I have a theory that the only way you can be any good is if the camera likes you. If the camera doesn’t like you, you are gone.

Fortune favors the prepared.

I guarantee you that two directors that are any good can take the same story, change the name of the characters, change the name of the town, and make an entirely different picture.

I’m such a coward that unless I get a good writer, I don’t want to make a picture.

I think girls who insult people are very attractive.

I find that when you open on a group of people sitting down and talking, the scene sits down with them. The best antidote for that is an entrance. Begin the scene with someone entering, and somehow it’s more interesting.

If you want to make pictures and enjoy making them, you better go out and make something that a lot of people want to see. And then they’ll turn you lose and let you make what you want. And then maybe you can do some of the things that you want to do. But as a beginner, you haven‘t got a chance.

I try to tell my story as simply as possible, with the camera at eye level.

I’m a storyteller – that’s the chief function of a director. And they’re moving pictures, let’s make ’em move!

A good movie is three good scenes and no bad scenes.

Too many actors try to get too much out of scenes that they ought to be leaving alone, just doing them quickly and getting the hell out.

John Wayne represents more force, more power, than anybody else on the screen.

The western is the simplest form of drama – a gun, death.

There’s action only if there is danger.