Top 55 Bill Pullman Quotes

That’s how we invaded Iraq, through the fear of an ‘evil empire,’ and it just makes people feel like bulls with the toreadors – you see red, and you charge.

I’ve always been what they call a late bloomer.

My interest in theater really began in the ’70s when American realism wasn’t really in favor. I really dreaded going into a play that had a toaster that worked. I just didn’t want to see that.

I think Westerns are always so great for clearing out the clutter and the ambiguities, and getting right to the broad strokes of that kind of situation.

I’ve always wrestled against being typified in one way or another.

I did a lot of Shakespeare touring when I was in college in Montana.

I think about Laura Bush every once in awhile. She is a great supporter of the arts. I did a show at the Eisenhower Theater, and she would make a point of coming backstage. The relationship between Laura and George Bush was always that way where you felt like he was at his best behavior when he was in her company.

I’ve seen a lot of actors in a lot of different stages of their careers, and I’ve seen it come and go. People get a sense of entitlement from it. And that’s when it starts getting you in trouble.

The first Westerns I saw as a child were those little 8-mm. home movies put out by Castle Films.

I’ve been lucky to have opportunities with David Lynch in ‘Lost Highway’ and Jennifer Lynch in this movie ‘Surveillance,’ so I’ve always boomeranged around a little bit, and no one has caught my foot in the trap yet, but I think if I move fast enough… ‘cos I think I got trapped a couple of times.

I’m fascinated by movies and enjoy that, of course, but always, the measure of how you are functioning in the arts was theater.

Commercial movies have to end with moral flags flown again and all that.

I have gotten a number of invitations to be on television shows as ‘the dad,’ but that was Kryptonite to me. I was like, ‘This would be the death of me. I’ll be a cesspool of niceness.’ It doesn’t feed me.

I’ve done a lot of different kinds of things, so different people remember me for different things.

There was an idea of accepting everyone; there was no sense of exclusion.

I was doing this children’s theater play, and it was non-Equity. We were out of town to do it at the Kennedy Center, and it was always kind of, ‘Well, the producers may have to turn this into Equity,’ and that’s what happened. It was kind of a silly children’s theater play, but that’s how I got my card.

I like to wear my dad’s shoes to auditions as sort of a lucky thing. I feel like I’m on solid ground.

Sometimes you fall into the niche of being the confidant guy, or the good-looking guy, or being too charactery, or not charactery enough.

I co-own the ranch with my brother, and he and his wife are really the backbone of the operation.

I never had any idea of going into movies.

I don’t like this instinct of reality television to wear your lifestyle in public. I’ve really always loved the anonymity of things.

It’s hard to explain to people how, if you’re really capable of providing the right professional work environment, it allows you to get more personal.

There’s something that comes into you that’s so exciting when you’re directing.

Growing things and being able to live off the land has always appealed to me.

No one wants to say, ‘That’s not funny,’ when you’re working.

Television tends to be a more difficult medium for me to get my head around sometimes when it comes to certain things I get offered.

Westerns give people a chance to see wide-open spaces and life before technology took over.

I did this play, ‘Expedition 6,’ that I worked on for three years in between other things. It was a good, interesting time for me because I trained as a theater director, and I went back, and we toured it around.

I think I was born out of my time.

The idea of taking classic American stories and reinterpreting them for a time and place is not just commercially viable. These stories also carry a sensual nature of what it meant to be an American, and they deserve to be reinterpreted.

I planted an orchard when I was 13. The impulse came from wanting to grow my own apples. That and the nursery catalog showed an apple tree with a beautiful girl standing under the fruit. Whether the flavor or the picture that did it, I’ve been hooked since.

I always come back to acting.

‘The Last Seduction,’ ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ and ‘While You Were Sleeping’ did a lot to get me noticed for bigger roles.

The chaos of my life has a lot to do with my hair.

A lot of people just ask me about how I can do small budgets and big budgets, but many actors do both. I think the more self-destructive impulse I have is doing so many different characters.

Othello is someone who’s just had a victory, and it’s the aftermath of coming back and attempting to live comfortably as a civilian.

I always love challenges and doing something that I can’t quite figure out.

I’m intrigued by a tough situation, and I try to do something with it.

Some of the shoes I have are from movies – I have my workman’s boots from ‘While You Were Sleeping’ – while others are shoes I’ve had forever.

I always feel like there’s some behaviour that we’re all capable – we have our inhibitions protecting from indulging in certain appetites or developing certain appetites.

That massiveness of bureaucracy at the VA is chronic and has been chronic.

If I were born in the 1700s, I would look like a rounded man.

It’s astounding to me that in a country where there is an ever-growing divide between rich and poor, that people won’t accept the need for regulation on banks and salaries and so on.

I hate to admit it, because it makes me sound weird, but I’m Mr. Shoes. I own over 30 pairs.

My family and I are hooked on ‘The Searchers.’ I can’t get enough of it.

With modern medicine prolonging life no matter what condition you’re in, it seems like we’re working towards immortality by science.

‘The Virginian’ has a very important romantic story line that you don’t find in a lot of Westerns… At the heart of the story is quite a bit of pain and a sense of loss.

We’ve seen with Brexit and other things that there’s a dark impulse to be petulant and frustrated with complicated solutions.

I never imagined myself in films. My benchmarks were performances I saw in the theater.

I watched John Wayne movies, matinees – things like that. It was only in college that I saw European films. That became more of what I was interested in.

I like those crisis moments – if you’re on top of it and don’t get pulled under by panic and fear, it’s a very bonding thing.

I always feel like there are a lot of different types of favourites. There are some that I look to for interesting things, some that I look to for acting things, others that I watch again and again.

We’re all part of humanity. And maybe there’s something about the worst people, with the most destructive, warped minds, that is just an acceleration of something that is in quite a few of us.

There’s something about Warren Wilson. You can gain a lot of very important things and skills that you carry over into whatever you decide to do.

I love to prune. I have a physical need to do things.