Sam Peckinpah Quotes

The whole underside of our society has always been violence and still is. Churches, laws – everybody seems to think that man is a noble savage. But he’s only an animal. A meat-eating, talking animal. Recognize it. He also has grace and love and beauty. But don’t say to me we’re not violent.

The Price Is Right can really get me going.

There is a great streak of violence in every human being. If it is not channeled and understood, it will break out in war or in madness.

Oh, I find it very easy to fall in love.

The western is a universal frame within which it’s possible to comment on today.

Well, killing a man isn’t clean and quick and simple. It’s bloody and awful. And maybe if enough people come to realize that shooting somebody isn’t just fun and games, maybe we’ll get somewhere.

I’m a student of violence because I’m a student of the human heart.

All I want is to enter my house justified.

Yeah, Dundee was great. It was a great film. I fell in love with my Mexican wife on Dundee.

I created ‘The Westerner’ because of anger – anger at never-miss sheriffs, always-right marshalls, whitewashed gunfighters … anger at TV’s quick-draw tin gods who stand behind a tin star or ten cents’ worth of righteous anger and justify their skill and slaughter with a self-conscious grin or a minute’s worth of bad philosophy.

I want to be able to make westerns like Akira Kurosawa makes westerns.

Why should I give you an interview? All you journalists are plagiarists.