Quotes

I love making pictures but I don't like talking about them.

Anybody can direct a picture once they know the fundamentals. Directing is not a mystery, it's not an art. The main thing about directing is: photograph the people's eyes.

It is easier to get an actor to be a cowboy than to get a cowboy to be an actor.

It's no use talking to me about art, I make pictures to pay the rent.

I didn't show up at the ceremony to collect any of my first three Oscars. Once I went fishing, another time there was a war on, and on another occasion, I remember, I was suddenly taken drunk.

For a director there are commercial rules that it is necessary to obey. In our profession, an artistic failure is nothing; a commercial failure is a sentence. The secret is to make films that please the public and also allow the director to reveal his personality.

[on John Wayne] Duke is the best actor in Hollywood.

As a beauty, Dolores Del Río is in a class with [Greta Garbo]. Then she opens her mouth and becomes Minnie Mouse.

My name is John Ford and I make Westerns.

[1967] I am a liberal Democrat and a rebel.

[on Native American Indians] We've treated them badly, it's a blot on our shield; we've robbed, cheated, murdered and massacred them, but they kill one white man and God, out come the troops.

Maureen O'Hara is one of the actresses I most dislike. Everybody thought I was her lover. Actually, I hated her and she hated me, but she was right for the parts.

[on the CinemaScope anamorphic aspect ratio] I hated it. You've never seen a painter use that kind of composition - even the great murals, it still wasn't this huge tennis court. Your eyes pop back and forth, and it's very difficult to get a close-up.

None of my so-called better pictures are westerns.

[on early cinema] None of us thought we were making anything but entertainment for the moment. Only Ernst Lubitsch knew we were making art.

[to Akira Kurosawa] You like rain a lot, don't you?