Zen & The Art of Clint Eastwood

Growing up in my grandparents house meant we were greeted every morning by a moody, squint-eyed, cigar-chomping, stetson-wearing cowboy, staring down at us from his position above the gas-fire. Shee-it, I must have seen that picture on a daily basis for at least 15 years.

A couple of decades later and The Man With No Name is still with us, dissing 'the pussy generation' and telling us how it is, in this month's Esquire magazine. Most noticeably of all ol' 'No Name' reveals a zen-like mastery of the creative process with platitude such as: '

"We've come this far, let's not ruin it by thinking."

Children teach you that you can still be humbled by life, that you learn something new all the time. That's the secret to life, really -- never stop learning. It's the secret to career. I'm still working because I learn something new all the time. It's the secret to relationships. Never think you've got it all.

We were doing In the Line of Fire, and John Malkovich was on top of the building, and he has me in a real precarious situation. My character is crazed and he pulls out a gun and sticks it into John's face, and John puts his mouth over the end of the gun. Now, I don't know what kind of crazy symbol that was. We certainly didn't rehearse anything like that. I'm sure he didn't think about it while we were practicing it. It was just there. Like Sir Edmund Hillary talking about why you do anything: Because it's there. That's why you climb Everest. It's like a little moment in time, and as fast as it comes into your brain, you just throw it out and discard it. Do it before you discard it, you know?

You look at Velázquez in his dark years and you wonder, How the hell did he get that way? I'm sure he didn't say to himself, "I'm in my dark period right now, so I'm going to paint this way." He just did it. That's when real art gets a chance to come into play.

Who'd have realised that for those 15 years we were actually looking at a Zen master?


Source:
http://www.esquire.com/features/what-ive-learned/clint-eastwood-quotes-0109?click=main_sr