"There's action only if there's danger." "A good movie is three good scenes and no bad scenes." "I'm a storyteller - that's the chief function of a director. And they're moving pictures, let's make 'em move!" "When you find out a thing that goes pretty well, you might as well do it again." "Cary Grant was so far the best that there isn't anybody to be compared to him." "John Wayne represents more force, more power, than anybody else on the screen" "When (John) Ford was dying we used to discuss how tough it was to make a good western without [John] Wayne." [On John Wayne] "He never squawks about anything. He's the easiest person I ever worked with. Because he never says anything about it, he just goes ahead and does it." "I never made a message picture, and I hope I never do." "If you don't get a damn good actor with [John] Wayne he's going to blow him right off the screen, not just by the fact that he's good, but by his power, his strength." "[John] Wayne is underrated. He's an awfully good actor: He holds a thing together; he gives it a solidity and honesty, and he can make a lot of things believable." [Director Eric Rohmer on Hawks' pictures] "If one does not love the films of Howard Hawks, one cannot love cinema". "Rio Bravo was made because I didn't like a picture called High Noon. I saw High Noon at about the same time I saw another western picture, and we were talking about western pictures and they asked me if I liked it, and I said, 'Not particularly.' I didn't think a good sheriff was going to go running around town like a chicken with his head off asking for help, and finally his Quaker wife had to save him. That isn't my idea of a good western sheriff. I said that a good sheriff would turn around and say, 'How good are you? Are you good enough to take the best man they've got?' The fellow would probably say no, and he'd say, 'Well, then I'd just have to take care of you.' And that scene was in Rio Bravo."