"When I believe in something, I fight like hell for it."

"Ill never be as good an actor as I want to be....but I'll be good."

"Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting."

"I could see that Jim (his close friend, James Garner) was very neat around his place. Flowers trimmed, no papers in the yard...grass always cut. So, just to piss him off, I'd start lobbing empty beer cans down the hill into his driveway. He'd have his drive all spic and span when he left the house, then get home to find all these empty cans. Took him a long time to figure out it was me."

"Stardom equals financial success and financial success equals security. I've spent too much of my life feeling insecure."

"I don't believe in that phony hero stuff."

"I really don't like to act. At the beginning, back in '51, I had to force myself to stick with it. I was real uncomfortable, real uncomfortable."

"I scrounged around for the next couple of years, trying to get the scam on the human race and just where the hell I fitted in - I discovered there were no openings."

"I'm out of the Midwest. It was a good place to come from. It give you a sense of right or wrong and fairness, which I think is lacking in our society."

"I've got a feeling I'm leaving stardom behind, you know. I'm gradually becoming more of a filmmaker, acquiring a different kind of dignity from that which you achieve in acting. After all, I'm no matinee idol, and I'm getting older. I don't think I can be doing my kind of thing in the seventies; I want to be on more of the creative side of business."