"It's very liberating to be naked in front of a hundred people, but there's nothing sexual about lovemaking on a movie set...."

In reference to "The Terminator":
"I actually met Jim in 1980 ... he was art directing a picture for Roger Corman, called Galaxy of Terror, a real classic, and I got hired on to his night crew. At the time I was making this short film, Fishheads, and I showed it to Jim, and at the time he was writing this story called The Terminator. We'd be painting sets and I'd say, 'Wait, let me get this straight. The Terminator comes back from the future to change something in the past because of a future war, there's gonna be a revolution ... oh, oh, I get it. That sounds pretty cool, Jim.' And, this was The Terminator."

In reference to "Aliens":
"That one was so weird to make because, as we shot at Pinewood Studios in England, we'd show up on set and blast the crap out of these roaring Aliens all day, shooting them left and right, explosions, the works and then at the stroke of ten and four an old lady would push this tea trolley around, and all the Marines and all the guys playing the Aliens would take their costumes off and have cups of tea and scones."

"... but it was movies I had always wanted to be in. I'm into the whole thing, not just performing. I love watching what goes on behind the camera. My heroes are Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd -- complete filmmakers...."

In reference to "Next of Kin":
"Like every other young dreamer, I was crushed. You don't just arrive in Hollywood and become an actor, but after a few years I did get into the business."

In reference to "Mortuary":
"Years ago when I was a student in New York, I had the opportunity of studying with Stella Adler. Very early on, she had me do a scene from Zoo Story, the Edward Albee play. Well, she just ripped my balls off. I couldn't even get out of bed the next day. But she did say one funny thing. She said, 'Dahling, you're not ready for realism.' "

In reference to "True Lies":
"I had to beg for my life and say I had a little penis. That line would have scared off a lot of lesser men, but I relished it."

In reference to "Stripes":
"I did that film 18 or so years ago, Johny. I played a soldier. I haven't seen the movie in so long and films are shot out of sequence."

In reference to "Death Wish in Venice" (A super 8 film he made with a friend in high school):
"An androgynous boy wanders around the beaches, and these middle-aged men keep coming on to him. And every time they touch him, he turns around and blows them away with a .44 Magnum. I was eighteen years old, I was from Texas, and everything had to blow up real good or it wasn't a movie."

In reference to "Aliens":
"I was the scared, hysterical Marine in 'Aliens,' and I thought I had pushed the part too far. I came back home after that and just slid into this well of depression. I decided that I wasn't going to be an actor anymore."

"...Wilmington feels like a cottage industry. Much like Hollywood must have felt in the really early days... I'd like to come here and shoot another picture... as a producer I couldn't have picked a better place to shoot!"

Quoted from Monolith (1993):
Tucker (Bill Paxton): "I got 3 rules: 1) Shit happens. 2) Shit happens on a regular basis and 3) You better get used to rule 1 and 2."

"... I'm not sure exactly how, but from the second I read Twister I knew what was going to happen and how it was going to turn out and what the critics would have to say about the story,... it's an action movie, and it was fun, that was all I wanted at that point and I needed to feel my heart beat about something the way it did when I first started..."

In reference to "Indian Summer":
"I've got three nipples. Three. No one knows about that, but no one's ever asked me before. I guess it's about time I got it off my chest."

In reference to "Boxing Helena":
"There's nothing sexual about being on a set with seventy people watching you, you know... I mean, I'm an exhibitionist - more of an introverted extrovert - but it doesn't raise the flag, as it were..."

In reference to "Mighty Joe Young":
"I was having dinner with Rex [Reed]. I had received an offer for another big action movie at the same time Disney contacted me for Mighty Joe. I asked Rex which movie he thought I should take. He said: 'Paxton, while you still have some looks left, do the monkey movie. It's a lead. The other film is just a supporting role. You'll get enough of those sooner than you'd like.' "

In reference to "Titanic":
"But unless you've been put in situations of incredible temptation, or you've been on the deck of a sinking ship, you want to believe you'll do the right thing, but you can't know. I guess I have this fear that I would be kicking and clawing my way to the lifeboat."

In reference to "Monolith":
"I've kind of had a Forrest Gump career. I've been at the right place at the wrong time."

In reference to "Near Dark":
"A lot of people want to tell me I'm the affable all-American guy, but I came up doing character parts."

In reference to "Weird Science":
"It's one of those roles that I knew I had nailed to the barn door even while we were shooting it. I remember I wanted to get that haircut for the movie, and Michael Germain, who was the hairdresser and was a friend of mine from a movie called Streets of Fire that I had done about a year or two before, was afraid to cut my hair that short. He was worried that he was gonna get in trouble with John Hughes and Joel Silver, who produced movie. And I said, 'No, please. I just want to show up on the set.' The first shot I ever shot in that movie was the scene where I pull up in, I don't know, it's like a Bronco, it's all camouflage, and I get out and I've got my shotgun in one hand, and like this one duck in the other hand, and I'm kind of seeing the cars in the driveway. And I said, 'Let me just show up on the set. I don't even want them to see it.' So, the hairdresser was this guy from the '50s and he kept it a little long on the sides and it just looked like an aircraft carrier on top. When I walked onto the set in that outfit they were just completely floored. And when they saw the dailies, they went, 'Man, don't change a thing.' "

In reference to "Apollo 13":
"He called me back and said 'I'd like you to play the role of Fred Haise,' and my wife and I danced all over the house."