Barbarian Quotes

(Talking about his Conan the Barbarian (1982) director): John Milius used to call himself the dog trainer. Guess who were the dogs?

(About the dog accident while making Conan the Barbarian (1982)) One of them hit me too soon. It caught me off guard and I went right over the ledge. I fell ten feet and landed on my back. I was covered with scratches and bruises. It was probably a pretty good beginning for this movie, though. It set the tone for the whole time we were there. This was going to be fun . . . but dangerous.

(From an interview expressing concern over making Conan the Destroyer (1984) less brutal than its predecessor, Conan the Barbarian (1982)) I think it`s a mistake. I know Sylvester Stallone made an extra $20 million because he got a PG rating for Rocky III (1982), but it`s a matter of how much you want to stay within the character`s reality. Can you slaughter people and never see blood? Is it possible? You must have battles. That`s part of life, war, and the world of Conan.

There were various stepping-stones in my career. One of them was Conan the Barbarian (1982), because it was the first time I did a film with that kind of budget and I had the title role. The next big stepping-stone was The Terminator (1984). With The Terminator", I think people became aware of the fact that I didn`t really have to take my shirt off or run around and expose my muscles in order to sell tickets. After I did "The Terminator" and we had seen it be more successful than the Conan films, people then sent me a variety of different kinds of scripts - all in the action-adventure genre, but they were not muscle movies or Viking movies or pirate movies or anything like that.

I took more abuse in Predator (1987) than I did in Conan the Barbarian (1982). I fell down that waterfall (40 feet) and swam in this ice-cold water for days and for weeks was covered in mud. It was freezing in the Mexican jungle. They had these heat lamps on all the time, but they were no good. If you stayed in front of the lamps, the mud dried. Then, you had to take it off and put new mud on again. It was a no-win situation. The location was tough. Never on flat ground. Always on a hill. We stood all day long on a hill, one leg down, one leg up. It was terrible.

If you go back to the Conan the Barbarian series, I really liked that.

As a result, I`ve been portrayed as a cynical barbarian preying on the very clients I was charged to defend.

Every singer who`s worth his salt is an actor. You play different characters in different songs. Sometimes you`re a romantic lead, sometimes you`re this madcap party barbarian. You play all these roles, running through every aspect of emotion.

(Talking about the shoot of Conan the Barbarian): "It was tough. I nearly lost a finger. Arnold (Schwarzenegger) smashed his head against a rock. But that was nothing compared to what the stunt men went through."

The true law of the race is progress and development. Whenever civilization pauses in the march of conquest, it is overthrown by the barbarian.