Time & Perspective Quote by Kevin Costner

Costner is making a savvy play for permanence in an era that treats culture like a scrolling feed. By naming The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and The Searchers, he’s not just praising two famous Westerns; he’s invoking a shared American myth-making machine that once taught audiences how to feel about violence, justice, race, and belonging. Those films aren’t remembered because they’re “classics.” They’re remembered because they land images and moral shocks so cleanly that they become personal memory: the kind of scene you can’t shake years later, even if you’ve forgotten the plot.

The subtext is defensive, and revealing: cinema, at its best, is still capable of engraving itself onto you, regardless of TikTok or whatever comes next. Costner’s “it does not matter what century you are from” is deliberately hyperbolic, but it’s also a pitch for continuity. Westerns are often dismissed as dusty, politically compromised artifacts; he argues they’re time-proof because their craft is time-proof. Ford’s framing, the slow dread, the clash between law and legend - these are techniques that bypass taste and hit the nervous system.

Context matters: Costner has spent decades trying to revive the Western as prestige storytelling (Dances with Wolves, Open Range, Yellowstone, Horizon). This line doubles as a manifesto: the genre isn’t nostalgia, it’s an engine for unforgettable moments, and he wants to be one of the people still building them.