Clint Eastwood is an icon. His face, his voice, his films — each distinctively Clint. He has worked in the movie business for now over six decades — as an actor, a director, and an artist — yet seldom strayed from greatness and singularity. And so Esquire asked him how — how did he do it? Where did he come from? What did he learn? Below, his answers.

I don’t know if I can tell you exactly when the pussy generation started. Maybe when people started asking about the meaning of life.

We were doing In the Line of Fire, and John Malkovich was on top of the building, and he has me in a real precarious situation. My character is crazed, and he pulls out a gun and sticks it into John’s face, and John puts his mouth over the end of the gun. Now, I don’t know what kind of crazy symbol that was. We certainly didn’t rehearse anything like that. I’m sure he didn’t think about it while we were practicing it. It was just there. Like Sir Edmund Hillary talking about why you do anything: because it’s there. That’s why you climb Everest. It’s like a little moment in time, and as fast as it comes into your brain, you just throw it out and discard it. Do it before you discard it, you know?

I’m past doing one chin-up more than I did the day before. I just kind of do what I feel like.

As Jerry Fielding used to say, “We’ve come this far, let’s not ruin it by thinking.”

For more wisdom from Clint Eastwood, read his full What I’ve Learned at Esquire.com.