Paul Haggis Quotes

I don't think writers should write about answers. I think writers should write about questions.

As a general rule, I don't plan to travel with my Oscars, but we may have to make an exception.

We think we know what's right. With excessive pride comes blindness.

I don't think it's the job of filmmakers to give anybody answers. I do think, though, that a good film makes you ask questions of yourself as you leave the theatre.

I was in a cult for thirty-four years. Everyone else could see it. I don’t know why I couldn’t.

We crash into each other just so we can feel something.

We're trying to reinvent Bond. He's 28 - no Q, no gadgets.

If there's magic in boxing, it's the magic of fighting battles beyond endurance, beyond cracked ribs, ruptured kidneys and detached retinas. It's the magic of risking everything for a dream that nobody sees but you.

I like to write about things about which I have no answers, questions that trouble me. These things trouble me.

You have to be careful of the advice you take.

Now we really like to put people in boxes. As men, we do it because we don't understand characters that aren't ourselves and we aren't willing to put ourselves in the skin of those characters and women, I think, terrify us. We tend not to write women as human beings. It's cartoons we're making now. And that's a shame.

The hope is what America represents to the world and has always represented - the hope for a better life and a better world. We have a duty to protect and support that hope with not just our words, but with our deeds.

You hear this story that we're all on the left, but when there's a demonstration, you count how many actors actually come out. If there's a half dozen, that would be a big day.

If you change the right mind, then that person can perhaps change the world.

Usually the characters are where I start. Then I continually ask myself, 'What's the worst thing that could happen to this character?'

Always write from your gut, no matter what the project is.

What I love about writing is the contradictions we all embody as human beings.

United States could be a great country. It needs to be a great country. It's our responsibility as citizens to make that happen, every single one of us.

You don't do pictures because the audience is ready for them. You do them because there's something gnawing at you, something inside.

I've lived in America for many years. I mean, I love being a Canadian, but I truly identify with America. I love America so much.

I just want to thank people who take big risks in their daily lives when there aren't cameras rolling. I want to dedicate this award to people who stand up for peace and against injustice and intolerance.

I like taking genres and subverting them. I did that with In the Valley of Elah. I said, "Okay, this is just a murder mystery. Relax." And then, two thirds of the way through, I broke every convention of a murder mystery.

The stereotypes we pretend that we reject are ingrained in our DNA.

I like to really respect the audience and let them come through on answers.

If you make a film and then two and a half, three years later, suddenly the country's changed and you look like you just happened to hit it. I actually like being contrarian. I would have preferred to come out three years ago when everyone was disagreeing with me. But hopefully it asks a lot of questions about our responsibility in sending young men and women to war, especially a war that's so complex, where there's no right answer, where they're forced with impossible decisions every day.

We are manipulated by fear and the fear of others, and how we're often manipulated into doing things and voting in ways that are against our own best interest. Look at healthcare. People will tell you that healthcare is socialism and communism, and they're doing this while their wife needs an operation and their kid needs braces.

Right after we invaded Iraq, I put a sign on my lawn that said "War is not the answer." That sign was either defaced, ripped up, or stolen every week. I had to replace that sign twelve times.

I was fired from my own television show, CBS's Family Law. It was the second time this had happened in my career, the first being when I was fired from The Facts of Life. I had been grateful to work in TV for so long but had always been chasing a career as a feature writer-director and had completely failed.

I was trying to talk about where we are right now as a society, and talk about the fear we all live in, and certainly since 9-11, how it's affected us and the world.

I try not to think of actors as I'm writing because I think you do them a disservice by writing for things they've already done.

It turns out that good actors can make anything believable.

I just love actors, and I've always loved actors. I empathize with their job. Everyone thinks it's easy, and it ain't. To be that vulnerable and brave on camera is tough.

It takes me awhile to find something that I'm passionate about. I'm reading a lot and thinking a lot, and torturing myself a lot because I'm feeling really guilty for not writing something today.

You'd be surprised how many writers, or how many actors, if they miss a paycheck or two, they've got nothing. As a writer or an actor you can have four or five jobs in one year and then have none for two years.

I just always try to find an interesting story and tell it well. That's a hard enough thing to do, whether it's a piece of fiction or it's a small piece of reality. I just look for good story.

The wrong one will start saying things like "withdraw with honor." We've heard phrases like that before, and they led to thousands and thousands of deaths. Democrats always want to look tough.

This is our fault. My fault as much as the next man's, because even if I was against the war, I didn't do enough to stop it.

I wanted to do a political film that is as nonpartisan as can be, because I wanted to do a story that was American. I wanted to tell an American tragedy.

All the studios are owned by multinational corporations, which are not usually bastions of the left. So all the actors, writers, and directors - or at least a great majority of them - live in fear because we're all insecure, we all want that next job, we all want to be loved, and we don't want to piss off some studio chief who won't hire us for the next movie.

When we're threatened, it's very easy to appeal to our basic natures.

You don't make a film because the audience is ready for it. You make a film because you have questions that are in your gut.

I miss my mother very, very much.

We never did just one take. Multiple takes. Many. I did a bunch. Sometimes I do one take. Sometimes I did 20.

We give you characters we'd feel very comfortable judging, and then go: 'Oh yeah? Watch this'.

We all have these tendencies in us that could go this way or that. I think that's the real key in writing. To look at a character without judgment.

As soon as you think you know Clint Eastwood, you don't know Clint Eastwood.

I’m a deeply broken person, and broken institutions fascinate me.

A creative person has to believe in the unseen and the untouched.

What happens when these young men and women come home so scarred and so wounded? We are ignoring that fact. We're just shoving them under the carpet.

Unless I'm really uneasy with what I'm writing, I lose interest very quickly.