Quotes By Paul Thomas Anderson

There's a lot for screenwriters to steal from songwriters, in terms of getting to the point.

My older sister was at the cusp of new wave, and I had older brothers from my father's first marriage who were rock 'n' roll guys, so I was exposed to a lot of popular culture.

Screenwriting is like ironing. You move forward a little bit and go back and smooth things out.

I don't want to be the angry guy.

I had never read Upton Sinclair. I didn't read 'The Jungle' in high school or anything like that. But it's pretty terrific writing.

I've never been a fan of whimsical or confusing storytelling.

I am always looking for that nuance, that moment of truth, and you can't really do that fast.

I'm not really a Sundance baby, but they helped me so much I feel I have to acknowledge it.

I'll rebel against powers and principalities, all the time. Always, I will.

But I'd be lying if I didn't say that every time you go to make a film, you're desperate to either do it better than you did it last time or to not repeat yourself.

So with 'There Will Be Blood,' I didn't even really feel like I was adapting a book. I was just desperate to find stuff to write.

I actually enjoyed the struggles that we had trying to shape 'Blood', to get the pacing right, the rhythm of it.

It's a gamble you take, the risk of alienating an audience. But there's a theory - sometimes it's better to confuse them for five minutes than let them get ahead of you for 10 seconds.

It felt like the first thing, but when I first started out, I got a job adapting a book by Russell Banks called 'Rule Of The Bone.' I didn't do a very good job. I didn't really know what I was doing in general, let alone how to adapt a book.

I don't think the competition's so rough, within the majority of movies made in Hollywood.

Acting is the hardest job in the entire world. By far. Harder than ditch digging.

I didn't have any desire I might have had 10 years ago to shoot every single word that I wrote.

Clinton used to like to get out of the White House a lot. He would take night trips to McDonald's, and stuff like that. I think he wanted to get out of the house.

Of course, I'm no dummy.

Well I'd really love to work with Robert De Niro, because he's still the most talented actor out there.

How do I respond to criticism? Critically. I listen to all criticism critically.

My dad was this sort of avant-garde guy who did all kinds of weird things. He was a true original and anybody who met him never forgot him.

To make a film, the final big collaborator that you have is the composer.

I think my job is to try and be as honest as I can with what is in my mind and how I feel - I think that's what you're supposed to do, if you're a good writer. So I try to do that. I know I do that. I do do that.

No matter how many times you do it, you don't get used to the sadness - for me at least - of coming to the end of a film.

You have to be a brat in order to carve out your parameters, and you have to be a monster to anyone who gets in your way. But sometimes it's difficult to know when that's necessary and when you're just being a baby, throwing your rattle from the cage.

The films that I love are very straightforward stories, like really old-fashioned stuff.

I had the standard movie geek childhood, because for as long as I can remember, all I wanted to do was make movies.

As I have got older and become a father, there's less and less time for films.

I always had a dream about trying to make a movie that had no dialogue in it, that was just music and pictures. I still haven't done it yet, but I tried to get close in the beginning.