Quotes By Paul Thomas Anderson

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

I don't get a sense of American pride. I just get a sense that everyone is here, battling the same thing - that around the world everybody's after the same thing, just some minor piece of happiness each day.

My writing has a lot to do with who I am, and what my life is like, and my relationships to people.

No, really. Just do it. You have some kind of weird reasons that are okay.

Crazy is so hard to play, there's nothing you can really tell an actor.

Film school is a complete con, because the information is there if you want it.

I have a feeling, one of those gut feelings, that I'll make pretty good movies the rest of my life.

I don't miss scenes at all the way that I used to miss them when I was younger making a film. It's actually quite fun to get rid of them now.

I'm completely aware of the fact that I'm a control freak.

I write from my stomach.

I don't think it's a director's job to peek behind the curtain too much.

I really subscribe to that old adage that you should never let the audience get ahead of you for a second. So if the film's abrasive and wrongfoots people then, y'know, that's great. But I hope it involves an audience.

You know, I'm really not that competent at describing things musically.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.