Paul Haggis Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

I optioned the magazine article. That was end of 2003. It was a time when the war was incredibly popular here and everyone was driving around with flags on their car, if you remember not too long ago.

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.

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

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

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

I found two true stories. One was in 2003. One was the beginning of 2004. I decided to meld them. Richard Davis' story which is the largest portion of this, a lot of the events are exactly as you saw, exactly what happened and the locations. Exactly as it was said with the chicken house and the strip club. Richard's parents were on the set and they'll tell you that the story is different than their son's. I was very concerned because I called them to say, 'You understand I'm fictionalizing this story?

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

I really wanted to make a nonpolitical political film. I wanted something that folks in red states and blue states could look at and not ask if this is the right thing to do to be in this war, but what this war is doing to the fabric of our society.

It turns out that good actors can make anything believable.

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.

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.

Every 10 years, I know less about love and relationships. The smarter I get, the less I know.

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.

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

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.

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.

Independent films are very hard to get made, but I'm lucky enough to get them made, so I'm going to keep doing it. I like my independence. I like being able to tell a story the way I want to tell a story. I don't like developing it with a team. I like coming to a story and deciding whether I want to do it or not.

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.

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

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.

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

You have to be careful of the advice you take.

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

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.

There's something that's so basically corrupt about any system in which a good and fair profit is not enough. There has to be more, every year, every quarter, because your stock price has to rise.

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

There are very few guys like me. I make a lot of money. I didn't always.

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.

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

When I started to allow the characters to go where they wanted to go, I just had to follow.

If you're in a relationship and you try to trust somebody who's completely untrustworthy, when trust is the basis of any relationship and everyone else says not to trust, is love transformative.

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.