Paul Haggis Quotes

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.

If you believe in someone enough, and you just don't stop believing in them, mo matter what, no matter how much they push you away, and no matter how often they prove they're only there to use you.

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.

Walk through Santa Monica and try to find somebody who knows a young man or woman who's in this war. Here, war is an intellectual concept. If you lose your son or daughter, it's no longer an intellectual matter.

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.

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

The radical rightwing pegs Hollywood as a leftist town, which is completely wrong. There are a lot of actors, writers, and directors who talk a liberal agenda... but all the studio bosses, for as long as there have been studios, have all been as far rightwing as you can possibly imagine.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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