Paul Haggis
The worst thing you can do to a filmmaker is to walk out of his film and go, 'That was a nice movie.' But if you can cause people to walk out and then argue about the film on the sidewalk... I think we're all seeking dissension, and we love to affect an audience.
As artists, we have to be brave. If we aren't brave, we aren't artists.
I don't think writers should write about answers. I think writers should write about questions.Collection: Writing
The stereotypes we pretend that we reject are ingrained in our DNA.Collection: Stereotype
We think we know what's right. With excessive pride comes blindness.Collection: Pride
If you change the right mind, then that person can perhaps change the world.Collection: Mind
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.Collection: Reading
You have to be careful of the advice you take.Collection: Advice
I was in a cult for thirty-four years. Everyone else could see it. I don’t know why I couldn’t.Collection: Years
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.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Jobs
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.Collection: Kids
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.Collection: America
I like to really respect the audience and let them come through on answers.Collection: Answers
Usually the characters are where I start. Then I continually ask myself, 'What's the worst thing that could happen to this character?'Collection: Character
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.Collection: Awards
Always write from your gut, no matter what the project is.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Home
What I love about writing is the contradictions we all embody as human beings.Collection: Writing
A creative person has to believe in the unseen and the untouched.Collection: Believe
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.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Country
You don't do pictures because the audience is ready for them. You do them because there's something gnawing at you, something inside.Collection: Ready
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.Collection: Would Be
We crash into each other just so we can feel something.Collection: Crash
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.Collection: Jobs
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.Collection: Two
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.Collection: Political
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.Collection: Dream
I’m a deeply broken person, and broken institutions fascinate me.Collection: Broken
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.Collection: War
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.Collection: Honor
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.Collection: Daughter
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?Collection: Son
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.Collection: War
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.Collection: Country
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.Collection: War
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.Collection: War
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.Collection: Grateful
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.Collection: Team
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.Collection: Trying
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.Collection: Believe
When I started to allow the characters to go where they wanted to go, I just had to follow.Collection: Character
It turns out that good actors can make anything believable.Collection: Actors
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.Collection: Jobs
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.Collection: Long
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.Collection: Years
We never did just one take. Multiple takes. Many. I did a bunch. Sometimes I do one take. Sometimes I did 20.Collection: Sometimes
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.Collection: Reality