62+ Paul Haggis Quotes On Happiness, Bible And Crash

Paul Haggis is a Canadian screenwriter, film producer, and director. He is best known for writing the Academy Award-winning films Million Dollar Baby and Crash. He was also the creator of the television series Due South and the producer of the long-running series Walker, Texas Ranger. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Paul Haggis on love, leadership, life.

Top 10 Paul Haggis Quotes

1. As a general rule, I don't plan to travel with my Oscars, but we may have to make an exception.
2. I miss my mother very, very much.
3. We crash into each other just so we can feel something.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. I like to write about things about which I have no answers, questions that trouble me. These things trouble me.
7. 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.
8. We're trying to reinvent Bond. He's 28 - no Q, no gadgets.
9. We never did just one take. Multiple takes. Many. I did a bunch. Sometimes I do one take. Sometimes I did 20.
10. Usually the characters are where I start. Then I continually ask myself, 'What's the worst thing that could happen to this character?'

Paul Haggis Short Quotes

• We give you characters we'd feel very comfortable judging, and then go: 'Oh yeah? Watch this'.
• The wonderful thing about Clint is you can never second guess how he is going to react to anything.
• The stereotypes we pretend that we reject are ingrained in our DNA.
• We think we know what's right. With excessive pride comes blindness.
• When we're threatened, it's very easy to appeal to our basic natures.
• There are very few guys like me. I make a lot of money. I didn't always.
• It turns out that good actors can make anything believable.
• You have to be careful of the advice you take.
• When I started to allow the characters to go where they wanted to go, I just had to follow.
• I like to really respect the audience and let them come through on answers.

Paul Haggis Quotes About Love

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. — Paul Haggis

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

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. — Paul Haggis

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

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. — Paul Haggis

Paul Haggis Quotes About Writing

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

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. — Paul Haggis

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. — Paul Haggis

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

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

Paul Haggis Famous Quotes And Sayings

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. — Paul Haggis

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. — Paul Haggis

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. — Paul Haggis

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. — Paul Haggis

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. — Paul Haggis

I just asked myself, what piece of that man's soul did he just chew off and swallow to get next week's assignment? You know, just to live, just to work as an artist, or to feed the family? — Paul Haggis

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

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. — Paul Haggis

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. — Paul Haggis

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. — Paul Haggis

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. — Paul Haggis

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. — Paul Haggis

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. — Paul Haggis

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. — Paul Haggis

I’m a deeply broken person, and broken institutions fascinate me. — Paul Haggis

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. — Paul Haggis

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. — Paul Haggis

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

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. — Paul Haggis

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

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. — Paul Haggis

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. — Paul Haggis

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. — Paul Haggis

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. — Paul Haggis

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

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. — Paul Haggis

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. — Paul Haggis

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. — Paul Haggis

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. — Paul Haggis

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. — Paul Haggis

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. — Paul Haggis

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

Life Lessons by Paul Haggis

1. Paul Haggis’s work emphasizes the importance of understanding and respecting different cultures and perspectives. He encourages us to challenge our own beliefs and assumptions and to strive for greater understanding and empathy.
2. Through his films, Haggis encourages us to recognize the power of storytelling, and how it can be used to create meaningful dialogue and understanding between individuals and communities.
3. Haggis also teaches us to be open to new ideas and to recognize the importance of collaboration and communication in order to create positive change.