Paul Haggis Quotes

I miss my mother very, very much.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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.

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.

We never did just one take. Multiple takes. Many. I did a bunch. Sometimes I do one take. Sometimes I did 20.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

The wonderful thing about Clint is you can never second guess how he is going to react to anything.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Usually the characters are where I start.

Then I continually ask myself, 'What's the worst thing that could happen to this character?'

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.

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.

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

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

It turns out that good actors can make anything believable.

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 have to be careful of the advice you take.

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

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.

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