Paul Thomas Anderson Quotes

“Kill your television!”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

I don't want to talk about those things. I see the worst in people. I don't need to look past seeing them to get all I need. I've built my hatreds up over the years, little by little, Henry ... to have you here gives me a second breath. I can't keep doing this on my own with these ... people.
[laughs]

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“My filmmaking education consisted of finding out what filmmakers I liked were watching, then seeing those films. I learned the technical stuff from books and magazines, and with the new technology you can watch entire movies accompanied by audio commentary from the director. You can learn more from John Sturges' audio track on the 'Bad Day at Black Rock' laserdisc than you can in 20 years of film school. Film school is a complete con, because the information is there if you want it.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“No, really. Just do it. You have some kind of weird reasons that are okay.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“I've never been a fan of whimsical or confusing storytelling.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“I didn't have any desire I might have had 10 years ago to shoot every single word that I wrote.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“I really subscribe to that old adage that you should never let the audience get ahead of you for a second. So if the film's abrasive and wrongfoots people then, y'know, that's great. But I hope it involves an audience.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“I remember being taught in school that you would underline things that you liked. I remember just underlining everything as a kid, thinking, 'This has all gotta be important!' I would just underline the whole thing!”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“No matter how many times you do it, you don't get used to the sadness - for me at least - of coming to the end of a film.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“I am always looking for that nuance, that moment of truth, and you can't really do that fast.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“It's a gamble you take, the risk of alienating an audience. But there's a theory - sometimes it's better to confuse them for five minutes than let them get ahead of you for 10 seconds.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“You have to be a brat in order to carve out your parameters, and you have to be a monster to anyone who gets in your way. But sometimes it's difficult to know when that's necessary and when you're just being a baby, throwing your rattle from the cage.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“Acting is the hardest job in the entire world. By far. Harder than ditch digging.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

I'll rebel against powers and principalities, all the time. Always, I will.

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“How do I respond to criticism? Critically. I listen to all criticism critically.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“Screenwriting is like ironing. You move forward a little bit and go back and smooth things out.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

I don't miss scenes at all the way that I used to miss them when I was younger making a film. It's actually quite fun to get rid of them now.

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“I don't think it's a director's job to peek behind the curtain too much.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“I have a feeling, one of those gut feelings, that I'll make pretty good movies the rest of my life.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“I write from my stomach.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“Of course, I'm no dummy.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

Crazy is so hard to play, there's nothing you can really tell an actor.

— Paul Thomas Anderson

Well I'd really love to work with Robert De Niro, because he's still the most talented actor out there.

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“As I have got older and become a father, there's less and less time for films.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“I actually enjoyed the struggles that we had trying to shape 'Blood', to get the pacing right, the rhythm of it.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“I don't think the competition's so rough, within the majority of movies made in Hollywood.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“I don't want to be the angry guy.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

I had never read Upton Sinclair. I didn't read 'The Jungle' in high school or anything like that. But it's pretty terrific writing.

— Paul Thomas Anderson

I had the standard movie geek childhood, because for as long as I can remember, all I wanted to do was make movies.

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“I'm completely aware of the fact that I'm a control freak.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“I'm not really a Sundance baby, but they helped me so much I feel I have to acknowledge it.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“My dad was this sort of avant-garde guy who did all kinds of weird things. He was a true original and anybody who met him never forgot him.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

My writing has a lot to do with who I am, and what my life is like, and my relationships to people.

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“So with 'There Will Be Blood,' I didn't even really feel like I was adapting a book. I was just desperate to find stuff to write.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

The films that I love are very straightforward stories, like really old-fashioned stuff.

— Paul Thomas Anderson

There's a lot for screenwriters to steal from songwriters, in terms of getting to the point.

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“To make a film, the final big collaborator that you have is the composer.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“You know, I'm really not that competent at describing things musically.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“My older sister was at the cusp of new wave, and I had older brothers from my father's first marriage who were rock 'n' roll guys, so I was exposed to a lot of popular culture.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“But I'd be lying if I didn't say that every time you go to make a film, you're desperate to either do it better than you did it last time or to not repeat yourself.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“Clinton used to like to get out of the White House a lot. He would take night trips to McDonald's, and stuff like that. I think he wanted to get out of the house.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“I always had a dream about trying to make a movie that had no dialogue in it, that was just music and pictures. I still haven't done it yet, but I tried to get close in the beginning.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“I don't get a sense of American pride. I just get a sense that everyone is here, battling the same thing - that around the world everybody's after the same thing, just some minor piece of happiness each day.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“I think my job is to try and be as honest as I can with what is in my mind and how I feel - I think that's what you're supposed to do, if you're a good writer. So I try to do that. I know I do that. I do do that.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“It felt like the first thing, but when I first started out, I got a job adapting a book by Russell Banks called 'Rule Of The Bone.' I didn't do a very good job. I didn't really know what I was doing in general, let alone how to adapt a book.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“I guess what I like in my movies is where you see a character change by maybe two degrees as opposed to the traditional movie change of ninety degrees. I guess that always feels false to me in movies because that doesn't truly happen. Around me, at least in the life I live, I guess I don't see people change ninety or a hundred degrees. I see them change in very small increments. I think it's just a monitor I might have on myself as a writer to not make any false scenes.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“If you figure a way to live without serving a master, any master, then let the rest of us know, will you? For you'd be the first person in the history of the world.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“You write who you are. But you also cheat, and youwrite what you want to be. It's embarrasing to be the guy who madethe movie, knowing you're not exactly who you want to be.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

“It's so hard to do anything that doesn't owe some kind of debt to what Stanley Kubrick did with music in movies. Inevitably, you're going to end up doing something that he's probably already done before. It always seem like we're falling behind whatever he came up with. 'Singin' in the Rain' in Clockwork Orange - that was the first time I became so aware of music in movies. So no matter how hard you try to do something new, you're always following behind.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson