Paul Thomas Anderson Quotes
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Crazy is so hard to play, there's nothing you can really tell an actor.
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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.
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I didn't have any desire I might have had 10 years ago to shoot every single word that I wrote.
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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.
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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!
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Acting is the hardest job in the entire world. By far. Harder than ditch digging.
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I have a feeling, one of those gut feelings, that I'll make pretty good movies the rest of my life.
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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.
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I write from my stomach.
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I am always looking for that nuance, that moment of truth, and you can't really do that fast.
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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.
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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.
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I don't think it's a director's job to peek behind the curtain too much.
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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.
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Well I'd really love to work with Robert De Niro, because he's still the most talented actor out there.
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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.
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I'm not really a Sundance baby, but they helped me so much I feel I have to acknowledge it.
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I've never been a fan of whimsical or confusing storytelling.
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How do I respond to criticism? Critically. I listen to all criticism critically.
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I don't think the competition's so rough, within the majority of movies made in Hollywood.
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As I have got older and become a father, there's less and less time for films.
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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.
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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.
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Screenwriting is like ironing. You move forward a little bit and go back and smooth things out.