Quotes by Paul Thomas Anderson

A good actor is like watching a great musician, but having a bad actor terrifies me, because it means I've got to find something to say or something to do. And that's really frustrating, because you want to be concentrating on everything, and instead you find yourself bogged down with helping someone know their lines or not bump into the furniture, and that's when you want to strangle them.

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.

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.

I try and balance it out. I mean, I don't want to be blabbermouth-young-white-director-guy, but I gotta help. You just don't want to get a disgusting sheen on yourself.

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

I'm loving this kind of critical polarity. It's the first time it's happened to me and I'm actually getting off on it a little bit.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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