Top 40 Paul Thomas Anderson Quotes (2024 Update)

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

— Paul Thomas Anderson

Featured in: Moving Forward Quotes

2. “I write from my stomach.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

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

— Paul Thomas Anderson

4. “I’ll rebel against powers and principalities, all the time. Always, I will.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

5. “Of course, I’m no dummy.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

6. “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

7. “We’re all children of Kubrick, aren’t we? Is there anything you can do that he hasn’t done?”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

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

— Paul Thomas Anderson

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

9. “I don’t want to be the angry guy.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

10. “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

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

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

— Paul Thomas Anderson

12. “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

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

— Paul Thomas Anderson

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

— Paul Thomas Anderson

15. “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

16. “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

17. “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

18. “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

19. “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

20. “Film school is a complete con, because the information is there if you want it.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

21. “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

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

— Paul Thomas Anderson

23. “There’s a lot for screenwriters to steal from songwriters, in terms of getting to the point.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

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

— Paul Thomas Anderson

25. “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

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

— Paul Thomas Anderson

27. “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

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

28. “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

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

— Paul Thomas Anderson

30. “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

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

— Paul Thomas Anderson

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

— Paul Thomas Anderson

33. “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

34. “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

35. “Kill your television!”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

36. “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

37. “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

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

— Paul Thomas Anderson

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

— Paul Thomas Anderson

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

— Paul Thomas Anderson

41. “Crazy is so hard to play, there’s nothing you can really tell an actor.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

42. “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

Featured in: Fun Quotes

43. “If you figure a way to live without serving a master, any master, then let the rest of us know, will you?”

— Paul Thomas Anderson

44. “If I say I’m an oil man, you will agree.”

— Paul Thomas Anderson