Paul Haggis Quotes

The characters I write about are very internal.

It's true that all my novels have been versions of myself to some degree.

Every character in each of my movies is a different side of myself.

Writing plays for me is often an act of looking at basement-level fears in terms of where they come from.

All my movies have an autobiographical dimension, but that is indirectly, through the personages. In fact, I am behind everything that happens and that is said, but I am never talking about myself in first person singular.

All of my problems are rather complicated - I need an entire novel to deal with them, not a short story or a movie. It's like a personal therapy.

I made the character as much of myself as I could.

I don't try and be dark, but there are obviously darker emotions that I want to capture sometimes.

In every character you play, as much as you hate to admit it as an actor, but there's an element of you that you bring to it. Either the character helps you discover that element of you or the other way around, where that element of you helps you discover the character.

There are bits of me in all my characters.

I think every writer will tell you that their characters are always partially themselves: who I am and what I've experienced. It's always there in part of my characters.

A lot of interviewers are looking for the dark side. They want to know about the depths of your despair and fear.

My thing is, I like playing guys who have a really interesting internal monologue.

Everything I do is personal. I have never made a movie that didn't have very strong personal resonance.

Sometimes, a writer 'character' is just a projection of a person who is writing the story, but not necessarily 'me.'

To me, any character that is conflicted inside as well as outside of themselves is always a better role to play.

Character is primary. What happens as far as plot and events is not as intriguing to me as what's happening inside this particular person.

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

Bond doesn't have an inner life. There would be moments when I'd think, 'We need to gather our thoughts here and have a breather,' where in another novel you'd slow the pace, have some description and see what Bond feels about this. But Bond doesn't reflect. All you can do is move on to the next bomb or shark or car.

I see bits and pieces of me in all the characters in my films.

For the most part, there's so much of me in my characters.

Well, I think in my own work the subject matter usually deals with characters I know, aspects of myself, friends of mine - that sort of thing.

If something is going on in my life, it winds up getting into my strip.

The complexity of the emotional life of the play is what you live to work on.

I'm interested in writing that explores all sides of human beings.