Paul Haggis Quotes

It's true that I don't rearrange that much in the fiction, but I feel if you change even one name or the order of one event then you have to call it fiction or you get all the credits of non-fiction without paying the price.

I have always made an effort to render every detail of my reality with the greatest accuracy; but I have never paid attention to whether my presentation of historical facts was an exact one.

With fiction, you can do whatever you want to, but if you are making a film on someone, you have to stick to the truth. You cannot just say that I will change the climax because I do not like it.

I think any time you've got a story based on a true story, no matter how accurate it is, obviously it's still fictitious.

You're trying to dramatize events to tell a story most effectively. That doesn't mean the events aren't true, it just means you're making them as dramatic as you possibly can.

Even the two novels I've written were based on true stories. It's how I'm wired - real life is fascinating and fantastical enough. The kind of journalism I did unpeeled lids from cans otherwise sealed.

So much of what I write in fiction is based on true stories.

The way that I process and make writing work is I'm really telling true stories; I'm just putting them in a cape and putting an 'S' on its chest.

I try not to take any liberties when it comes to being factual. Sometimes you have to, just to make the song sound good. But I feel like, personally, if you've lived it, then you shouldn't stretch the truth. It should be that experience.

When a novel is based on an actual crime, it should do much more than loosely fictionalize it. The novel must stand alone as a work of art that justifies using the story for its own purposes.

Gerald's Game,' we could not have made it at a studio without substantive changes to the story.

To my mind, a journalist needs to espouse objectivity and distance, while a writer practises an art that is more free.

You amp things up and you speed things up, but technically, you can still be legally correct. This is the big beef I have with novels as well as television shows - it actually makes for a better show when you accommodate the truth.

I prefer non-fiction to fiction. In fact, I don't read fiction at all. I read books that are based on true events.

If a film is based on a true story and you don't use anyone's name, you can do what you like.

I much prefer films based on fact rather than fictional stories.

When you are doing a film about real people, you don't have a lot of manoeuvrability when it comes to how much you can add by way of imagination. You have to replicate what they were like. What you can add to it is your version of it.

The truth is not delicate and it does not suffer from denial—the truth only dies when true stories are untold.

Every filmmaker knows that when you make a book into a movie, the first thing you have to do is kill the book, unfortunately. You've got to recreate it.

It is true that some of my fiction was based on actual events. But the events took place after the fiction was written.

There are many dramas that I would like to make: dramas based on real stories. It's approaching things from the other side.

Those parents who do not educate their sons are their enemies; for as is a crane among swans, so are ignorant so are ignorant sons in a public assembly.

For a while, the genre seemed to be just about sex and crime. Rappers are storytellers; the stories don't need to be true!

You can care very much about someone without being capable of becoming their primary caregiver in the event of their parents' untimely death.

With a historical novel you know that liberties are being taken. Since Walter Scott, we know that poetic license, dramatic license, that events been conflated and that liberties have been taken, characters ditto, dates rearranged. But people don't seem to understand that movies are fictions, they are dramatizations, at least historical movies, and we should accord the moviemakers some of the same understanding and latitude. When you go to a movie you know it's a dramatization and not history.