Paul Thomas Anderson Quotes

I've commissioned an adaptation of 'The Jungle', by Upton Sinclair, a story of a young immigrant from Lithuania to the meat-packing industry of Chicago in 1904, and the rise of the unions in America.

What surprised me about 'The Casual Vacancy' was not just how good it was, but the particular way in which it was good.

Dickens writes such brilliant characters and stories, and his themes and social commentary are still so relevant. I think that's why he's still so loved today.

I sort of try to read the books when they come out impartially and not make up my mind, but the fact is when I was reading the sixth, 'Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince', there were bits in there where I was going, 'God, I would love to do that because it's so good'.

Anything I've ever read by John Irving has been really well written.

'Middlesex' by Jeffrey Eugenides left me both moved and, at times, laughing out loud in delight.

What, after all, is the narrative of 'the American Dream?' It was a discourse formulated between the 1880s and the 1920s in the United States during the great waves of migration and expansion and reforms of the Progressive Era.

My favorite zone is from 1890 -1915, that zone that spans the overlap of the so-called Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. People had such a boundless sense of optimism; They felt they could do anything they wanted to do, and they went out and tried to do it.

In my early 20s, I was a big fan of Theodore Dreiser and might be one of the few people on the planet who have voluntarily read all his novels.

I read one Jane Austen in college and didn't like it at all and told everyone how much I disliked it. I read 'Northanger Abbey' sophomore year in college and hated it. I didn't read good Austen until after college, maybe a couple years out.

I did not intend for there to be an incisive historical lesson in 'North and South.' Basically, it's just a good, juicy story.

I think Wilkie Collins was a man ahead of his time, asking really important questions but also telling a really good and thrilling story.

I first read Heinlein when I was very young.

One of the stories that really impressed me was 'Anna Karenina.' As a novel, that made an impression on me, showing me what the novel can do.

For four wicked centuries the world has dreamed this foolish dream of efficiency; and the end is not yet. But the end will come.

Economic nationalism is what this country was built on. The American system.

Attending a book group is always a salutary experience for a writer. There's no guarantee that the people there will have enjoyed your book, and, as anyone who has taken part in a book group will know, half the fun is in ripping a book you haven't liked to shreds.

I can always go back to Jane Austen. 'Mansfield Park' is full of wise aphorisms and relevant observations of people.

I remember when I was reading 'The Bear,' I was reading as a kid. All these years later, one returns to that for an entirely different reason.

Late 19th-century America was basically a plutocratic enterprise while people toiled in mines and died of coal dust poisoning.

I made 'Ricki Lake' as a big love show for the American culture: big jars of mayo and ketchup and industrial stuff and capitalism, which I celebrate, because I believe that the criticism comes with love.

I had read Harold Bloom's 'Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?' Late in his life, having read everything, Bloom asked which books had given him wisdom. I had just read a bunch of contemporary novels that had no wisdom for me.

When I do the street stuff, primarily it's jocular. But we've also gone and done serious packages at steel plants or in the inner city.

I really enjoyed reading 'The Da Vinci Code,' but from a literary standpoint, the book did not live up to the hype.

We're so used to seeing Agatha Christie's work on screen that going back to the original is a real joy.