Paul Schrader Quotes

Is there anything men take more pains about than to render themselves unhappy?

It's a most distressing affliction to have a sentimental heart and a skeptical mind.

It was strange how your brain could know what your heart refused to accept.

When you run into someone who is disagreeable to others, you may be sure he is uncomfortable with himself; the amount of pain we inflict upon others is directly proportional to the amount we feel within us.

When you try to avoid the pain, it creates greater pain.

Unhappy is a nice word.

Sometimes, it is precisely when you discover that you are living very happily that you suddenly find yourself in danger. To be happy means to discover that you are exposed to being hurt.

I don't feel any pressure from fans. But I'm always in some kind of state of emotional turmoil. I would not describe myself as happy-go-lucky. That's not to say that I'm not happy.

All forms of self-defeating behavior are unseen and unconscious, which is why their existence is denied.

Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible.

My mother was suffering every day of her life, and what right did I have to be happy if she was suffering? So whenever I got happy about something, I felt the need to cut it off, and the only way to cut it off was to pray. 'Forgive me Lord.' For what, I didn't know.

A sad person who is so involved with his sadness that he mistakes it for reality will have a hard time seeing himself as anything but sad. For him, the sadness is not a feeling that he experiences - it is him.

Oh yes, I certainly have low days. I feel that in treating the depression, it's not so much that I've become happier as it is that I can be unhappy in better ways.

Quite frankly I don't know how to be happy. I have not a clue.

Everybody that writes has their own area of inquiry. And mine has always been kind of, why is it that when life can be so hard and difficult, we compound it by self-sabotage, doing terrible things? That's always been my main area of inquiry, and it does lead you to dark places.

If I had to play myself, I'd probably want to fight me too.

Money doesn't make you happy - I know people in the U.K. with money, they never seem to be happy.

Nobody can be happy all the time, and if you aim to be, ultimately you will never be happy.

It was all wrong, ugly, unhappy and coloured with cynicism, but nothing was tragic, there were no moments that could change anything or anybody. From time to time the emotional lightning flashed and showed a landscape of private misery, and then — we went on dancing.

A lot of the time, I'm just smart enough to be unhappy.

To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts.

Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down.

Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is the cause of untold misery and unhappiness, as well as of disease.

Man is extraordinarily clever in preventing himself from being happy; it would seem that the less able he is to endure misfortune the more apt he is to attach himself to it.

Stephen had spared no expense in making himself more unhappy, his own position as a rejected lover clearer.