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" I have never pretended to be the best Scientologist, but I openly and vigorously defended the church whenever it was criticized, as I railed against the kind of intolerance that I believed was directed against it. I had my disagreements, but I dealt with them internally. "

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" I have so many questions about love. How do you win at it? Especially if you're in a relationship with an impossible person? What if you believe in someone who's completely untrustworthy, who at their core can't even believe in themselves? "

Paul Haggis

Relationship

Love

Win

" The worst thing you can do to a filmmaker is to walk out of his film and go, 'That was a nice movie.' But if you can cause people to walk out and then argue about the film on the sidewalk... I think we're all seeking dissension, and we love to affect an audience. "

" As a general rule, I don't plan to travel with my Oscars, but we may have to make an exception. "

" Every 10 years, I know less about love and relationships. The smarter I get, the less I know. "

" I just asked myself, what piece of that man's soul did he just chew off and swallow to get next week's assignment? You know, just to live, just to work as an artist, or to feed the family? "

" For me, the most interesting people are ones who often work against their best interests. Bad choices. They go in directions where you go, 'No no no nooo!' You push away someone who is trying to love you, you hurt someone who's trying to get your trust, or you love someone you shouldn't. "

" The wonderful thing about Clint is you can never second guess how he is going to react to anything. "

Paul Haggis

React

Wonderful

" We give you characters we'd feel very comfortable judging, and then go: 'Oh yeah? Watch this'. "

" My one guiding rule for success in the film world would be, be careful of your friends. "

" You can't plan for people to like your movies. I knew that people were not going to run in droves to the theater for the 'In the Valley of Elah.' I knew they might not want to see it, but I still had to the movie; I felt very strongly about it. Wanting to keep telling a good story is what you want to do, a compelling story. "

" You have to have empathy, knowledge and compassion for your characters if you're a writer. "

" We're trying to reinvent Bond. He's 28 - no Q, no gadgets. "

" I'm a deeply broken person, and broken institutions fascinate me. "

Paul Haggis

Institutions

Deeply

" I don't pay much attention to the press. My films always get good reviews and bad reviews. I just try to make the best film I can. "

" I made a very good living as a bad writer. I wrote a lot of comedies, 'Diff'rent Strokes,' 'Facts of Life,' while all my friends were doing the good shows, like 'Cheers,' but I loved it because I got to be a working writer in Hollywood. "

" As artists, we have to be brave. If we aren't brave, we aren't artists. "

" The great majority of Scientologists I know are good people who are genuinely interested in improving conditions on this planet and helping others. "

" I don't think it's the job of filmmakers to give anybody answers. I do think, though, that a good film makes you ask questions of yourself as you leave the theatre. "

" 'Crash' came from personal experience. I saw things inside me from living in L.A. that made me uncomfortable. I saw horrible things in people and saw terrible things in myself. I saw a black director completely humiliated, but the three people around me just thought it was funny. 'No,' I said, 'that is selling your soul.' "

" I just love actors, and I've always loved actors. I empathize with their job. Everyone thinks it's easy, and it ain't. To be that vulnerable and brave on camera is tough. The more they reveal themselves, the more we love them, but there's a lot of truth in what they're showing. "

" I was trying to talk about where we are right now as a society, and talk about the fear we all live in, and certainly since 9-11, how it's affected us and the world. "

" We all have these tendencies in us that could go this way or that. I think that's the real key in writing. To look at a character without judgment. "

Paul Haggis

Writing

Character

" In 'The Next Three Days,' even though it was a prison breakout movie, I was asking myself, 'What would I do? How far would I go for the woman I loved? How far would I go, and what would I do when the person then told me that they were guilty? Could I still believe in them?' So it was very personal. "

" Even a modicum of celebrity is hard to deal with. You see it with actors and directors all the time. "

" I'm such an antsy type of person. I can't write in a room without other people around. I write in coffee shops. "

" I like to write about things about which I have no answers, questions that trouble me. These things trouble me. "

Paul Haggis

Trouble

Answers

" I don't know if 'Crash' is a good movie or not because I didn't set out to make a movie. Really, what I wanted to do is more of a social experiment. "

Paul Haggis

Good

Know

" My kids paid the price for my career. We can say it's for our family, but it almost never is. It's about us. It's just some of us can pretend better than others. "

" I try not to think of actors as I'm writing because I think you do them a disservice by writing for things they've already done. "

" I miss my mother very, very much. "