Paul Thomas Anderson Quotes

All of life`s questions and answers are in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). It`s about greed and ambition and paranoia and looking at the worst parts of yourself. When I was writing There Will Be Blood (2007), I would put "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" on before I went to bed at night, just to fall asleep to it.

No matter how many times you do it, you don`t get used to the sadness - for me at least - of coming to the end of a film.

Today`s movie villains often remind us of James Cagney and `Humphrey Bogart` and that`s as cool as it gets. There`s something comforting if they`re hip and cool. They`re not entirely real, or not entirely threatening, so it might be a little easier to swallow if they remind us of traditional movie villains.

(on the meaning of Magnolia (1999)`s ending) Oh, how I hate it, when directors are supposed to explain their films. I only say this much: If I had had more cash, I would have let it rain cats and dogs.

My dad was one of the first guys on the block to have a VCR. So along with all the videotapes that I would rummage through, I would find porno movies. Not that it twisted me into some maniac or anything. I was watching porno from age 10 to 17. I had an interest in it.

You can really see a strong and distinctive line between `70s and `80s porn, not just in the quality but in the spirit behind it.

I had older brothers and sisters who were doing drugs and playing rock music and doing all those insane things. I was watching.

I have a feeling, one of those gut feelings, that I`ll make pretty good movies the rest of my life. And maybe I`ll make some clunkers, maybe I`ll make some winners, but I guess the way that I really feel is that Magnolia (1999) is, for better or worse, the best movie I`ll ever make.

(on buying a copy of Upton Sinclair`s "Oil!", which he adapted into There Will Be Blood (2007)) I was homesick and the book had a painting of California on the cover.

I watch (Steven Spielberg) movies, and know: Those are fairy tales. I understand what he does. And I make a film on cancer and frogs - however I want that many spectators nevertheless! I find that is a good goal, and I consider it a weakness of mine that I haven`t reached it yet.

All I wanna try and do is sing "Melancholy Baby", y`know, but then it starts to come out like "The Star Spangled Banner" half the time.

(on the popular belief that Daniel Day-Lewis is indifferent or not completely committed to remaining an actor) That is an amazing misconception. Daniel loves acting so much that it becomes a quest for perfection. People don`t know how Daniel can do this job the way that he does it, and my feeling is, I just can`t understand how anyone could do it any other way.

I remember the bad outfits my parents dressed me up in and my Beatles haircut but I never watched "The Brady Bunch" (1969). The Partridges? I hated their music.

(on Stanley Kubrick) We`re all children of Kubrick, aren`t we? Is there anything you can do that he hasn`t done?

(on researching for There Will Be Blood (2007)) After a few trips to Bakersfield, where they have museums devoted to the early oilmen, I started to get a sense of the film. The museums are largely trailers with a lot of oil equipment lying around the yard. Back in the day, enough people had cameras and they took a lot of pictures. Oil fields were an interesting thing to photograph, and that research made it easy to put the pieces of their times together.