Paul Schrader Quotes

The secret of the creative life is to feel at ease with your own embarrassment.

Screenplays are not works of art. They are invitations to others to collaborate on a work of art.

Let's just shoot in black and white. Don't explain why. Have no reason for it. Just do it because it's interesting.

If you write interesting roles, you get interesting people to play them. If you write roles that are full of nuance and contradiction and have interesting dialog, actors are drawn to that.

One of the things that I do like about filmmaking is that you find out how to solve new problems.

Once you have a situation that is fresh, then you sort of believe in it and it becomes normal. So you do end up with protagonists that haven't been in other movies before.

Don't ever let the viewer settle in and get ahead of you.

I teach a course in screenwriting at Columbia, but I've never taken a course and I've never read a book about it!

Ultimately, it's an illusion that you can understand yourself.

Those artists who say that somehow therapy or analysis will thwart their creativity are completely misinformed. It's absolutely the opposite: it opens closed doors.

The only economic paradigm that movies have ever known is capitalism. There were no church sponsors or state patronage. The idea was that if you'd pay to see it, we'll make it for you.

You think it's a blessing to know what God wants? I'll tell you what he wants. He wants to push me over! Can't he see what's inside of me? All my sins.

I want to be happy; why do I do things that make me unhappy?

That's just my disposition - to create a situation where you have to come up with something.

You can't take contradiction away. Part of the fun of it is that the contradiction never really quite goes away.

All the animals come out at night.

I get bored very easily. I find most movies boring. I go to movies and ask, "How do they stay awake making this?"

I don't think it's very useful to open wide the door for young artists; the ones who break down the door are more interesting.

Anything that doesn't bore me I think is doable because it's keeping me awake.

There's no escape. I'm God's only man.

The clock is impotent; mechanical time does not affect those living in an eternal present.

Words are a completely different form of expression. The word P-E-N-I-S is an entirely different form of communication than a photograph of the same thing. H

Nobody has shot a strip club in black and white in a long time.

'Taxi Driver' wasn't autobiographical in terms of the actual events, but I did draw on my own mental state.

I was looking for people who didn't have any preconceptions about films, what I call the "post-rules" generation.

Now I see it clearly. My whole life has pointed in one direction. I see that now. There never has been any choice for me.

As screenwriters, we struggle with our own success. We have wallpapered our world and now we can't get anyone to notice the picture we just hung.

I was raised as a Calvinist, which is doctrine-driven. And though there are many things wrong with Calvinism, you are at least encouraged to argue about things.