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

- Paul Schrader

There's the generation that made the rules, the generation that codified them. The generation that broke them - that's mine. The generation that laug…

- Paul Schrader

I could be just a writer very easily. I am not a writer. I am a screenwriter, which is half a filmmaker... But it is not an art form, because screenp…

- Paul Schrader

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

- Paul Schrader

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 intere…

- Paul Schrader

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

- Paul Schrader

Contradiction is the heart and soul of character and drama. You're always looking for it. I loved her so much I hit her; that's character. I loved he…

- Paul Schrader

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

- Paul Schrader

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

- Paul Schrader