Rebecca Stead Quotes

I like playing flawed characters, people who aren't perfect.

I'm attracted to playing characters that have flaws.

I'm not sure that it's possible to write a novel about people who don't transgress or stumble, people who don't surprise themselves with the things they do, people who can explain all their actions with perfect logical consistency. At least it's not possible for me to write that sort of novel.

I don't want a perfect character, I want a character who has, as strange as it sounds, some humanity, some flaws, some needs.

Do I want a character who just has the best motives and the best intentions, zero flaws, and is doing things for the right reasons? No!

'Star Wars' is very black and white, and honestly, I like it that way. But fantastical settings like that work best when the characters within them feel real. Real people have conflicts and make mistakes and get it wrong sometimes.

The thing that I like about the way characters are written on the show these days is that nobody's perfect. Everyone has made a lot of mistakes and bad choices.

I think any character has to be well-rounded, whether they are male or female - they have to be complex and make choices that maybe we don't agree with, you know? I guess that's what makes them human.

I think many people have contradictions to them and I love characters that deal with those contradictions.

With all the main characters that I write, it's always very important to me that they have good and bad aspects of their personality. It's important to me that they're complicated and that they're human.

I enjoy played flawed men who are pushed to the limit, who make mistakes and then have to recover.

Certainly, your characters - whether they are superheroes are not - should have foibles. They should have problems; they should have things that their powers can't solve. That's what makes them nuanced, interesting characters. They can have intense motivations. They should have intense motivations to do what they do.

The truth is that, to me, a likeable character is a character that is really flawed, so I don't know what people mean when they say 'likable.'

I look for a layered character who has problems and issues - which, by the way, we all do have.

If you break things down to goodies and baddies, the baddies are always a bit more alluring in fiction, and that's true from a narrative point of view. But I wanted to write a novel about real life, and real life is a bit more nuanced than that.

It seems to me that most characters, in anything, are flawed in some way, just like most people. You look for the good in the flawed people and vice versa, and then try and make them appealing in some way.

In 'Garden Party' or '40 Days and 40 Nights,' I played characters who people don't necessarily like; I just find some humanity in them.

When I create a character, particularly my central character, I want someone who is interesting and feels real and who might have quite a few virtues but is unlikely to be perfect, who hasn't necessarily made all the right choices.

No author ever drew a character consistent to human nature, but he was forced to ascribe to it many inconsistencies.

I love it when you like a character, and then she does something you don't like, and you hate her for a while - then you love her again. I'd like to see her have unlikable moments that the audience understands and sympathizes with.

In the best works of fiction, there's no mustache-twirling villain. I try to write shows where even the bad guy's got his reasons.

I like playing characters with internal problems.

The best characters to play are the ones who have deep internal conflict.

I am really drawn to damaged characters, and I have a lot of sympathy for them. Making those complicated characters empathetic is something to strive for. It's too easy to create a good guy or a good girl.

To me the interesting main character is never the one without flaws.