Willem Dafoe Quotes

The only way you can write about a happy family in a drama is to make them unhappy.

There's a lot of conflict and darkness inside everybody's family. We all pretend to outsiders that it's not so, but behind locked doors, there are usually high emotions running.

Yes, a family is interesting. You can get a lot of drama in the conflicts there. It's like the sea. It seems calm, but inside there is conflict.

A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.

There's actually 14 in our family, but we disowned the others.

A lot of my YA novels are about family problems.

The idea that the family is this locus of support but can also hold you back and keep you down makes for good drama.

It seemed like my father and I were always fighting. I know a lot of kids go through that with their families, but it was hard for me.

Who hasn't had an argument with their mother-in-law?

I remember the bad times as a succession of painful emotional snapshots: Me walking into the library at 24 Sussex, seeing my mother in tears, and hearing her talk about leaving while my father stood facing her, stern and ashen.

Any kind of conflict draws me to a role.

My mother and father didn't love each other, so they were always fighting.

Nothing is quite so emotional and passionate as what goes on inside of a family. People are driven to distraction by a father or a mother or a husband. Or a child.

We all have our family issues from time to time.

I think every family is dysfunctional, and some manage to control it better than others.

I wasn't being bullied at school at this point. I had a group of friends, and I was isolated because I wasn't communicating with my parents. I wasn't telling them what I was going through.

Over the years, things got so bad between my mother and I, we stopped talking to each other and started communicating by putting Ann Landers articles on the refrigerator.

I grew up in a house that had a whole lot of trouble. As much trouble as you could imagine.

But while mum and dad were incredibly caring, it was also a very chaotic household where everyone fought about everything. So I know what it's like to internalize all that chaos.

I'm not 18 anymore, so I'm not into starting unnecessary beefs. It's tacky.

Family is conflict and it's something that we all relate to.

My kids have never seen me scream at anybody. They've never seen an argument. There's never been even a cold silence. And those are things that I grew up with because my parents did end up divorcing.

My parents' marriage was very rocky. They were always arguing. When they split up when I was in my 20s, my brother and I were both delighted because we knew they weren't good for each other.

If you try to bring 'teen drama,' you end up doing nothing but pouting.

I don't believe in happy families.