Alice McDermott Quotes

The bigger confrontation is the one an individual has with itself.

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.

Every man is crucified upon the cross of himself.

I am a spy in the house of me. I report back from the front lines of the battle that is me. I am somewhat nonplused by the event that is my life.

I do listen to myself sometimes and think, 'Is my moral compass so easily swayed by the characters I play, or is it me growing as a human being?'

Being an actor sometimes requires that you ask yourself questions you'd rather not know the answers to.

Identity is part of drama to me. Who am I, why am I behaving this way, and am I aware of it?

An actor knows much more about a character than the character knows about himself.

Every good story is about who we are and our struggle to define ourselves.

It's nice to take the gloves off, to really examine your character's desires and goals.

My first four books, from 'Fight Club' to 'Choke,' dealt with personal identity issues. The crises the narrators found themselves in were generated by themselves.

Ten years of character development affords you a lot. You get a chance to dig deeper and deeper and deeper into a person.

I like characters who aren't typically heroic and come to some sort of epiphany about themselves.

It's a lot harder to write a story that's compelling about identity and sense of self without some villain in the room.

I had to learn some hard lessons in my early days because I was a bit of a showman, a kind of Jekyl and Hyde character.

Am I too fast, too facile? I do not know. I do not know myself sometimes, or how to measure and name and count out the grains that make me what I am.

Each character represented a trait that resides in me.

Like all of my fictions, 'Sinner' is a mirror. Look into it and you will find yourself. What you do with what you see is your choice.

The only history is a mere question of one's struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.

Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.

I always get inspiration from whatever characters say about my character.

Somewhere deep down there's a decent man in me, he just can't be found.

I am a very honest person, and I can only say there are moments in my life where I really did think I was being me in the sense of my morals and beliefs and the way I acted. But when I look back at certain things that I wore and my hair and make-up, I was like, 'Whoa! That wasn't me!' But I didn't know it back then.

I think a novel has to be about where you are at a given moment in time. I think it really needs to represent some specific pain you're going through. it's not just a story.