Raymond E. Feist Quotes

Nobody does anything for one reason.

I always look for contradiction in a character.

You have to think an awful lot about your motivations or people's behavioral intentions or what their body language can indicate or what's really going on or what makes people sometimes do, sometimes, the irrational things they do.

The contradictions are what make human behavior so maddening and yet so fascinating, all at the same time.

Life's complicated and people do things for a lot of reasons.

I think fiction, for me, is a way of trying to understand why people do the things they do - and trying to explain what is, at heart, illogical.

I'm definitely interested in exploring human contradictions. Contradictions are what make us human - it's what defines us as human beings. Contradictions are what make characters interesting, and I've been lucky to be presented with characters who have a lot of contradictions.

In general, I like contradictions and complex situations.

All human behavior has a reason. All behavior is solving a problem.

I have come to the conclusion that my subjective account of my motivation is largely mythical on almost all occasions. I don't know why I do things.

I suppose it's too bad people can't be a little more consistent. But if they were, maybe they would stop being people.

People more easily tolerate opposition than a contradiction

I was a psychology major. I think that definitely helps in general life; I enjoy trying to figure out why people are the way they are.

It is impossible to get anywhere without sinning against reason.

I'm curious about what makes people do things that they do, unless it's absolutely terrifying to me.

In the denial of that disorder there is order.

Men turn their faces to hell, and hope to get to heaven; why don't they walk into the horsepond, and hope to be dry?.

You can never trust a human being to behave as you would have expected in a given circumstance

The causes that govern the heart appear to be wholly alien to the results achieved. Are the forces that moved a desperate criminal the same that fill a martyr with pride, as both mount the scaffold?

There are two kinds of people in this world: people who want to be desired, and people who want to be desired so much that they pretend they don't.

It is tragic-comic to see that all this knowledge and understanding exercises no power at all over men's lives, that their lives do not express in the remotest way what they have understood, but rather the opposite.

When something happens people didn't predict, they find ways to explain it as if it were predictable.

One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.

I just love thinking about what makes people tick

Systems don't change easily. Systems try to maintain themselves, and seek equilibrium. To change a system, you need to shake it up, disrupt the equilibrium. That often requires conflict.