Lena Olin Quotes

I'm interested in writing that explores all sides of human beings.

I think people have a lot of layers. I know I do in particular.

Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes him tick, and yet is at once fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know.

People say I make strange choices, but they're not strange for me. My sickness is that I'm fascinated by human behavior, by what's underneath the surface, by the worlds inside people.

Although my stories are all very different on the surface, I like to write stories about characters struggling with big problems. I'm always reminded, no matter how different from me one of my characters is from me on the surface, how we're all pretty much the same underneath.

The greatest explorer on this earth never takes voyages as long as those of the man who descends to the depth of his heart.

I liked the fact that I was forced to get inside of my emotions and to really try to figure out a lot of what I was going through.

I like exploring both the light parts and the dark parts of a single person. And all of those shades tend to come out most acutely in stories about families.

Acting is usually regarded as a wholly narcissistic pursuit but there really is a hunger in me to unravel the human condition.

We saw in him what we seek in ourselves.

In every person, you have a world of personalities and souls, a world of perspectives that you can share. You can get into anyone's shoes. You've got to be willing to stare at the ugliest part of yourself and deal with it.

Every character, before they are heroes or villains, they are human beings.

We may know ourselves, and yet even with all the efforts we make, we do not know ourselves. We know our fellowman, and yet we do not know him, because we are not a thing, and our fellowman is not a thing. The further we reach into the depths of our being, on someone else's being, the more the goal of knowledge eludes us.

Everyone should go inward, get curious about themselves, and investigate their shadows. It's one of the most important gifts we can give humanity. It's one of our most vital causes.

I have never known a greater miracle, or monster, than myself.

It takes longer for man to find out man than any other creature that is made.

Shakespeare brings us to know ourselves. Dante, with his dissection of all others, bids us to know one another.

How can a man know himself? He is a thing dark and veiled; and if the hare has seven skins, man can slough off seventy times seven and still not be able to say: "this is really you, this is no longer outer shell.

Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself.

Remember that every man is a variation of yourself

Whatever discoveries we may have made in the regions of self-love, there still remain many unknown lands.

Only the shallow know themselves.

I am constantly interested in people who society calls 'bad' because I don't like to just buy into something that everybody's going to say. I want to investigate that for myself. With a character, you get to fully investigate that emotionally and understand the parts of them that are in pain and scared and are good. That's human.

A man is sometimes as different from himself as he is from others.

I get a lot of people saying to me, 'Oh, you're the actor who plays the nutters,' and I'm not. I'm the guy who plays human beings. I understand why the characters are doing what they're doing. When you play a villain, you don't play a villain: you play a human being doing what he thinks he needs to do to get what he wants.