Mara Brock Akil Quotes

We're all complex human beings, and if some of that complexity shows through, I think it's advantageous for the movie.

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.

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 analysis of character is the highest human entertainment.

A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or bear's, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.

I'm a very happy-go-lucky lover of all mankind as a person in real life. So when I play a darker character, I have to tap into something that isn't my natural way, and what I found was that I think human beings have the potential for all of these emotions.

The function of the novel is the exploration of the human condition. Really, that's what it's all about.

It's interesting if you can talk about the large moments and also the small moments to understand the deepest complexities of a man by trying to imagine who they are.

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.

You learn stuff from every character you play about the human condition that can be quite enlightening.

I am drawn to characters that go on journeys, characters that are real people, that have life.

I like being able to play women that are growing or aren't easy to love. Maybe they are really likable, but they're annoying because they're not tapping into who they're suppose to be. You're watching them, and you're like, 'Oh, why does she keep making this decision?'

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

I look to find the heart and soul of people, of my characters. I look for the truth of them and the truths about life that are presented through them.

The endings for all my characters seem sufficiently human and messy for me to feel comfortable with them. In some ways they have only moved an inch, but sometimes an inch is a great distance.

No person can ever know everything that is in the heart of another. We are all Face Dancers in our souls.

Life can be very funny and very tragic. Everyone has stuff that they've been through that makes up whatever fire it is that they have in their gut, but nobody goes around wearing that as their outmost exterior, all the time.

The novel is a big space, and a lot can happen. Just think about the parts of your life. How do we account for our own contradictions? The only way to understand them is to let them exist, as truths that indicate something about character. People are built of elements that don't fit together - and the conflict of that is their essential drive.

I like to think that even with some of the more intense ones sometimes there is humour in there, you try to make a complete human being, whether the guy is good or bad.

I think it is a quest of literature throughout the ages to describe the human condition.

When I'm creating a character, I don't see it so much as playing someone else as just playing a specific part of myself under certain circumstances.

All of us want something in life, all of us have flaws, and all of us have strengths. So, I always try to discover those things in a character and then try to expose it in one way or another.

We, people, are so very, very complicated that no matter how well drawn a fictional character is, they can't get anywhere near as complex as a real person.

Those things interest me a lot in songwriting - the human nature of how people think, and the muck that we wind up in.