Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes

I like films to be pure cinema, but I also like them to provide a snapshot of a family, a society or a character - something that can nourish you as a human being as well as an actor.

I think character is very much a product of where you live, who you are, what is happening in that time of your life, and I'm interested in those pressures, those forces. A political context, a social context, really determines if not who people are then how they treat one another and what they say, how they speak.

When I watch a movie, someone's beauty isn't what engages me: it's what's going on internally. And I imagine it's what the audience thinks, too.

It is within you that the ghosts acquire voices.

I try to give both my heroes and villains an emotional dimensionality which provides the motivation for their actions.

I don't really approach a character as to whether or not it's good or bad. I just approach a character as to where it lives in me.

You know, the point of a novel - or to me, the point of a novel, the gift of a novel is to go really deeply inside people's lives and inside their personal experiences.

I cringe at backstory. Because it never quite explains or gets into some psychological thing that is never quite right and never quite the truth and who knows why someone is some way.

Some of the greatest works of theater, from Chekov's work to modern playwrights', consist of just a few people in a room with no one leaving.

I didn't expect to feel pathos for the villains in our show. I feel quite moved in several of our episodes; I never realized that a show like 'Motive,' which aims for a broad appeal, could have that sort of emotional impact.

Well, I don't know. It's long, it's longer than both of the other books put together, so it's more ambitious. I think I get under the skin of the people a lot more than in the other books.

I think I am more attracted to characters with a subtext, whatever that is and they don't necessarily have to be virtuous, but they have to at least be human.

Loki in 'Thor' is the most incredible springboard into a sort of excavation of the darker aspects of human nature. So that was thrilling, coming back knowing that I'd built the boat and now I could set sail into choppier waters.

Dialogue is what a character's willing to share and reveal to another character, and the 90% they aren't willing to share is what I do for a living.

I always think about Faulkner, and I would argue that there can be a difference between the way that characters express themselves internally and externally.

Whenever a film allows you to think and feel and take it beyond the moment, I think it's achieved something. And 'Funny Games' does that.

'Ida' doesn't set out to explain history. That's not what it's about. The story is focused on very concrete and complex characters who are full of humanity with all its paradoxes. They're not pawns used to illustrate some version of history or an ideology.

I really want to do something that is very, very deep within realism, like a 'Winter's Bone,' or a 'Blue Valentine.'

I really care more about the human drama than I do the thriller stuff.

Literature has become too psychological.

I want to work with directors who can tell intimate stories in a way that feels universal and with a big enough scope and depth to travel outside of Iceland.

How to make a scary movie human, take a movie like Sinister. How can I make that guy so real so that the scary elements of it are more scary and it functions as a genre movie - as the way it's supposed to, you want to hear a ghost story at midnight, that's a good one - but how do you fill it up with humanity inside, in staying true to the genre? You know? Does that make sense?

To me sympathy for a character has little to do with how morally upstanding or wicked they are. All that really matters for me is how human and interesting they are. I happen to be drawn to characters who operate under intense internal pressure, which often comes from some deep psychological conflict.

Villains with a conscience have this sad realization of who they are, and the monster they've become — there's a sense of regret. So at the end of these movies there's a dramatic resonance that really stays with the audience.

no one in a group of three is the same person he (she, it) is in a group of two. No more than he is the same in a group of two as he is alone.