Jim Starlin Quotes

I am not interested in one-sided characters.

We're not one thing, as human beings, so any character that is written uni-dimensional, that's just a shallow character with shallow writing and shallow acting.

Anyone who is drawn in broad strokes either negatively or positively is generally not very interesting to play.

Life is very, very complicated, and so films should be allowed to be, too.

I like to play characters that are convincing, that aren't just straightforward and nice.

I am oblique; I think that has to do with my own nature. I like trying to do things which work on many levels, because I think it is terribly important to give an audience a lot of things they might not get as well as those they will, so that finally the film does take on a texture and is not just simplistic communication.

There's more depth to Lionel. What I am finding so interesting about playing him is there's all these different layers. I prefer playing Lionel because he's a human being.

Multifaceted and textured characters are always more intriguing to me. You never really just want to play one note. It becomes a bit monotone and boring.

I'm always just drawn to those roles that present one way and have many other things going on underneath. It's just more fun to play as an actor.

That's what attracts me to the kind of characters I try and write - that they're not cut and dried.

To ground a character in reality, you have to use shades of gray.

The purpose of narrative is to present us with complexity and ambiguity.

I like complicated characters.

Positive characterizations are complex characterizations. That's all we need to know. They shouldn't be saccharine. They shouldn't feel like medicine.

The darker the character, the more interesting.

Even if I'm playing a bad guy, I work hard to make him multi-leveled and interesting.

I always tell my students to complicate your characters: never make it easy for the reader. Nobody is ever one thing. That's what makes characters compelling.

The beauty of Sudhir's protagonists is that they are not shown as black and white. There are various layers to the characters.

A short story can be really interesting and enriching and powerful, but a novel just contains so much more information and richness and depth. That's what I strive for in my music. I want to create something that's like a longform statement.

I think the most interesting characters are those in which you can see both sides.

It's rare that movies can sort of capture the tone of life; movies always feel like they have to be one thing or another.

When you're writing a novel, you don't want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that. Reality simply consists of different points of view.

As an actor, I'm constantly striving to find the darkness in the lighter characters and the lightness in the darker characters.

I never play a villain that I don't have something I can either do or say so the audience sees there is something redeemable about them. In other words, I don't want to do evil for evil's sake. I don't want to do Jason slasher movies. There's no point in that.

I think difficult characters are very rewarding to do. They often have facets to them and this and that.