Sara Zarr Quotes

Only the emerging specialty of psychoanalysis seemed to understand that mental maladies are not fully analogous to physical disease. They resist classification, and might better be known by their symptoms and the individualized sufferings of patients than by assigned names.

If the novelist shares his or her problems with the characters, he or she is able to study his personal unconscious.

I read Freud's Introductory Lectures in Psychoanalysis in basically one sitting. I decided to enroll in medical school. It was almost like a conversion experience.

I think shrinks are interesting to write about because you get to see what the character chooses to reveal, and what behaviors or stances the character tries out on the shrink that might not be part of the character's make-up outside of that room. It's an emotional test-kitchen.

A neurosis is a secret that you don't know you are keeping.

The challenge is to stay true to the characters while also having them be entertaining every day, because it turns out that just watching someone be true to themselves isn't that rad to watch.

In London, it's quite a rarefied activity to be on an analyst's couch.

I abhor badly-written characters and any character, be it man, woman, any character in the film. If it is a well-written character, it will come across as strong.

My best writing has to do with an internal process that I'm working out unconsciously and put into my characters.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, psychoanalysis swept through the intellectual community, and it was the dominant mode of thinking about the mind. People felt that this was a completely new set of insights into human motivation, and that its therapeutic potential was significant.

My characters are not plastic.

I love playing really strung out characters, and characters that are really pushed to their limits and losing their mind.

I don't worry about whether a character is likable, as long as the character is believable.

It's always difficult with the superhero stuff because you're working with characters who have been written by 100 to 200 people over the past 20 years, at least, so they never sound the same or act the same. The best approach is to try to draw the best fitting line through all of the interpretations.

Hysteria is something that I've been interested for a very long time. I thought I might have it, but it seems that it's unlikely.

If I wasn't an actor, I would probably be writing or doing something with psychology.

The thing I respond to the most is just great writing, interesting characters. I like to think that there is something fun about playing a character that has a lot of authority in her own life.

For whatever reason I tend to get roles that are more damaged.

Usually, people write the characters into a box, and that's just not true to life.

A novel that features real people is complicated, but in the end, that extra challenge is all for the good.

I might have been a psychologist. It interests me.

I've always tried to have a healthy take on the characters I play; they are only characters I play.

Any fiction writer who assumes that a character is typical no doubt runs the risk of stumbling into cliche and stereotype.

The novelist, quite rightly, fears the psychoanalyst as both an enemy and a usurper.

I often hear actors say during their interviews: 'I want to play a crazy person, a murderer, or someone who's on edge.' But that question scares me. I mean, of course there are characters I'd like to play, but I can't really say specifically who they are. It's much too hard to play a convincing normal person as it is.