Steven Pinker Quotes

Things that are unknown attract us.

The mysterious is always attractive. People will always follow a vail.

People like secrets. Creative people really like secrets.

Secrets are very intriguing - I always think that's an interesting theme.

Anything - a destination, a person - that has some mystery around it becomes exciting and attractive.

The more things remain obscure and mysterious, the more they interest me. I even try to find mystery in things that have none.

The darker the character, the more interesting.

It's good to be difficult to know. Too many people are too easy to know.

I'm drawn towards people who have a little pathos and a little dark side, and I feel the same towards fictional characters.

I think for something to be beautiful, it has to have some darkness in it; otherwise, it's just pretty. And pretty does not interest me at all.

Mystery is underrated, and understanding is overrated.

When things are too clear, they are no longer interesting.

I’m very attracted to things that I can’t define.

It's fun to discover things. I wouldn't want everything laid out, simply and too obviously.

Good books don't give up all their secrets at once.

He'd always been fascinated by her, drawn to her the way curious people are always drawn to things they don't understand.

Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.

Secrets make for good drama, and revealing the hidden truths and contradictions of life is, for me, one of the most exciting aspects of making movies.

Photography acts as a teaser, suggesting we can know something that we can never know. And the more we can't obtain it, the more we want it.

We also maintain - again with perfect truth - that mystery is more than half of beauty, the element of strangeness that stirs the senses through the imagination.

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.

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

Don't be so familiar and so much into the details. Keep people dreaming. Close the window, and make them wonder.

There are secrets at the heart of every story; there is something that must be uncovered or discovered, both by the reader and by the characters.

You always admire what you really don't understand.