Chadwick Boseman Quotes

Very few of my characters are totally heroic or totally villainous.

I don't believe novels should carry an obvious message. I don't want to write characters you can immediately say are good or bad; as in life, most people are a mixture.

There are some characters in 'The Names' who are very much heroes and others who can only be called villains. But generally, as we get to know them, we see most of the characters are, or at least become, quite nuanced.

Life is not simple, and people can't be boxed into being either heroes or villains.

I think that we are all the heroes of our own story, and I think life comes in all shades of gray. Personally, I love movies that exist like this, where you think someone can behave both heroically and like a villain.

Things were easier for the old novelists who saw people all of a piece. Speaking generally, their heroes were good through and through, their villains wholly bad.

In the best works of fiction, there's no mustache-twirling villain. I try to write shows where even the bad guy's got his reasons.

My theory of characterization is basically this: Put some dirt on a hero, and put some sunshine on the villain, one brush stroke of beauty on the villain.

I've always been interested in the antihero myself.

I'm most drawn to characters who are compelling and repellant at the same time, very often right at the same moment, and who are frightening and funny all at once.

I have a tendency to think that when you portray baddies in movies, they come out more human than good guys.

I'm always interested in what we're not being shown. So if you're playing ostensibly a quote-unquote 'baddie,' what are their good sides, and vice versa.

Unalloyed heroes and unalloyed villains make me suspicious.

I never try and play a bad guy to be bad and to be brutal and to be nasty and vicious, because I think you're going to be very cliche there. You know, you've got to find the truth in that character and what he believes in. It just happens that, you know, he's wrong.

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

It's funny how you can be thought of as somebody who humanizes bad guys, and I'll take that, but it is something that gave me pause, and I started speaking to my team about finding a good guy.

I don't like characters who are either good or bad. I just don't experience that in life, so my writing hasn't evolved that way.

I like ambiguity. I think it's so much more interesting to play than an overtly good or an overtly evil person.

I wanted to do something heroic if I was going to be on TV. And the first thing that appeals to me once I have decided I don't want to be the bad guy is to find things that are not black and white.

I'm very glad people love 'Breaking Bad,' but the harder character to write is the good character that's as interesting and as engaging as the bad guy.

When you're playing a good character, you have an idea that you're playing the hero and the good guy. Actually, I think you're more stymied playing the good guy than you are the bad guy. As the bad guy, you have no inhibitions. Nothing stops you from doing what it is you feel you have to do. You do it because it's what's required.

I'm not interested in a character's goodness. I'm interested in what makes them human.

If you're going to make a movie about a character who is a supervillain, it's fantastic to have a core sense of empathy for that character.

People do bad things, but that doesn't mean they don't have other colors or qualities.

It's important for a young black kid to see a Mexican hero, just to know that we're all equal.