John Logan Quotes

I like devilish, thorny, dirty, mean roles, muck and mire, unbelievably sad, unbelievably happy, burdened. Inner conflict - that's where drama is.

I think that Gollum is really the character who is a very human character, and he's very flawed, like most humans are, and has good and bad sides.

I love it when you like a character, and then she does something you don't like, and you hate her for a while - then you love her again. I'd like to see her have unlikable moments that the audience understands and sympathizes with.

Because I had a lot of emotional upheaval in my life, I'm attracted to stories about characters whose lives are full of wounds and secrets. I'm not interested in who's going to ask me to the prom. I never went to a prom.

The worst thing in life is not to die but to live with bitterness.

I feel people naturally have a brightness. When that is extinguished by circumstances - be it a wrong marriage or a situation that you cannot leave psychologically - there's something about that dying spark that I'm drawn to playing.

The best characters are always wretchedly flawed

I love characters that are going through turmoil. To be honest, I love characters with conflict. I love characters who are really going through an emotional journey; whether it's a super-dark-crazy journey or a really relatable guy.

I don't know why, but I respond well to tortured characters.

I am really drawn to damaged characters, and I have a lot of sympathy for them. Making those complicated characters empathetic is something to strive for. It's too easy to create a good guy or a good girl.

I like characters who have blind spots and are full of themselves, but there also needs to be vulnerability.

Some of my favorite shows are ones where the characters are vile and human and flawed. That's what makes me want to keep watching a show, not writers telling me how to feel about characters.

I think Shakespeare really got it. He was the first one to introduce psychology to villains and give them a real point of view.

I know myself - I cannot just play a cliche. It has to be a character; it has to be written with the complexity of the human being behind. Could be bad, could be good, could be someone we would hate, but still, I need a reason for that influence, and I need to understand why.

I couldn't have come up with a better metaphor for my life and my internal conflict. It amazes me how quickly we can manifest our fears; not only had I created my 'I'm never satisfied, I'll drive her away' nightmare.

I always say the classier cousin of 'Anchorman' is 'Mad Men,' because when you really look at it, why do people really love Don Draper in 'Mad Men?' He's just a terrible guy. But we know why he's terrible, and I think that's really key to why you can be sympathetic to a character.

Shakespeare's villains are fabulous because none of them know that they are villains. Well, sometimes they do.

I totally respond to complex characters, and I'm not interested in anything too simple.

As a reader, I much prefer to read a book where people embody all kinds of ideas and everybody is making mistakes.

What I always studied in screenwriting from my mentor John Glavin was that the most interesting characters are characters with shades of gray.

I'm afraid I don't think I really have a life on which something can be written.

I think any character has to be well-rounded, whether they are male or female - they have to be complex and make choices that maybe we don't agree with, you know? I guess that's what makes them human.

I like characters who have faults. I'm drawn to darker people.

I think many people have contradictions to them and I love characters that deal with those contradictions.

You know, we have to take these characters - who, granted, have their separate personalities but, on a lot of levels, are pretty two-dimensional - and make them into people with flaws, with insecurities.