Neal Shusterman Quotes

We want to live in the black and white, but we don't. The world is gray. And, I'm always fascinated by people who are clearly, 'This is black and this is white, and that's the way life is.' Life always has something to say about that.

I love the gray area between right and wrong.

There's no good guys and bad guys.

Things aren't black and white in the world.

Nothing is all good or all bad, nothing is black or white, everything is just messy and human and difficult.

You can choose who you want to be the hero [in Hard Candy], but youll be second-guessing yourself -- theres just no right answer. Our society is obsessed with finding good and finding evil, but I think were all capable of anything.

The world is not that black and white, Rachel. There are no moral absolutes. It is complex.

We always want to find good and bad guys, and I don't believe in that.

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

We should not be simply fighting evil in the name of good, but struggling against the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found.

I don't know anyone who's 100 percent pure - nor do I have any interest in portraying anyone like that.

We grow up to respect the gray. Black or white, one or the other, is childish. It represents the worldview of someone who does not know the world.

I personally feel that no human is a hero or a villain. All of us have our grey sides, and that is why grey interests me: because it's more human, more life-like.

When I see big movies that are only about good versus evil, and the good guy wins, I only can think we're in a far more complicated world than that. I frankly think that this binary philosophy is actually a dangerous way to look at the world.

People do things in the names of good, and in the name of ideals, but the world isn't that simple. So they end up doing things that aren't necessarily good. Even if they think they're doing the right thing, but when viewed from a different perspective they can look barbaric and crazy.

I find it most remarkable that we who are so intimately involved in the battle between good and evil are even more involved with the shades of gray in between them.

Life isn't black and white. It's a million gray areas, don't you find?

To me, most of life kind of lives in the grey and I don't just mean morally. I just mean kind of everything. If things were black and white it would be a lot clearer as to what to do all the time.

I tend to look for the good in bad people and the bad in good people, to make them human. 'Cause I don't think that people generally are that black and white. Maybe in movie-land they can be... but that isn't necessarily all there is.

I don't believe in bad and good, I believe we are all a mix of both.

I don't look at things in black and white. There are big gray areas. There's a lot of slippage.

I like to show the grey area in all my characters.

I don't believe that there's a good guy and a bad guy. Unless it's like Superman or Batman, there is no good guy and bad guy.

Despite what they tell you, there are simply no moral absolutes in a complex world.

Life isn't one-dimensional. The world isn't simply divided into good versus evil. I think we're all capable of both.