Michelle MacLaren Quotes

For 'Breaking Bad,' people were with Walter White for 99% of that show, even though that guy is a monster.

The problem and the question on 'Breaking Bad' is always 'Where is Walt's head at?'

The thing that intrigued me about 'Breaking Bad' from day one was the idea of taking a character and transforming him.

If you look at 'Breaking Bad,' nothing lacks.

You just never know what the grand plan is on 'Dexter,' so I didn't know if I was going to make it to the next episode, let alone the next season!

Action fiction is driven more by what than by who. Put that ticking nuclear suitcase under Manhattan, and it's relatively easy to create suspense. Literary fiction is driven more by who than by what.

You might as well ask why a middle-aged man with no criminal record might put a paper bag over his head and rob a bank. I acted out of personal desperation.

I firmly believe that a story is only as good as the villain.

Honestly, all of 'Breaking Bad' was the best television experience of my entire life - the writing, the crew, the other actors.

'Breaking Bad' and 'The Shield' were planned right from the start so that their narrative trajectory would come down in a blaze of fireworks.

Dramatically, the moment in 'Gravity' that was hardest to nail down is when Ryan is in the Soyuz capsule and she realizes that she's out of fuel. That's when the character's arc gets defined.

Let's get right to it: On page 5 of Paul Murray's dazzling new novel, 'Skippy Dies,'... Skippy dies. If killing your protagonist with more than 600 pages to go sounds audacious, it's nothing compared with the literary feats Murray pulls off in this hilarious, moving and wise book.

That's just what 'The 100' does. They like to put their characters in a position where no decision is the right one, you know? You have to kind of just hope that it works out.

We need the villain sometimes. It makes for an interesting story.

I mean, I love Walter White.

I left it entirely in the hands of the 'Emmerdale' team and had no input into how Andy would leave. I put my full trust in them to come up with a way for him to leave that was fitting for the character.

The anti-hero walks the morally gray path and constantly flirts with redemption, and that flirtation is just a blast to write.

I think 'The Condemned' has a great story. It's a lot more than a mindless action flick.

There's a reason a happy ending is called an ending. The trick of a television storyteller is to find all the rivers and mountains and valleys on the way to that ending.

'The Turnaround' isn't even really a crime novel. But you need conflict to make a novel, any kind of novel, and I don't know any other way to do it than crime.

Everyone knows what it's like to make the wrong decision for the right reasons. For me, wrong decisions are the heart of drama - a character who's always making the right decisions is boring.

Stories work better when not everyone gets what they want.

What's great about the play 'Pygmalion' is that it's sort of two plays. It's the one simple trajectory of girl bettering herself. It's a bet; it's a dare. Will they get away with it? Basic seed: boom. And then it goes into a different direction.

I think the parts that I played sort of broke the mould in terms of - you know, I played grey characters, the bad girl with a good heart, there was a good reason for her to be bad.

Let the story lead you. If the story needs to be dark, let it go dark. If it's a sweet, good-for-the-world story, that's what it is.