David Baldacci Quotes

The bad guys don't always get punished and the good guys are not necessarily pure.

We were living in a tumultuous time, when the world was upside down. Freeman produced a show that was black and white, the good guys versus the bad guys.

In recent years, anyone in the government, certainly anyone in the FBI or the CIA, or recently, in again, Clint's film, In the Line of Fire, the main bad guy is the chief advisor to the president.

Thrillers provide the reader with a safe escape into a dangerous world where the stakes are as high as can be imagined with unpredictable outcomes. It's a perfect genre in which to explore hard issues of good and evil, a mirror that allows the reader to see both the good and not so good in themselves.

White shall not neutralize the black, nor good compensate bad in man, absolve him so: life's business being just the terrible choice.

The older I get the more I realize there's no real good guys or real bad guys, and I'm curious about how the good guys got good and how the bad guys got bad.

I'd read a lot of thrillers about politicians and presidents, but never one where you flip the stereotypes and make good people bad and bad people good.

In all good westerns, the good guy is always a little bit questionable because he kind-of has to make moral judgments.

We all are who we are. We're not necessarily good, and we're not necessarily bad. So much television, in the writing, is so one-dimensional, in that aspect, where you have your good guys and you have your bad guys.

Cinema explains American society. It's like a Western, with good guys and bad guys, where the weak don't have a place.

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

It's good to play something that's black and white, and a guy that sees right and wrong. I've never played a character like that.

I much prefer playing the bad guys. I think they are always the most interesting characters. I liken it to painting: if you're playing the good guy, you get three colors: red, white and blue. But if you're the bad guy, you get the whole palette.

After Sept. 11, there was a reticence and worrying about films that touched on war, and even more on terrorism.

I always try to find something I like about the bad guys and then try to find the mistakes and the flaws in the good guys.

The bad guys are not typical; they are not just bad, they are interesting. They might be good or bad.

In general, I think writing characters, no one is 100 percent good or bad, and certainly, the bad characters never think they're bad themselves. Even the worst characters don't feel like they're bad guys on the inside.

The myth of Good Guys and Bad Guys is one of the most pervasive we own, and morally grey anti-heroes are simply one of modern fiction's attempts to shake off that mythology and replace it with something a bit more honest.

There's no good guys and bad guys.

The way I look at humanity, I don't think there's good guys or bad guys. We're all potentially bad and potentially good.

You know, the best-laid plans of mice and men... I like playing bad guys, and I don't have a problem doing that. They're interesting characters, and there's as many different kinds of bad guys as there are good guys - they're rich, they're strong, they're powerful, and so that's fine with me.

When you look at a film like 'The Ides of March' or 'Good Night, and Good Luck' even, those are really contained pictures.

I like stories of the classic hero, of good versus evil, the ones in which the good guys wear white and the bad guys wear black... and I love a good sword fight.

I've been playing both sides of the law my entire career. It's not really surprising for me to be doing opposing sides simultaneously. I would argue that even though my character on 'Hawaii Five-0' originated on the wrong side of the law, I'd say he's worked his way over to the good side.

The thing about villains is most people play them with the shifty eyes and all that, whereas I play them as good guys. 'Cos everyone thinks they're a goodie, don't they?