David Maraniss Quotes

I am obsessed with why people turn out the way they are.

A man's character never changes radically from youth to old age. What happens is that circumstances bring out characteristics which have not been obvious to the superficial observer.

Men's natures are alike; it is their habits that carry them far apart.

Men's fundamental attitudes toward the world are fixed by the scope and qualities of the activities in which they partake.

Nobody starts out evil - we know that. It's life circumstances that lead them to that.

The properties of people and the properties of character have almost nothing to do with each other. They really don't. I know it seems like they do because we look alike, but people don't speak in dialogue. Their lives don't unfold in a series of scenes that form a narrative arc.

By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart.

One of the best ways of understanding human nature is to study children. After all, if we want understand who we are, we should find out how we got to be that way.

Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.

The analysis of character is the highest human entertainment.

Behavior is mutable. It changes from place to place. It's like accents, dialect - it varies from one area to another. But there are universal truths about what it means to be a human being. All the other stuff is like applique. Learning that was interesting to me and probably useful for becoming an actor.

I think the great thing about characters is the ways that they can be surprising. I mean, sometimes you think you've got a lock on a personality, even just in life, and then they'll shock you by their behavior.

Just recently I worked with Van Morrison and I came to realize that money can't make a decent human being out of you.

Different people bring out different aspects of ones personality.

You've got to understand what makes the character human.

In soft regions are born soft men.

I think to try to understand human behavior and why people do what they do, and what in their lives have shaped them and impacted them to be who they are, it's something. I mean, that's my entire life.

Any human being is this wonderful conglomeration of experiences and behaviors, if you like - some of them healthy, some of them not so healthy.

I think you have to see the high highs and the low lows to get to the core of what makes us tick as people.

I think you are a product of the environment you surround yourself in, and everything you've experienced is a part of you and the fabric you are in.

I'm very much a person of nurture over nature. When the world is not nurturing, it can really change a man.

Guess what? Human beings are complex.

We all have these shades in our nature: it's a spectrum within all of us.

Everyone is a product of their own environment, and that, I think, has actually been the key lesson for me.

The older I got, I started to realize more it's not necessarily that any of us are inherently bad or good; you just kind of carve your own way, and you are your experiences and your surroundings and what you grow up in.