Ari Graynor Quotes

Personally I don't believe in bad people. I think there's always a reason for people acting badly.

My characters make incomprehensible decisions until you stand in their shoes. Then it makes more sense. Life is very rarely black and white, and most people are trying to do their best. I try not to judge.

There's really no "bad" people; there's just humans who are doing the best they can to figure life out. It's hard! We can all relate to that.

I think it was a big revelation to me earlier in my life that people who appear to be evil are actually not. In other words, nobody wakes up in the morning and says, "Yuck, yuck, yuck, I'm gonna be evil."

Instead of condemning people, let's try to understand them. Let's try to figure out why they do what they do. That's a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness.

I have tried sedulously not to laugh at the acts of man, nor to lament them, nor to detest them, but to understand them.

I don't think badly of people. I like everybody, and I'm sorry for everybody.

I think the church needs – I think this is the world we are living in and we need to affirm people wherever they are.

We do not see into men’s hearts. We cannot judge, and are indeed forbidden to judge.

Remember that other people may be totally wrong. But they don't think so. Don't condemn them. Any fool can do that. Try to understand them. Only wise, tolerant, exceptional people even try to do that.

Human nature is complex. Even if we do have inclinations toward violence, we also have inclination to empathy, to cooperation, to self-control.

I find that one must accept the people in such a way as they are.

Nobody's really unsympathetic, I think. People do good and bad things. If a character's totally unsympathetic, they're not real and I'm not interested. Even the real monsters have to have a spark of something you can relate to.

Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.

When people need love and understanding and support the most is when they deserve it the least.

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

I take people very seriously. People are all I take seriously, in fact. Therefore, I have nothing but sympathy for how people behave - and nothing but laughter to console them with.

I'm just incredibly interested in people.

I don't judge my characters.

If you really want to be able to express what goes on with other people, you have to be able to look at them and empathize with them and not judge who they are and what they do.

I think, to me, I was always taught you never approach any character as a villain. Every human being on earth really believes that they're doing the best thing. We all have our rationalizations.

I am constantly interested in people who society calls 'bad' because I don't like to just buy into something that everybody's going to say. I want to investigate that for myself. With a character, you get to fully investigate that emotionally and understand the parts of them that are in pain and scared and are good. That's human.

I love taking people on that journey, which I feel like can open them up to seeing human beings a little more complexly. People that you originally don't like, maybe they have reasons for the way they are, and maybe we can start to understand each other a little better as opposed to being quick to judge and dismiss people.

A word of advice is, when you judge someone, it doesn't define the person that you're judging. It defines you.

Characters, like people, don't need to be right - only understood and, perhaps, accepted. We are all grey, lighter and darker, depending on our state of security.