Harlan Coben Quotes

I prefer to work with grey characters rather than black and white.

The characters that have greys are the more interesting characters. The hero who sometimes crosses the line and the villain who sometimes doesn't are just much more interesting.

I get the feeling that audiences have become mature and they understand that not every character is in black or white. There can be grey shades to it.

I've always preferred writing about grey characters and human characters. Whether they are giants or elves or dwarves, or whatever they are, they're still human, and the human heart is still in conflict with the self.

Very few of my characters are totally heroic or totally villainous.

People are much more complicated in real life, but my characters are as subtle and nuanced as I can make them. But if you say my characters are too black and white, you've missed the point. Villains are meant to be black-hearted in popular novels. If you say I have a grey-hearted villain, then I've failed.

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

I'm attracted to those kinds of roles that could be good or could be bad, and you just don't know.

What I always studied in screenwriting from my mentor John Glavin was that the most interesting characters are characters with shades of gray.

Sometimes even when the book is over I don't know who's good and who's bad. It's really more interesting, I think, to write about gray characters than it is to write about black and white.

The beauty of Sudhir's protagonists is that they are not shown as black and white. There are various layers to the characters.

It's really interesting to play someone you wouldn't want to ever spend more than a couple of drinks with - but who has redeemable characteristics.

It is difficult to portray grey characters because there is a very thin line between being nasty and slightly negative.

I don't believe novels should carry an obvious message. I don't want to write characters you can immediately say are good or bad; as in life, most people are a mixture.

I did a play once where a reviewer said, 'Martin Freeman's too nice to play a bad guy.' And I thought: 'Well, bad guys aren't always bad guys, you know?' When I see someone play the obvious villain, I know it's false.

Gray space is fertile ground for fiction. When I can see both sides of an argument and feel strongly in both directions, then there's a story there, then I can write real characters that I care about and believe in and champion on both sides.

I love it when you like a character, and then she does something you don't like, and you hate her for a while - then you love her again. I'd like to see her have unlikable moments that the audience understands and sympathizes with.

I'm not sure why I'm so drawn to heroes who do bad things and to villains who think they're the good guys, but I do find that moral ambiguity and conflict makes for great characters.

I think that characters who are nice all the time and who you sympathize with can get really boring.

It's as boring to see a completely evil villain as it is to see a completely good guy.

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.

I thought that would be kind of cool, to make a bad guy look sympathetic.

It's much less interesting as an actor playing someone who's purely good or purely evil.

I think any character has to be well-rounded, whether they are male or female - they have to be complex and make choices that maybe we don't agree with, you know? I guess that's what makes them human.

I love to make even villains people you can relate to. When you find out who did it, I think you almost like the person, which is not easy to do.