Alice McDermott Quotes

My goal was to show that even if people work in a garage or a supermarket, they have very funny things to say. We never hear their voices.

Television, although It's in steep decline, still occasionally gives voices to people who don't have voices.

That's what independent filmmaking does: it gives the underdog a voice, a shot.

Even being part of a world like 'Black Panther,' that is gonna be something that's deeply commercial, it still is about a narrative of people who are unseen, unheard, and unrepresented, you know?

That was one of the reasons why I wanted to tell the story of Colin Price. I saw someone in this fictionalized political character that was trying to do something important for his city. He meant well, but then you see that the human flaws had really derailed his past. It seems to be happening more and more in our country. I wanted to hold a mirror up to that.

PHYSIOGNOMY, n. The art of determining the character of another by the resemblances and differences between his face and our own, which is the standard of excellence.

I believe in characters as vehicles of exposition. Their voices are full of hidden clues, and I like to listen to them.

Onstage, you just have to tell the absolute truth about the character you are playing. You hope you communicate it, and you hope it comes back like a tennis ball. If you're listening to the sound of your own voice, nobody else is. The audience knows, and they freeze on you.

Gossip, or, as we gossips like to say, character analysis.

You know what needs to be done when you're a writer. You know what the job is, particularly if you're an African American writer, or if you deal with people, or if your subjects are poor people or people who need voice. So you don't really need to know whether or not you are doing the right thing. What you have to be wary of if you're doing the right thing to the right level that will surpass your own life. I'm hoping that my work will surpass my own life.

In my lifetime I have seen democracy begin to expand, not only to include those who have been excluded, but to provide a listening arena, a vocabulary, an intelligent reception for stories that have been buried. Not just stories of the disenfranchised and the marginalized, but marginalized and disenfranchised histories even in the lives of the accepted and the privileged.

But some characters in books are really real--Jane Austen's are; and I know those five Bennets at the opening of Pride and Prejudice, simply waiting to raven the young men at Netherfield Park, are not giving one thought to the real facts of marriage.

We listen so much to everybody - more than ever, because we have a kabillion voices whose opinion we can access - and we care so much if everybody agrees with us. To bust through all of the noise is very challenging.

I suppose that the sympathetic/unsympathetic debate about characters sometimes feels to me like a misstatement of purpose. I always think of truly complex characters are falling between the cracks in that debate.

The librarian, the warrior, the free spirit... archetypes are a great jumping off point to help clarify where we want to go with a character.

You're more than Dauntless," he says in a low voice. "But if you want to be just like them, hurling yourself into ridiculous situations for no reason and retaliating against your enemies without any regard for what's ethical, go right ahead. I thought you were better than that, but maybe I was wrong.

When I leave the theater I can always hear people talking about the character, and everyone always says, "You know, I know someone like her." And I always think, Everyone knows someone like the characters; nobody is like the character. Nobody wants to admit that they are a little bit like that.

Most people like the sad songs. Some of the oldest songs known to man are sad. Listening to a voice singing something sad is a really great way to help you to feel sad when you need to.

he challenge is finding the modern conduit for the audience, having fun and really looking at the duality of this particular character, that is both devil and angel, and on the cusp of losing control of the pagan background, to this newfangled religion called Christianity. There's a great backdrop there, and just a whole dark side with the magic.

Never before had I recognized the ring of majesty that was in Billy Black's voice, though I realized now that this authority had always been there.

History is a conversation and sometimes a shouting match between present and past, though often the voices we most want to hear are barely audible.

There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.

As an actor, anything that you have to help get you into character is helpful.

You could only draw conclusions about my personal sexual politics if you proceed from the assumption that I was presenting the characters as the way it is and the way it ought to be. But both are clearly defined as deranged – it’s love among the mad. He’s a psycopath, so is she. She’s prepared to throw him to the dogs until he works out the code, he’s prepared to let her nearly get executed. They’re not really going to buy a house and a Volvo together. I’m not saying this is how people should date!

In terms of how prudish Americans were in the '40s and '50s, I have absolutely no idea. I do know about the character that I play. And I don't think it's about being prudish. I think it's about trying to balance a sense of control in this man's life.