Richard LaGravenese Quotes

Mostly I'm writing about people, so I feel constrained to take with me my view of people, my curiosity about how people choose the things they do and why they come to certain decisions in a certain fashion and all the things that drive most writers.

I also try very hard to create characters - both heroes and villains - with psychological depth.

I think the human mind is fascinating. I love figuring out why people are doing what they do.

People write fiction in their minds all the time - every time we read a 'human interest' news story, or a true crime tale, we find ourselves fascinated because we're trying to understand why people behave the way they do, why they make the choices they do, how we become who we become.

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

I'm interested in character and people and motivations and things like that.

It's great to be able to play the 'bad guy' role, because you always get a lot to do, but I'm always looking at the why - how does a person get to that particular point.

I still ponder what gets in people's minds and souls, why they do the things they do.

Because I am fascinated by people and what makes them behave the way they do. I think it is one of the most fascinating things in the world.

There appears to be but two grand master passions or movers in the human mind, namely, love and pride. And what constitutes the beauty or deformity of a man's character is the choice he makes under which banner he determines to enlist himself. But there is a strong distinction between different degress in the same thing and a mixture of two contraries.

My theory was that what I had to do was make a study of human behavior.

The analysis of character is the highest human entertainment.

I'm interested in the psychological exploration of human nature, and it just happens to come in the form of film-making.

I like analyzing human behavior. It's complex. That's what keeps me going.

The most fascinating powers don't mean a thing if the guy's poorly motivated or dull, and the most generic powers won't hurt a well-motivated character. Personality and motivation are what make Magneto, Magneto and not Cosmic Boy. The powers work for him, but it's his motivation that makes him the character he is.

I love people, I love studying people more than history. So whatever situation I see, then I look at, what were the people like, more than history itself.

The interesting part of the process is developing the character, you know, why did he become that? Why is the guy a murderer, or why is this guy a pervert, or whatever he is. So that's the fun part for me to delve into the abyss.

What I loved about the acting class was that you got to think all day long about a person that wasn't you, and figure out why they were sad and what they wanted, what they dreamed.

I'm insatiably curious about human nature. I feel very lucky that as a writer I get to learn so much about it just to do my job right.

I suppose one of the things that interest me about acting is unpicking what makes people tick and why they do what they do and what it means to be human.

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

I get a lot of people saying to me, 'Oh, you're the actor who plays the nutters,' and I'm not. I'm the guy who plays human beings. I understand why the characters are doing what they're doing. When you play a villain, you don't play a villain: you play a human being doing what he thinks he needs to do to get what he wants.

I do think you need to understand a character's motivation and perspective.

With any role I play, I find out what the human problem is first.

For each character, I try to understand what is driving them.