Anais Nin Quotes

I'm interested in writing that explores all sides of human beings.

I've always been drawn to tormented people full of contradictions.

People are composed of many things, and in my work, what influences me is the complexity of people - the chiaroscuro of dark and light. When I play a strong guy, I try to find, where is he weak? And, conversely, when I play a weak guy, where is he strong?

I have my dark side. You have your dark side. From the second that we have a brain, there are things that are not right - we are human beings with all these illusions and complexes and everything. That's attractive to me.

'Breaking Bad' is great at blurring the line between good and evil. It makes you feel compassion for Walter White so you're with him throughout this descent into the darker parts of his psyche. The bad that we're capable of is all circumstantial.

One of the things I constantly think about as a writer is the way in which people are full of contradictions - there's all this contradictory information inside a human personality.

I never appreciated 'positive heroes' in literature. They are almost always cliches, copies of copies, until the model is exhausted. I prefer perplexity, doubt, uncertainty, not just because it provides a more 'productive' literary raw material, but because that is the way we humans really are.

I do believe as human beings we are a great mass of contradictions.

We are, all of us, incoherent text, and just knowing that - knowing that no matter how much you say, 'I am this' and part of you is not that - means that you can say it.

You are at the same time arrogant and self-loathing. You are a puzzle. But the ancient truth remains: as the light grows dimmer, things begin to become harder to see. I came to love you in time, but I feared the dark side as well. I still do. You have tremendous potential, potential for joy or hate, light or dark, life or death. But in the end, you choose. What a gift, what a joy to witness.

Of all the things that God has made, the human heart is the one which sheds the most light, alas! and the most darkness.

We as beings are very contradictory, complicated creatures that work in our best interest and against our best interest. In a certain way, I want my work to have all that messiness.

What I love about writing is the contradictions we all embody as human beings.

Like most, I was a mix of good and bad, anger and protectiveness, kindness and pride. But right now, I had only strangled fear and the promise of revenge.

He loved the people just as much as he feared and detested persons.

That's the way man is, cher monsieur. He has two faces: he can't love without self-love.

Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin.

I'm not afraid to play the role of Christian Grey. Because I'm not like him. But I perfectly understand him. I never thought that he was a monster. He is simply woven from desires. As every one of us.

Demon, angel, all the same thing if you go back far enough, or cut deep enough.

The heart and the mind, what an enigma.

It doesn't matter that Cathy was what I have called a monster. Perhaps we can't understand Cathy, but on the other hand we are capable of many things in all directions, of great virtues and great sins. And who in his mind has not probed the black water?

I don't write about anything I don't love even if that love sometimes gets all screwed up and tormented.

Isn't joyful or painful this pain in which I rejoice

The only boring part of it is finding the fact that got you from point A to point B. Most actors, if they're being honest, are not going to say that that's the most stimulating acting work they've ever done. But the dynamics of staring into the face of evil and it looking back at you, and seeing yourself in that or not, is interesting.

That was what gospel was meant to do - make you hate and love yourself at the same time, make you ashamed and glorified.