Dana Spiotta Quotes

Now for the hitch in Jane's character,' he said at last, speaking more calmly than from his look I had expected him to speak. 'The reel of silk has run smoothly enough so far; but I always knew there would come a knot and a puzzle: here it is. Now for vexation, and exasperation, and endless trouble!

Contradiction is the heart and soul of character and drama. You're always looking for it. I loved her so much I hit her; that's character. I loved her so much I hit her again; that's even more character.

I look for characters who are emotionally driven.

It's like I had two things pulling at me: you want to be a fighter, and you have problems. So I couldn't be a fighter, and I wasn't solving any problems.

Good TV is not about people being happy; it's drama.

Drama is always conflict. Conflict either comes from within or without. The thing that makes a show different is the conflict manifests itself both internally and externally.

This overwhelming desire to be close to you directly conflicts with my intense fear of people.

Modern science knows much about such conflicts. We call the mental state that engenders it "ambivalence": a collision between thought and feeling.

I balance things better and don't kill myself so much, but conflict makes me a more interesting actress to watch. The places I go to pull emotions from, I think if you have a perfect, happy life, you just don't have those places. And I want those places. I'm proud of those places.

When I'm writing a script, I don't worry about plot as much as I do about people. I get to know the main characters - what they need, what they want, what they should do. That's what gets the story going. You can't just have action, you've got to find out what the characters want. And then they must grow, they must go somewhere.

Why am I always at war with myself? Why have I told, as if upon compulsion, what I knew all along I ought to have withheld? Why am I making a friend of this woman beside me, in spite of the whispers against her that I hear in my heart?

I love characters that are going through turmoil. To be honest, I love characters with conflict. I love characters who are really going through an emotional journey; whether it's a super-dark-crazy journey or a really relatable guy.

You can take the high moral ground intellectually, but if it ever happens to you personally, I don't know that I could honestly say that I wouldn't want to kill someone who took someone away from me. So, it's a rich, fertile ground for great characters and great storytelling. That was the impetus.

For me the most interesting characters are outwardly static, but inwardly charged by an overriding passion.

There's something to play if there's conflict going on. Whatever that conflict is, that's where drama is; if the character is grappling with something you've got something to play, there's layers to it.

I think I'm drawn to characters with complexity or who are under duress in some way and have some conflict going on.

Clearly, I'm drawn to characters with inner conflicts.

I think a lot of people relate to some of my characters' inner struggles.

To me, any character that is conflicted inside as well as outside of themselves is always a better role to play.

I loved her. I still love her, though I curse her in my sleep, so nearly one are love and hate, the two most powerful and devasting emotions that control man, nations, life.

To be human and to be adult means constantly to be in the grip of opposing emotions, to have daily to reconcile apparently conflicting tensions. I want this, but need that. I cherish this, but I adore its opposite too.

I play a nice crazy lady whose morals are right but who is really foundering.

There's always going to be a war going on inside of me. That's just, I think, my make-up.

My literature is much more the result of a paradox than that of an implacable logic, typical of police novels. The paradox is the tension that exists in my soul.

I feel like there's so much darkness in all of my books.