Stephen King Quotes

Really a bad guy is more interesting, dramatically, than the good guy.

I always look at films as real stories with real people in real situations. That's why I struggle with the whole notion of calling someone the 'good guy' or the 'bad guy', because I think we all have potential to do good things and all have the potential to do bad things.

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.

Fiction is a kind of compassion-generating machine that saves us from sloth. Is life kind or cruel? Yes, Literature answers. Are people good or bad? You bet, says Literature. But unlike other systems of knowing, Literature declines to eradicate one truth in favor of another.

It's difficult to gauge that. With a bad guy you just know you're bad. To play a nice guy is harder - unless you are a very nice person like me of course.

You know, I think a lot of times what happens when we as actors know we're playing a bad guy is we get into bad guy mode. You know what, man? In real life, bad people do good things too and good people do bad things. So you don't necessarily have to be the stereotypical bad guy to still do bad things.

What makes 'The Wire' a beautiful story is how true to life it is. In other shows, you have a good guy and a bad guy. In 'The Wire,' bad guys are trying to be good, good guys are doing bad. You have real life. The people who do bad get bad things done to them.

Well, I think there are no villains in this world. There are just misunderstood heroes.

So much in TV today, you don't get to feel empathetic for the villain. The villains are the villains and the heroes are the heroes. It's very black and white.

If you look in real life, it is very hard to describe people as good people, bad people, heroes or villains. People aren't bad people. They all have their justifications.

I've learned a lot about good and evil. They are not always what they appear to be.

Nobody is all good or all bad.

We always want to find good and bad guys, and I don't believe in that.

There are many movies which come with an attitude of black and white. I am good and you are bad. And there are many movies that are also trying to see the reality as it is or to discover what really is behind the character or events.

The nice thing about 'Farscape' is that you got to be the good guy and still do the bad guy things.

No human being in history was all good or all bad, or all black or all white.

Nobody's perfect, and everybody plays the heel and the baby face at times in real life.

I don't think anybody's all good or all bad.

As if one could know the good a person is capable of, when one doesn't know the bad he might do.

I think all of us have a hero and a villain in us.

In most shows, there's usually a hero or a protagonist, and even if there are multiple heroes or protagonists, most shows try and make it so you really always know who's the good guy and who's the bad guy.

I don't believe that there's a good guy and a bad guy. Unless it's like Superman or Batman, there is no good guy and bad guy.

Look, we're in the time of the anti-hero.

The older I get the more I realize there's no real good guys or real bad guys, and I'm curious about how the good guys got good and how the bad guys got bad.

I don't want to play a bad guy who doesn't have a bit of good in him.