Dallas Roberts Quotes

Guy Rivers, a conventional piece as regards the love affair which makes a part of the plot, is a tale of deadly strife between the laws of Georgia and a fiendish bandit.

I think that internal conflict works very well, because, after all, all the best drama is fuelled by conflict.

I am drawn towards the sort of characters who are in situations where they don't want to be in. But that's a staple in pretty much in any hero's journey because if you have non-reluctant protagonist then how is there any conflict?

'Hamlet' is a play of many strange parts, with ghosts and players, politicians and clowns.

Usually, you see this play as a guy who can't make up his mind, but our version is more of a revenge thriller than a man who is pontificating what he should do next. I've never seen a 'Hamlet' this big, this exciting, with this many cast members; it's quite a spectacle.

I think it would be very boring dramatically to have a film where everybody was a lawyer or doctor and had no faults. To me, the most important thing is to be truthful.

Shakespeare is the outstanding example of how that can be done. In all of Shakespeare's plays, no matter what tragic events occur, no matter what rises and falls, we return to stability in the end.

In plotting a book, my goal is to raise the stakes for the characters and, in so doing, keep the reader mesmerized.

Shakespeare wrote about love. I write about love. Shakespeare wrote about gang warfare, family feuds and revenge. I write about all the same things.

You don't need to like your protagonists.

A man who goes forth to take the life of another whom he does not know must believe one thing only - that by his act he will change the course of history.

I think that characters who are nice all the time and who you sympathize with can get really boring.

I once tried to write a novel about revenge. It's the only book I didn't finish. I couldn't get into the mind of the person who was plotting vengeance.

The most enduring stories in literature generally have some kind of crime at their center, whether it's the bloody butchery of 'Hamlet,' the lecherous misanthropes of Dickens or the lone gunman from 'The Great Gatsby.'

As he was valiant, I honour him. But as he was ambitious, I slew him.

Shakespeare is in many ways an African writer and 'Hamlet' would be seen as a very accurate historical saga about an African kingdom.

It would perhaps be nice to be alternately the victim and the executioner.

Tales of power and ambition and intrigue and betrayal and desire - when you're telling those in a big way, you automatically want to go to Shakespeare.

You start thinking about a character in a new book, of course you're going to think pretty soon, 'Well, what's their secret? What is their problem?' Maybe, 'What is their secret?' is another way of saying, 'What is their problem?' There's got to be some issue, or you've got a totally boring book!

All the great Shakespeare plays are about killing. 'Alas, poor Yorick,' that's about death. And in 'Romeo and Juliet' everyone up ends up dying. The greatest dramas in the world are all about sex, violence and death.

I think that people are fascinated with the stories, with human nature and the dark turns it can take.

One of the most beautiful things about Shakespeare's Hamlet is when he stops in the middle of the play to ask, 'To be or not to be?' Then, right at the end, he decides to 'let be.' The first season of 'Stranger Things' was Hopper asking whether 'to be or not to be' and the second is to 'let be.'

If significant amounts of time go by without suspenseful action - which is often most powerfully motivated by backstory - the story loses momentum, and readers lose interest.

For me, a story always goes out of a mistake. Somebody makes a mistake, and that becomes the story. Probably that explains why my series are kind of dark: because there's a problem to begin with.

In the English books, the American kids' books, typically, there is a problem, the characters grapple with that problem, and the problem is resolved.