Jay Duplass Quotes

We're not one thing, as human beings, so any character that is written uni-dimensional, that's just a shallow character with shallow writing and shallow acting.

I don't steer towards anything. I steer towards character and truth. If it's funny then so be it. If it's dramatic, so be it. I just steer towards characters.

You have to avoid caricature, at the one end of the spectrum, and sentimentality, at the other; which is not to say that such characters shouldn't be funny part of the time, or that their actions shouldn't evoke genuine feeling.

'English Vinglish' is simple; that's why people like it. The film has simplicity and sensitivity. There is no melodrama. Some things have been conveyed just through expressions and no lines.

Over-articulation kills the character because it becomes one thing and that is not how it happens in life and it is not beautiful to watch on screen either.

I have had enough of an interesting life to not embellish it in any way.

I've never been one of those to kind of like, 'I want somebody to do something against their nature to titillate me.' That never holds any interest. And I always want people to be who they are and if they're being not who they are I feel like it's false and, therefore, less easy to connect to. I don't need them to kiss or to display physical intimacy. I think that almost becomes too obvious. I love playing in the suggestive.

He speaks truly who speaks the shade.

Granny Weatherwax was firmly against fiction. Life was hard enough without lies floating around and changing the way people thought.

I seem to know all the cliches, but not how to put them together in a believable way. Or else these stories are terrible and grandiose precisely because all the cliches intertwine in an unrealistic way and you can't disentangle them. But when you actually live a cliche, it feels brand new, and you are unashamed.

Sometimes their oppression of emotion and the weird way it comes out is more interesting than painting it in bold primary colors.

I try to look at life carefully and reproduce life the way life is. It's a question of looking carefully at how it is. In life, you don't have total happiness. People always say that. But you don't have total sadness either, no matter what situation you are living in.

My problem painting from my life was I found that you can't paint dirt without romanticising it.

I'm very militant, you know, in a quite way.

How as an actress are you meant to inhabit other people if you haven't lived? How are you meant to play someone who gets the bus to work or has a part-time job or whatever if I've never experienced any of it myself or if I haven't been to school? How does that make me someone that people can relate to? I don't think it's possible really.

I'm not interested in writers who are overcome with certainty, with single-mindedness, or with a sense of how consistent and morally upstanding they are. My writers are in the thick of it and they seek the truth, rather than embody it, and sometimes they find truths that don't sit palatably or easily together. That's life. That's personality. And that's writing.

If I seem detached or distant, it's because I think this is a more exact reproduction of life, where you hide as much as you show. When I see a scene in which feelings get loudly exteriorized, I say to myself, 'Well, at least this never happens to me.' I very rarely go through this type of expression. Most of the time things are hidden or at least much more subdued.

Sing sweet, but put a little dirt in it.

It isn't enough to shock. It's easy to shock. Real surprise is what I'm after.

If I don't have to act, I'd rather not. I'd rather not act cold. I'd rather actually be cold. That's my weird way of acting. If the door is supposed to be locked, I'd rather have it locked. But of course, most of the time, we have to act, and that's okay, too.

The secret to comedy is not playing the comedy, but actually playing the situation, playing the drama of it.

I always thought realistic was a better way to explain things that were "dramedies" because life is like that. It's funny, it's dramatic and to me that's how I see it.

I mean, it's impossible to fake anything if you've already seen the other person in a way they'd never choose for you to. You can't go back from that.

I tell the stories in the way that feels natural to tell them.

To expect wickedness from human beings is the best way I know of to avoid surprises. And when I am surprised, it's always pleasantly.