Ambiguous Characters Quotes

Sometimes even when the book is over I don't know who's good and who's bad. It's really more interesting, I think, to write about gray characters than it is to write about black and white.

If you have the personalities down, you understand them and identify with them; you can stick them in any situation and have a pretty good idea of how they're going to respond. Then it's just a matter of sanding and polishing up the jokes. But if you've got more ambiguous characters or stock stereotypes, the plastic comes through and they don't work as well. These two characters clicked for me almost immediately and I feel very comfortable working with them.

Here [in Wonder Boys] I had this group of characters where you didn't know which were the important ones or what direction they were heading.

I like films that take their time a little bit more and don't show you all of their cards right away, characters that are conflicted and contradicting and seem one way at first and then suddenly turn out to be something else.

If you've got more ambiguous characters or stock stereotypes, the plastic comes through and they don't work as well.

I like playing weird, kind of shady people.

I'm most drawn to characters who are compelling and repellant at the same time, very often right at the same moment, and who are frightening and funny all at once.

I like ambiguity because you may be the villain in someone else's story and the hero in your own, and I think very often, African-American characters are either one thing or the other. You shouldn't have to be perfectly good or perfectly bad. You don't even have to be magical.

I don't believe novels should carry an obvious message. I don't want to write characters you can immediately say are good or bad; as in life, most people are a mixture.

When I first auditioned for Dexter... Well, I was sent the script, and I read it and loved it, and I knew right away that it was going to be a hit because it's the type of programming that I like to watch. It's that very morally ambiguous thing where you find yourself rooting for someone who's really an awful person, but... is he doing good? You're constantly calling into question your own moral code. I love that as an audience member.