Complex Morality Quotes

I'm more attracted to the bad guys. Why? Because in real life, I don't know any good guys. I know okay guys. I know polite guys. I know people who can control themselves.

I could watch 'There Will Be Blood' all day long, and Daniel Plainview is a terrible person - but he's still compelling to watch. That's what makes me want to engage and see what happens next.

Everyone says villains are thankless parts, but those are really the best roles.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

The world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters.

I find that the most interestingly written parts happen to be the bad guys.

The pure and simple truth Is rarely pure and never simple. What's a boy to do When lies and truth are both sinful?

Maybe we are both good people who've done some bad things.

I was good and bad, but never wicked.

I like moral judgment to emerge from the reader. We are being sold a very simplistic morality by our leaders at a time when nuance and understanding are at a premium.

When I see big movies that are only about good versus evil, and the good guy wins, I only can think we're in a far more complicated world than that. I frankly think that this binary philosophy is actually a dangerous way to look at the world.

In the best stories, people are morally complex; they are flawed. We read them because the world is flawed, and we want to see it truthfully represented. And because it can be thrilling to be shocked and upset, and even to feel, for chilling moments, what it's like to be a bad person.

I recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty - a sunken beauty.

In every guilty man, there is some innocence. This makes every absolute condemnation revolting.

...one of those very bad men that not even postmodernism can explain away.

I lacked the courage to investigate the weaknesses of the wicked, because I discovered they are the same as the weaknesses of the saintly.

There is even the dignity of vice.

There was no black or white. Someone who had been good her entire life could, in fact, do something evil. People were just as capable of committing murder, under the right circumstances, as any monster.

I think that there are just people who are hurting other people, sometimes for the best of intentions and sometimes for the worst. In different times in my life, I've been the hero and I've been the villain. I also think that we're all evil sometimes.

I'm drawn to the classic antihero, the guy who's probably made a bunch of mistakes and really has the capacity to go either way. That's the most interesting type of character for me to watch, to see what decisions they'll make. There's a lot of gray area there for a writer to explore.

We aren't the good guys, Anita. We're the necessary guys. -Edward

You get Don King's point of view in what is almost a Shakespearean, classical technique. He comes across almost like a lovable rogue, like Iago in 'Othello' or Richard III. He's doing all these bad things, but I kind of like him. It's like 'Pulp Fiction': Everybody's a bad guy, yet you like them.

It felt very fresh to me, and it feels very contemporary - this idea that conflict's not being about good and evil and not necessarily being black and white. If you dig deep enough, you'll often find that people do things because they feel that they have to as opposed to because they are evil.

To me, a purely good individual or purely bad individual, that's a comic book - that's a fantasy - and I don't do fantasy.

Gee, I wish that life were so black and white that you can't think of a single person who, you know, a good person who has done bad things.