Identify the moral dilemma driving the novel. the successful novel will haunt a reader because it deals with some ethical or moral dilemma that makes the reader wonder what he or she would do in the protagonist's place.
A thorn in the flesh is nothing compared to a thorn in the conscience.
I don't think anyone sets out to do something bad, it's just that it's very difficult.
I wanted to make a redemptive thriller that didn't end with some kind of big, crazy shootout and blood spill, but more of a collision of ideas and a discussion of ethics.
It's never easy with characters in these dark and grave circumstances but that's my job.
I think that's the great thing about all 'Black Mirror' episodes - it really leaves you with this feeling of not knowing how to feel.
To me, any character that is conflicted inside as well as outside of themselves is always a better role to play.
It is seldom very hard to do one's duty when one knows what it is, but it is often exceedingly difficult to find this out.
Which is more misshapen,--religion without virtue, or virtue without religion?
The difference is too nice - Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.
Two points of danger beset mankind; namely, making sin seem either too large or too little.
The lives of the best of us are spent in choosing between evils.
I could not stop something I knew was wrong and terrible. I had an awful sense of powerlessness.
He talks about the Scylla of Atheism and the Charybdis of Christianity - a state of mind which, by the way, is not conducive to bold navigation.
The best fiction is geared towards conflict. We learn most about our characters through tension, when they are put up against insurmountable obstacles. This is true in real life.
I sat on the bed. Neither of us said anything. I wasn't slick and sophisticated enough for this. What do you say to boyfriend A when he finds you naked in the bed of boyfriend B? Especially if boyfriend A turned into a monster the night before and ate someone. I bet Miss Manners didn't cover this at all.
The battle of good and evil reduced to a fat woman standing in front of a chocolate shop, saying, Will I? Won’t I? in pitiful indecision.
For me the moral dilemma this past year has been how to make peace with the unacceptable.
What I always studied in screenwriting from my mentor John Glavin was that the most interesting characters are characters with shades of gray.
How can justice fall victim, ever, to what is right?
But the first lie in the series is the one you make with the greatest trepidation and the heaviest heart.
'Collateral' poses lots of questions and does it within the format of a really good, tense thriller. It starts at a real pace, and it doesn't let go.
From the wrestling of his own soul with the great enemy, comes that depth and mystery which startles us in Hamlet.
Would you rather suffer 90 minutes or 90 years?
The bite of conscience, like the bite of a dog into a stone, is a stupidity.
