Jesse Plemons Quotes

Nobody's really unsympathetic, I think. People do good and bad things. If a character's totally unsympathetic, they're not real and I'm not interested. Even the real monsters have to have a spark of something you can relate to.

Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.

Heaven and hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad. But the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue.

What makes 'The Wire' a beautiful story is how true to life it is. In other shows, you have a good guy and a bad guy. In 'The Wire,' bad guys are trying to be good, good guys are doing bad. You have real life. The people who do bad get bad things done to them.

Whenever I have tried to make a character bad, they end up being good in some way.

I love the character of Jaime Lannister. He's just so complex - a character that we love to hate - but it's a lot more complex than hatred. It starts off, and he seems so arrogant and so smug.

Nobody's really unsympathetic, I think. People do good and bad things. If a character's totally unsympathetic, they're not real and I'm not interested.

I feel like life is much greater than a hero or a villain: there's good people that sometimes make mistakes.

A novel can grant humanity even to those who act inhumanely, and by making men and women of monsters, it can offer not only a ground-level view of a particular conflict, but a descent into the substratum of human nature capable of the incomprehensible.

I love to start characters in a place where you think you know them. We can make all kinds of assumptions about them and think they have no redeeming qualities, but like everyone, they're complex.

I think everybody has a good and bad side.

I think that Gollum is really the character who is a very human character, and he's very flawed, like most humans are, and has good and bad sides.

I have never played a role in which someone's dark side shouldn't be explored.

The bad guys are not typical; they are not just bad, they are interesting. They might be good or bad.

I am really drawn to damaged characters, and I have a lot of sympathy for them. Making those complicated characters empathetic is something to strive for. It's too easy to create a good guy or a good girl.

If I play a villain, I try to find his lightness and his good side. And if I play a hero or a good guy, I'll try to find his darkness or his flaws. Because I don't believe in good and evil. I believe in grays.

There's always a theme I'm drawn to, that we humans are not good or bad. We're all a mixture of both. We can have great compassion or commit great violence.

I think all of us have a hero and a villain in us.

There's a story in 'Kabu Kabu' called 'Bakasi Man' where I got to explore the mind of a 'bad man.' It was fun.

I know myself - I cannot just play a cliche. It has to be a character; it has to be written with the complexity of the human being behind. Could be bad, could be good, could be someone we would hate, but still, I need a reason for that influence, and I need to understand why.

As Faulkner says, all of us have the capacity in us for great good and for great evil, for love but also for hate. I wanted to write those kinds of complex character in a fantasy, and not just have all the good people get together to fight the bad guy.

Inside each of us, there is the seed of both good and evil. It's a constant struggle as to which one will win. And one cannot exist without the other.

I like the opportunity to play characters who have these dark sides but make the audience empathize with them. You want them to think there is some kind of sweeter, softer side to it.

There have to be moments when you glimpse something decent, something life-affirming even in the most twisted character. That's where the real art lies. See, I always suspect characters who are painted as lovely, decent human beings. I would always question where the darkness lies.

White shall not neutralize the black, nor good compensate bad in man, absolve him so: life's business being just the terrible choice.