Christine Leunens Quotes

I think any character has to be well-rounded, whether they are male or female - they have to be complex and make choices that maybe we don't agree with, you know? I guess that's what makes them human.

I like characters who have faults. I'm drawn to darker people.

The beauty of the characters on 'Justified' is that all the human beings that are written are all flawed. Even with the good guys, you see darkness surface.

With all the main characters that I write, it's always very important to me that they have good and bad aspects of their personality. It's important to me that they're complicated and that they're human.

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'm attracted to playing characters that have flaws.

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.

In a novel, if you're any good, you don't just have good people or bad people. You have complicated people. You have real people.

I think I am more attracted to characters with a subtext, whatever that is and they don't necessarily have to be virtuous, but they have to at least be human.

What I always studied in screenwriting from my mentor John Glavin was that the most interesting characters are characters with shades of gray.

As human beings, of course, we're all compromised and complex and contradictory and if a screenplay can express those contradictions within a character and if there's room for me to express them, that's a part I'd love to play, so much more than a character who is heroic and one-dimensional.

Of course I know my characters are unlikable sometimes or have prejudices. It's not as if I'm thinking they're so endearing all the time. I guess it's much more interesting to me to write someone who is a combination of good and bad qualities because that's what people are like in real life.

I try genuinely, when I'm playing a character, to not judge them and just to inhabit someone as how one sees them. That being said, you also want to make sure that you don't blur the edges of people too much because humans are naughty and complicated beings.

I think conflicted characters are always more interesting.

The beauty of Sudhir's protagonists is that they are not shown as black and white. There are various layers to the characters.

I like fractured characters with human follies.

I think all interesting characters have some kind of a complex.

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.

In 'Garden Party' or '40 Days and 40 Nights,' I played characters who people don't necessarily like; I just find some humanity in them.

I'm always much more interested in flawed heroes than in perfect ones.

Nobody's all good or bad, and nobody's all light or dark. Every human being has so many different aspects and facets to them. And there can be something noble and something really dark and dangerous going on in a person all at the same time.

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.

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 happen to like movies and plays about dislikeable people as long as I get to know why they are what they are.