Roxane Gay Quotes

All of my characters are less than perfect.

When it comes to your hero, what the readers really fall in love with are his flaws. No one ever falls in love with a perfect hero.

I work very hard at creating complex characters, a mix of positives and negatives. They are all flawed. I believe flaws are almost universal, and they help us understand, sympathise and, paradoxically, feel closer to such characters.

I don't want a perfect character, I want a character who has, as strange as it sounds, some humanity, some flaws, some needs.

I like playing flawed characters, people who aren't perfect.

I don't think being flawed is a bad thing for a character... nor do I think it's a bad thing for a person in life, because that's how we all are.

It seems to me that most characters, in anything, are flawed in some way, just like most people. You look for the good in the flawed people and vice versa, and then try and make them appealing in some way.

The characters are whole, real people to me that I'm getting to know, and since real people are all flawed, so are my characters, I hope.

I'm drawn to villains that are three-dimensional and raw and that I can kind of see in my own life.

My characters all have issues, but I don't see that as weird or abnormal because I think in real life there are very few bland, normal people.

I'm attracted to playing characters that have flaws.

I think we love watching people that are flawed because we're all flawed.

To me the interesting main character is never the one without flaws.

Everyone loves characters that are relatable or who have unique quirks or tragic flaws.

You don't want to play a perfect person; no one cares about that.

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 think heroes who are not flawed are not believable.

Fallible characters are more interesting than superheroes in the end.

I like fractured characters with human follies.

I believe that attributing flaws to medical characters makes them not just doctors but something more. It makes them people.

Aren't all people flawed?

The truth is that, to me, a likeable character is a character that is really flawed, so I don't know what people mean when they say 'likable.'

All my characters are quite relatable, as they are flawed, true, and honest. All of us are flawed; nobody is pure and pious.

With my physicality and my face, I don't think I could pull off a completely righteous guy. There's something devious about my eyes. I like characters with flaws and to see how they overcome those flaws. I want to play real people, and they're flawed, not perfect.

The hero is changing in Bollywood, and I approach a hero's role like a character by focusing on its weaknesses. I feel the weaknesses of a character make them more alive, relatable, and human.