Susan Isaacs Quotes

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

I want to look at this character from all points of view. I know I don't want to make them all good or all bad or all anything... the story itself often helps create the character.

I will always find a defense for characters, and that's why it's fun playing characters that are morally ambiguous, or are at least perceived superficially as being problematic.

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

The villain of any story is often the most compelling character.

The thematic bucket of vomit that I've been chained to since I was about 9 is the moral complexity of anti-heroism. I have always been interested in good people who do bad things for understandable reasons.

Good guy' or 'bad guy', hero or anti hero; doesn't matter to me, what role I play, only the character have something magical.

I think that characters who are nice all the time and who you sympathize with can get really boring.

People always tell me I'm nothing like my character. Well, hopefully not! He's a character who's very defined. He was purposefully written by Jo Rowling as very one-dimensional in the first few books, because you're supposed to hate him.

If the reader cares, I don't think it matters so much whether your hero is in fact an anti-hero.

In most shows, there's usually a hero or a protagonist, and even if there are multiple heroes or protagonists, most shows try and make it so you really always know who's the good guy and who's the bad guy.

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

Villains are very, very boring to do. They're so much easier than heroes.

I'm always going with my visceral reaction when I read a script. I am more drawn to characters who are conflicted, and in developing a character exploration. If it's a baddie, I'm rarely intrigued, and if it's a goody two-shoes - too much of a good guy - I'm not, either.

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

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.

No author ever drew a character consistent to human nature, but he was forced to ascribe to it many inconsistencies.

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.

Evil is such a simplistic way to describe any character, be it Iago or Caliban, or any character from history.

It really doesn't matter whether it's the villain or the hero. Sometimes the villain is the most colorful. But I prefer a part where you don't know what he is until the end.

I wanted readers to be genuinely unsure as to whether she's telling the truth or lying. It meant making her partly sympathetic, and partly unsympathetic, which wasn't easy.

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.

Very few of my characters are totally heroic or totally villainous.

A friend of mine who is in the publishing business knew I was writing a book, and he said, 'Have you said anything yet about the good guy? Because I know you spend so much time with the bad guys.' Because they're fun. So then you have to make the good guy fun, in order to compete. That's the challenge.