Moral Gray Areas Quotes

Right and wrong becomes more difficult for each of us as we grow older, because the older we get the more we know personally about our own human frailties.

Stealing, of course, is a crime, and a very impolite thing to do. But like most impolite things, it is excusable under certain circumstances. Stealing is not excusable if, for instance, you are in a museum and you decide that a certain painting would look better in your house, and you simply grab the painting and take it there. But if you were very, very hungry, and you had no way of obtaining money, it would be excusable to grab the painting, take it to your house, and eat it.

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 try not to break the rules but merely to test their elasticity.

In all good westerns, the good guy is always a little bit questionable because he kind-of has to make moral judgments.

I've played people that are on the line of evil and good, but that's life. We are always playing with the good and the bad. I see them as people. I don't see them as caricatures. I try to not make them caricatures. Maybe I fail, but I try to see what' behind them. Would I play the hero? A superhero? I don't think so. But, I play good guys. There are some there, but you have to look.

Somehow we allow, if a character goes to the dark side, if we're hooked into that character - I'm obsessed with Peaky Blinders. Those characters are awful, and yet you root for them. You love them! Same with Breaking Bad. That's not as easy in a feature.

In a very complex way, things have improved in the dramatic field. Before you had the good and the bad and you couldn't mingle them. Now it's more ambiguous.

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

It's difficult in the abstract to appreciate that those with morally objectionable viewpoints can still be good people.

Every vice is only an exaggeration of a necessary and virtuous function.

She used to pride herself on her refusal to see two sides of an argument, but increasingly she accepts that issues are more ambiguous and complicated than she once thought.

I much prefer following a lead character that is doing morally questionable things. How much do you get on board? Do like that? Do you hate it? Does it matter?

'Orphan Black' allows for people to have debates and theories and allegiances to different characters - to trust characters and hate other characters - but it doesn't tell you who is good or bad or right or wrong. That's the most exciting storytelling, in my book.

I like ambiguity. I think it's so much more interesting to play than an overtly good or an overtly evil person.

I find Hollywood gives these pat stories, and they're reassuring stories, and I don't really want to give people that. Hollywood does all that work. I'm offering, sometimes, an alternative to that. The answers aren't black-and-white. There may not even be answers in certain instances. The ground is not necessarily solid, either. So you've got to keep awake the whole time, even after the movie is over.

It's as boring to see a completely evil villain as it is to see a completely good guy.

I don't feel I'm playing villains all the time.

It's not always so simple, Haven. Sometimes there isn't a good guy and a bad guy. Sometimes even the ones you want to believe turn out to be liars.

I maintain the importance of an absolute prohibition against torture, while acknowledging that even absolute prohibitions can sometimes be broken. If that is a contradiction, it is a contradiction that ethics has to embrace, or else it becomes like glass: hard, clear, but fatally inflexible.

There are things I take sides about, like capital punishment, which it seems to me there is only one side about: it is evil. But there are two or three sides to sexual harassment, and the moment you get into particular cases, there is injustice in every conceivable direction. It's a mess.

I like to stay away from writing about good versus evil. I think the world is more complicated.

Some of my favorite shows are ones where the characters are vile and human and flawed. That's what makes me want to keep watching a show, not writers telling me how to feel about characters.

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.

It's not all 'Jane Eyre' out there. In her sweet, honorable, slightly passive-aggressive way, Jane was as perfect as a protagonist can get while remaining interesting; in fact, she's one of my favorites. But most characters are more morally ambiguous.