Understanding Motivations Quotes

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them.

We're all the heroes of our own stories. So, when I am inside the head of a character who would otherwise be considered a villain, I have a great deal of affection for that character and I'm trying to see the world and the events through their eyes.

I don't watch scripted television, and I finally figured out why. It's my line of work, you know? It's what I do.

The most critical thing in a negotiation is to get inside your opponent's head and figure out what he really wants.

Even in high school I was very interested in history - why people do the things they do. As a kid I spent a lot of time trying to relate the past to the present.

I've played an awful lot of people that other people would call villains, but that isn't a very helpful attitude to have if you're about to play them. They are just people, and they may do dreadful things and say dreadful things, but your job as an actor is to know why they do them or say them.

I think one of my big skills is making unlikable characters likable or real in some way. No matter how hateful people are, there's always something vulnerable about them, or something that you can understand or relate to. I think that's my job as an actress - to find those.

If you never fall in love with your character, you'll never be able to do that character justice. No matter who it is, no matter what the character does, you have to find the reason for it. Everyone's got a reason for what they do, even if it's a reason that they're not proud of.

I don't spend a lot of time judging anyone I play. Even if their function in the script is to be the villain, I concentrate on what their perspective of the events is. Not even to justify them.

Whatever it is, people have issues and that affects you deeply. So you have to get to the bottom of it and not let that affect your life decisions and really understand why you're making the decisions you make so that way you can understand how to not do that, so I always encourage people to ask why and then to really understand you, because that's the only way to be your most successful and your most happy.

Everyone is complicated one way or another. But it's interesting to dig into a complicated character, to try to find that within yourself.

How barbarous, to deny men the privilege of pursuing what they imagine to be their proper concerns and interests! Yet, in a sense, this is just what you are doing when you allow your indignation to rise at their wrongdoing; for after all, they are only following their own apparent concerns and interests. You say they are mistaken? Why then, tell them so, and explain it to them, instead of being indignant.

If "man who supports his family, at all costs, even his own happiness" is Who You Are, then love your work, because it is facilitating your creation of a living statement of Self. If "woman who works at job she hates in order to meet responsibilities as she sees them" is Who You Are, then love, love, love your job, for it totally supports your Self image, your Self concept. Everyone can love everything the moment they understand what they are doing, and why. No one does anything he doesn't want to do.

People are complicated. Our behavior towards one another is strange. So I like opportunities to investigate that.

What I try to do in writing any character is to put myself in his position.

But to fight something, you really have to try to understand its motivations—particularly when the something you’re fighting holds most of the cards, the deck is stacked against you, and the whole gambling hall is on fire and filled with thugs.

One of the great lessons I learned about historical fiction from writing 'Loving Frank' is that you don't try to disguise what people did; my approach was to try to understand the characters and why they did what they did.

I suspect I have probably disagreed with him more than with any other justice, that we have not joined each other’s opinions more than anybody else. And yet Justice [Clarence] Thomas is the one justice in the building that literally knows every employee’s name. Every one of them. And not only does he know their names, he remembers their families’ names and histories. He’s the first one who will go up to someone, when you’re walking with him, and say, “Is your son OK? How’s your daughter doing in college?” He’s the first one that when my stepfather died sent me flowers in Florida. He is a man who keeps cares deeply about the court as an institution, about the people who work there, but about people. . . . You really can’t begin to understand an adversary unless you step away from looking at their views as motivated in bad faith, but until you can look at their views and think about what the human reaction is that’s motivating those views.

A good lie detector doesn't jump to conclusions but tries to understand the person across the table, her personality, and her motivations. Your goal as a lie spotter isn't to point the finger and say, 'You're lying' - your goal is to get to the truth.

I read about violent things. I think what I get out of that is entertainment by learning about different things, and reading the genre and getting an understanding of motivations. But at the end of the day, it's still a book, and I can walk away.

Actually, I identify with all my characters, good and bad. I have to do that in order to make them genuine. I have to understand them even if I don't approve of them. Not completely - it's impossible; complete identification is, in fact, not desirable.

Individuals who were submerged in reality, merely feeling their needs, emerge from reality and perceive the causes of their needs.

It wasn't the intention to do something important, or to even relate about social issues. The ground is so fertile in the justice world, dealing with the death penalty and the Innocence Project, for characters that have a moral ambiguity, which we were both attracted to. It's the idea that everybody has their reasons. Whatever their actions are, whether you agree with them or not, you can understand why they're feeling that way, in terms of racism or even the death penalty.

As an actor, I've learned to become a detective. You have to figure out who that person is. If the character is a thief, you have to figure out what makes them a thief. Whatever the prevailing idiosyncrasy is, I have to find it in the script.

I don't really try to judge any character that I play, afterwards I figure it out, but while I'm working on the character, I have to find something in them to relate to.