Alan Ball quotes

Alan Ball is an American director, screenwriter, and producer, best known for his work on "American Beauty" and the HBO series "Six Feet Under" and "True Blood." His storytelling often explores deep themes of family, identity, and the human condition. He has won numerous awards, including an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Here are 58 of his quotes:

I was conveniently bisexual for a long time, and then I went, 'Come on, who am I kidding?' And I have to say, it was the single biggest step I took toward emotional well-being, to stop feeling like I had to hide who I am.

Alan Ball

There is a fetishization of victimization in our culture. And I just am not interested in victimhood.

Alan Ball

We live in a time where there's an alienation factor. There's a certain disconnection. We don't have any real sense of community anymore.

Alan Ball

I'm a Buddhist, so one of my biggest beliefs is, 'Everything changes, don't take it personally.'

Alan Ball

I would say try to tell stories that you care about as opposed to stories that you think will sell.

Alan Ball

Not everything is going to be successful. To strive for that is really naive. You just do the best you can do.

Alan Ball

I really love storytelling, and I love the stories as they reveal themselves. It's an incredibly nourishing process; it's probably the closest I come to having a religion.

Alan Ball

I will say that the environment I grew up in was not the most progressive.

Alan Ball

Happy relationships are boring. We all want them in our own life. But I don't want to watch them on TV.

Alan Ball

The difference between film and TV is the pace. You don't have the leisure of time in television.

Alan Ball

If a scene is longer than three pages, it better be for a good reason.

Alan Ball

Directing is physically exciting because there's a ticking clock, you're working with people, it's very social, it's very enjoyable.

Alan Ball

I'm a huge freak, and always have been. I spent the first part of my life trying really desperately not to be one, and it was just a waste of time.

Alan Ball

I am a little suspicious of industry paradigms. I feel like so many movies and TV shows feel so familiar because of over-reliance on these paradigms.

Alan Ball

We live in a patriarchal culture. It's okay for women to be objectified but not for men.

Alan Ball

Racism is ridiculous no matter where it's coming from.

Alan Ball

A lot of times, the choice of the right song will save a scene. Or there will be a scene that's a little flat and you put in the right song and somehow it just comes alive.

Alan Ball

Life is too mysterious to try to map it out. I've certainly lived long enough to know it will take you places you never thought it would take you - and some of those places are kind of wonderful.

Alan Ball

Beauty is in the strangest places. A piece of garbage floating in the wind. And that beauty exists in America. It exists everywhere. You have to develop an eye for it and be able to see it.

Alan Ball

I think it's very difficult, and it requires a tremendous amount of spiritual integrity and discipline, to not be a narcissist in a culture that encourages it every step of the way.

Alan Ball

And as I stumbled onto Eastern philosophy and Buddhism, it was the first time I had ever read any sort of philosophy that really made a tremendous amount of sense. What I liked that was missing from my experience of Christianity growing up was a sort of acceptance, a sort of being OK with being imperfect and not focusing on the sin.

Alan Ball

I am so spoiled. I cannot watch a show where it gets interrupted for ads. I have to TiVo it and skip through the ads, because the culture of advertising is so false and phony that I just... ugh, you know?

Alan Ball