Alan Ball quotes - page 2

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 definitely see the good in people. Certainly in my own life I strive to be somebody who is functional and well adjusted and can face conflict in a non-emotional and non-destructive way, and those are the people I try to surround myself with in my life. But as characters, they bore me.

Alan Ball

Most of us live in artificial environments and then we go to work in artificial environments and the world becomes something that you see through a window.

Alan Ball

Ultimately, physical resemblance isn't as important as whether this person can bring this character to life in a way that's compelling and makes me care about what happens to them.

Alan Ball

Well, here's the thing with relationships on 'True Blood': Once they happen then you have to throw a monkey-wrench into them, because to have people be happy is not that exciting.

Alan Ball

I try to tell the best story, and the story that has some heart and some genuine terror and some social commentary and some comedy and some romance and some sex and some violence.

Alan Ball

I'm not like J.K. Rowling, where I know there's going to be this number of seasons, and I know exactly what's going to happen. I would be so bored if that was the case. There would be no journey. There would be nothing to discover.

Alan Ball

I guess in America we're so sold on this ideal of the perfect, well-adjusted family that is able to confront any conflict and, with true love and understanding, work things through. I'm sure they do exist, but I never knew any of them.

Alan Ball

I need to feel like the work I'm doing is not necessarily important, but meaningful, at least to me, because otherwise it just becomes a day job. It just becomes factory work and I get really frustrated.

Alan Ball

I'm 53. I don't care about high school students. I find them irritating and uninformed.

Alan Ball

I believe forgiveness is possible for everybody, for everything, but I'm a Buddhist.

Alan Ball

I'm at the point in my life where I don't want to work as hard. Actually, I've had to take a good hard look at workaholism and it's effect on one's mental health.

Alan Ball

I always choose to look, as much as one can, at the supernatural not being something that exists outside of nature, but a deeper, fundamental heart of nature that perhaps humans... have lost touch with. It's a more primal thing than perhaps we are attuned to in our modern, self-aware way of life.

Alan Ball

Obviously death is a theme I'm fascinated by.

Alan Ball

I'm used to American actors who have a movie career thinking television acting is beneath them.

Alan Ball

I'm from the South, so while I personally find it impossible to live there, I still have a fondness for it as a geographical region.

Alan Ball

I certainly believe that what we perceive as humans is just the tip of the iceberg. I don't necessarily believe in vampires or werewolves or that kind of thing, but I believe there is definitely a realm we don't necessarily have access to.

Alan Ball

As a culture, we are not comfortable with mortality. We do not accept it the way other cultures do. We cling to youth, and we don't want to die. It's like, 'Well, too bad, we do.'

Alan Ball

Television viewing has become for me a completely different experience, because I don't watch shows on a weekly basis. I wait until the DVD or I TiVo everything and wait until the end of a season and watch it all over a weekend. For me that's a really satisfying experience, like reading a book.

Alan Ball

You know, I'm gay and I grew up being aware of that at a very early age, in a fairly repressed family.

Alan Ball

I'm aware of 'Twilight,' but I've never seen the movies or read any of the books. Frankly, the story leaves me cold - why do a vampire story about abstinence?

Alan Ball

In my own life, I think legends of supernatural, mythic things are really just a manifestation of the collective unconscious. So I don't really get freaked out. I mean certainly, you read about things people did to each other in the pursuit of some mystical or occult goal, and it's horrifying. But that's just human nature.

Alan Ball

I know a lot of shows are like, 'Here's the pages,' right before they start filming. I'd have a heart attack. The anxiety would be way too much for me. I don't have as strong a backbone as those other show writers.

Alan Ball