#villain

Coleridge’s description of Iago’s actions as "motiveless malignancy" applies in some degree to all the Shakespearian villains. The adjective motiveless means, firstly, that the tangible gains, if any, are clearly not the principal motive, and, secondly, that the motive is not the desire for personal revenge upon another for a personal injury. Iago himself proffers two reasons for wishing to injure Othello and Cassio. He tells Roderigo that, in appointing Cassio to be his lieutenant, Othello has treated him unjustly, in which conversation he talks like the conventional Elizabethan malcontent. In his soliloquies with himself, he refers to his suspicion that both Othello and Cassio have made him a cuckold, and here he talks like the conventional jealous husband who desires revenge. But there are, I believe, insuperable objections to taking these reasons, as some critics have done, at their face value. ↗

— W.H. Auden

#shakespeare #villains #motivational

I might be the villain of this story. ↗

— Rebecca Makkai

#villains #first-sentence

There is such a thing as the poetry of a mistake, and when you say, "Mistakes were made," you deprive an action of its poetry, and you sound like a weasel. ↗

— Charles Baxter

#deniability #mistakes #passive-voice #politics #villainy

I cannot help thinking that the menace of Hell makes as many devils as the severe penal codes of inhuman humanity make villains. ↗

— Lord Byron

#codes #devils #hell #help #humanity

I'm such an admirer, I am an admirer of villains, especially working with so many great ones. ↗

— Tom Felton

#am #especially #great #great ones #i

I like villains because there's something so attractive about a committed person - they have a plan, an ideology, no matter how twisted. They're motivated. ↗

— Russell Crowe

#attractive #because #committed #how #i

You have to love the guy that you play, even if you play the villain, you've got to love him. ↗

— Andy Garcia

#got #guy #him #love #play

Also for me it was different because I play a lot of villains and in this one I play a dad and I play a good guy, basically. He's the Secretary of the Treasury. I never had a job like that. ↗

— Christopher Walken

#basically #because #dad #different #good

One thing that's happened to me is I've been around a long time and I've played a lot of villains and so forth. I think it had to do with, well one thing is that I looked younger than I was for a long time. Now I think I'm suddenly starting to play people's father. ↗

— Christopher Walken

#been #father #forth #had #happened

I try to give both my heroes and villains an emotional dimensionality which provides the motivation for their actions. ↗

— Sidney Sheldon

#both #emotional #give #heroes #i