#villain

Some writers, notably Anton Chekov, argue that all characters must be admirable, because once we've looked at anyone deeply enough and understood their motivation we must identify with them rather than judge them. ↗

— Scarlett Thomas

#heroes #villains #writing #motivational

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

I did this within a philosophical framework, and a moral and legal framework. And I have been turned into a cartoon of the greatest villain in the history of lobbying. ↗

— Jack Abramoff

#cartoon #did #framework #greatest #history

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

Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all. ↗

— John W. Gardner

#conviction #diagnosis #excessively #extremism #identifiable

If you have not been a villain at a certain point in time, you will never be a hero. And the day you are a hero, you may become a villain the next day. ↗

— Carlos Ghosn

#been #certain #certain point #day #hero

You can't think that you're playing a villain, or you'll end up with a cartoon. You have to think about him as a person and a hero. ↗

— Tom Berenger

#cartoon #end #hero #him #person

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