Attached Quote by Roger Rosenblatt

Shakespeare's villains are fabulous because none of them know that they are villains. Well, sometimes they do.

— Ian Mckellen

“The writers I most enjoy reading, even in gritty, down-to-earth genres, have a touch of the poet in them; they can create original, evocative…

— Charles Kowalski

“In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most…

— John Steinbeck

We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the neverending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs…

— John Steinbeck

“Might not certain vices have the same relation to character that the rigidity of a fixed idea as to intellect? Whether as a moral…

— Henri Bergson

To be a satirist, at all events. The venom of Pope is what is needed. The sense of delight -- the expansion and the…

— Wyndham Lewis

There is a natural disposition with us to judge an author's personal character by the character of his works. We find it difficult to…

— Edwin Percy Whipple

I'm not sure why I'm so drawn to heroes who do bad things and to villains who think they're the good guys, but I…

— Barry Eisler

I think nobody since has written such extraordinary work as Shakespeare writes. The characters he writes are full of inconsistencies, which is a great…

— Jeremy Irons

Shakespeare put characters in extreme circumstances, all over his plays. Therefore their behaviour becomes extreme, in ways that can be both extremely good and…

— Adrian Lester

“Should a writer have a social purpose? Any honest writer is bound to become a critic of the society he lives in, and sometimes,…

— Edward Abbey

If it's a really well written villain, he probably has more layers than the archetypal good person. So that would be very attractive to…

— Ben Kingsley