You know, I'm gay and I grew up being aware of that at a very early age, in a fairly repressed family.
Alan BallRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the complexity and multi-faceted nature of storytelling.
Alan Ball suggests that a compelling story should encompass a wide range of human experiences, blending emotions such as love and fear, along with social insights, humor, and various elements of life. This holistic approach to storytelling allows narratives to resonate more deeply with audiences, reflecting the intricacies of life itself.
Themes
StorytellingArtEmotionNarrativeComplexity
In practice
Example use cases
In a film discussion, to highlight the importance of blending genres in storytelling.
More from Alan Ball
All quotes βIf a scene is longer than three pages, it better be for a good reason.
Alan BallRead
It's hard for me to get interested in stories that ignore death, which is what American marketing culture would like to do: pretend that death doesn't exist, that you can buy immortality; just buy these products, and you'll be forever young and happy.
Alan BallRead
Death is a companion for all of us, whether we acknowledge it or not, whether we're aware of it or not, and it's not necessarily a terrible thing.
Alan BallRead
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 BallRead
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 BallRead
Similar quotes
Stories are there to be told, and each story changes with the telling. Time changes them. Logic changes them. Grammar changes them. History changes them. Each story is shifted side-ways by each day that unfolds. Nothing ends. The only thing that matters, as Faulkner once put it, is the human heart in conflict with itself. At the heart of all this is the possibility, or desire, to create a piece of art that talks to the human instinct for recovery and joy.
Colum MccannRead
It's hard to make something that's interesting. It's really, really hard. It's like a law of nature, a law of aerodynamics, that anything that's written or anything that's created wants to be mediocre. The natural state of all writing is mediocrity... So what it takes to make anything more than mediocre is such an act of will.
Ira GlassRead
Everything that I saw became something to be made, and it had to be exactly as it was, with nothing added. It was a new freedom: there was no longer the need to compose. The subject was there already made, and I could take from everything. It all belonged to me: a glass roof of a factory, with its broken and patched panels, lines on a road map, a corner of a Braque painting, paper fragments in the street. It was all the same: anything goes.
Ellsworth KellyRead
I love beauty. But I like the beauty accidentally, not dished up, served up on a platter.
Wole SoyinkaRead
You may not, cannot, appropriate beauty. It is the wealth of the eye, and a cat may gaze upon a king.
Theodore ParkerRead
My dream concept is that I have a camera and I am trying to photograph what is essentially invisible. And every once in a while I get a glimpse of her and I grab that picture.
Leonard NimoyRead