In America, the stories we tell ourselves and we tell each other in fiction have to do with individualism. Every person here is the center of his or her own story. And our job as people and as characters is to find our own motivations and desires, to overcome conflicts and obstacles toward defining ourselves so that we grow and change.
Adam Johnson
My paintings capture the humor, zaniness, and depth of the Batman villains as well as the Freudian motivations of Batman as an all-too-human, venerable, and funny vigilante superhero.
Adam West
If you are striving to have more happiness in your life, it helps to guide your mind towards starting to recognize what are selfish motivations and what are constructive motivations.
Adam Yauch
Besides the mistakes that are pointed out, I love the way readers become involved with the characters. When readers start asking about character motivations instead of concentrating on the special effects, it means you're connecting with them on a personal level.
Alan Dean Foster
Sequels are generally done in a rush. They're done with a sense of urgency. The first time, you spend a long time developing to get it over the line. The second time, you don't. Your expectations are different, and your motivations are different.
Alex Garland
I'm a stickler for structure. So I tend to make sure I'm hitting certain points in the script and that I'm progressing and moving things along. You know, are the characters keeping the plot moving along? And are they true, and do I know their motivations?
Allison Schroeder
The distinction is large in my mind. The gay police captain is eventually going to be wearing hot pants and singing 'YMCA.' The police captain who happens to be gay is going to be a huge collection of personality characteristics and motivations.
Andre Braugher
I want to be the world's number one one-day player; I want to win a World Cup, win the championship with Lancashire - those are my motivations.
Andrew Flintoff
I don't think most people are all heroic or all villainous, so I find ambiguity of motivations to be a natural human condition.
Ann Nocenti
To understand the motivations behind Chinese government policy decisions, look no further than their impact on State-Owned Enterprises.
Anthony Scaramucci
We have today a fairly thorough knowledge of the early Greco-Roman period because our motivations are the same.
Arthur Erickson
Good history is good story-telling. And good story-telling demands empathy; it requires understanding different actors, differing motivations, competing goals.
Ben Sasse
Examining other people's motivations, other people's language and other people's way of interacting is much more fascinating to me than spending a lot of time worrying about my own. I've said, 'What other people think of me is none of my business.'
Beth Broderick
One of my motivations in life is to be a billionaire.
Birdman
We want our villains and antagonists to have distinct motivations.
Bryan Konietzko
I don't do villains often enough. There are two approaches: give them sympathetic, reasonable motivations for doing the most unspeakable things, or get inside heads that are interestingly broken.
Charles Stross
There's nothing ever monetarily or fame-seeking or any of the other motivations that sometimes go hand-in-hand with this profession. To me, it's just not like that. I'm on a journey of self-discovery and trying to avoid total existential crisis. That's the kind of operating zone that I'm approaching this business from.
Charlie Hunnam
Often, writer's block will occur when I don't understand a character or his/her motivations. So I will make notes analysing characters.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
I definitely have a preference for writing anti-heroes and bad guys, especially when they have motivations that the average 'good' person can understand and get behind.
Cullen Bunn
It is helpful to think of people as having two fundamental motivations: the desire to see ourselves as honest, good people, and the desire to gain the benefits that come from cheating - on our taxes or on the football field.
Dan Ariely
The motivations for using drugs, often it's pretty obvious and common: you know, peer pressure. You know, kids are struggling growing up.
A lot of times in coaching, that's more than half the battle, to get people that are willing to buy in because they trust you and understand that you're genuine in your motivations.
Corruption has its own motivations, and one has to thoroughly study that phenomenon and eliminate the foundations that allow corruption to exist.
My motivations are thinking I can write better songs, that the concerts can be better.
I like a role where some of the character's motivations are confusing or at least interesting.
We need to separate the process of evolution - which is, indeed, a self-serving process - and the actual motivations of animals.
I was not sympathetic to the assumption that criminals had radically different motivations from everyone else.
I'm a better person in a relationship, and I'm a happier person. I need to come home at the end of the day and have it not be about me and my freaking hair and makeup and character motivations anymore. And I think my work is more inspired when home is safe and sound and solid, because what I do for a living is so bananas and so insecure.
Getting older, getting married, buying a house, becoming a different person... I had to figure out what my new motivations, inspirations, and goals were.
Whatever their motivations, lawmakers on both side of the aisle have certainly discovered that immigration is one of those issues that resonate strongly with the public.
You can't be funny for funny's sake. You try to get as outrageous situation as you can but it always has to be believable and based in real character motivations and what people would really do.
The pavilion that seems to intercept divine aid does not cover God but occasionally covers us. God is never hidden, yet sometimes we are, covered by a pavilion of motivations that draw us away from God and make Him seem distant and inaccessible.
I'm not comparing it with cricketers who get huge money. But getting some financial benefits do motivate players, especially athletes. I appreciate this move by the state government. A state like Haryana has been producing more and more players because of such motivations.
My general philosophy of playing bad guys, which I've sort of done, you know, half the time is, you know, very few people who we view as bad guys get out of bed and think, 'What evil, terrible thing am I going to do today?' Most people see their motivations as justified - as, you know, justifying whatever they do.
The second draft is on yellow paper, that's when I work on characterizations. The third is pink, I work on story motivations. Then blue, that's where I cut, cut, cut.
At the same time it offered the hope, as it still does, that improved understanding could better the lot of mankind. For me, growing up in the 1930s, the two motivations powerfully reinforced each other.
Let America Vote will make the case for voting rights by exposing the real motivations of those who favor voter suppression laws.
It's a complex relationship when your dad happened to be president and you are president and then you have all the amateur psychology that goes on when people try to speculate about motivations.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev is telling no tales. The older of the two brothers who committed the Boston Marathon bombings was likely the one who planned the attack, but when he died in a shootout with police just days after the blasts, his thoughts and motivations vanished with him.
My great-grandfather and his two brothers fought at Gettysburg. They were in artillery, and they survived the war, thank goodness. So I revere what they did. I think their motivations were honorable when they undertook the war and participated in it along with other Southerners.
The best leaders understand the motivations of their team members and know their people - their lives and their families. But a leader must never grow so close to subordinates that one member of the team becomes more important than another, or more important than the mission itself.
Two actors who have different motivations and skill sets can work together and be magic. Charles Grodin and Robert DeNiro technically couldn't work more differently, and yet they made 'Midnight Run,' which is a genius comedy.
Proposals to forbid golf courses have about the same motivations as proposals to forbid skate boarding, although the rationalizations are different.
Bureaucrats behave very differently than a private-sector manager because their motivations are different. Permanent bureaucrats, no matter how senior, worry about their next job.
I read about violent things. I think what I get out of that is entertainment by learning about different things, and reading the genre and getting an understanding of motivations. But at the end of the day, it's still a book, and I can walk away.
The motivations of kings in British history can generally be reduced to two: the quest for territory and the search for a male heir. No king was secure on his throne until he had a son, and no queen consort was ever really safe without a boy.
I aim to be translucent, so you don't notice the words, just their meaning. I haven't much insight into people's motivations.
Now the problem with standardized tests is that it's based on the mistake that we can simply scale up the education of children like you would scale up making carburetors. And we can't, because human beings are very different from motorcars, and they have feelings about what they do and motivations in doing it, or not.
One of the central motivations for holiness in the New Testament is to be who you are, to understand your identity and your union in Christ and to live that way.
I try to keep in my mind the simple question: Am I trying to do good or make myself look good? Too many of our responsibilities get added to our plate when we are trying to please people, impress people, prove ourselves, acquire power, increase our prestige. All those motivations are about looking good more than doing good.
