Alan Ball Quotes

Author Image

Alan Ball

Profession : Director

Birth : May 13, 1957

When I go home, the last thing I want to do is read about the popular lore of vampires.

Alan Ball

I definitely see the good in people. Certainly in my own life I strive to be somebody who is functional and well adjusted and can face conflict in a non-emotional and non-destructive way, and those are the people I try to surround myself with in my life. But as characters, they bore me.

Alan Ball

I certainly feel fortunate in my career to have been able to continue to work in different mediums. I don't ever want to be the guy who gets really good at one thing and just does that over and over and over again.

Alan Ball

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 Ball

I don't really know what it is about vampires that makes them such a powerful symbol, metaphor, whatever in people's consciousness. But I do know they're tremendously powerful. I mean, there's a vampire on 'Sesame Street.' And Count Chocula. I don't know why it's so powerful.

Alan Ball

I love to direct! I get really jazzed by directing, but directing is not the same kind of personal expression, the same kind of personal intimate expression that writing is. Because when you're directing, you're basically managing, basically getting out of people doing their job, except when you see them going astray.

Alan Ball

It's easy to look at the vampires as a metaphor for any feared or misunderstood group. It's also easy to look at them as a metaphor for a shadow organization that says one thing and has a completely different agenda on their mind, and anybody who gets in their way, they just get rid of them. Does that sound familiar?

Alan Ball

I really feel like my goal, and I don't always achieve it, is to do the best work I can do, and stay out of the results. Because ultimately, the result is not what the work is about. There are other people whose jobs are to focus on those results and maximize them, and that's great. Let them do their job.

Alan Ball

Death showed up in my life very early on, so I'm aware of it. If you look at most of the things I write there's a sort of contemplation of mortality - although 'True Blood' doesn't fall into that. Even though there's such a ridiculously high body count!

Alan Ball

I think the world is a place for oddballs and freaks. I'm only interested in oddballs and freaks as characters.

Alan Ball

I guess in America we're so sold on this ideal of the perfect, well-adjusted family that is able to confront any conflict and, with true love and understanding, work things through. I'm sure they do exist, but I never knew any of them.

Alan Ball

I'm not saying that being gay is what defines me, but at the same time, if you feel like you have to hide it, then it becomes what defines you. You keep it hidden, and the secret becomes you.

Alan Ball

My own belief is that people can come back from anything. It doesn't mean that it won't come at a huge cost.

Alan Ball

Television viewing has become for me a completely different experience, because I don't watch shows on a weekly basis. I wait until the DVD or I TiVo everything and wait until the end of a season and watch it all over a weekend. For me that's a really satisfying experience, like reading a book.

Alan Ball

Most of us live in artificial environments and then we go to work in artificial environments and the world becomes something that you see through a window.

Alan Ball

I am a little suspicious of industry paradigms. I feel like so many movies and TV shows feel so familiar because of over-reliance on these paradigms.

Alan Ball

I'm used to American actors who have a movie career thinking television acting is beneath them.

Alan Ball

As a culture, we are not comfortable with mortality. We do not accept it the way other cultures do. We cling to youth, and we don't want to die. It's like, 'Well, too bad, we do.'

Alan Ball

I'm not like J.K. Rowling, where I know there's going to be this number of seasons, and I know exactly what's going to happen. I would be so bored if that was the case. There would be no journey. There would be nothing to discover.

Alan Ball

I'm from the South, so while I personally find it impossible to live there, I still have a fondness for it as a geographical region.

Alan Ball