Alan Ball Quotes

Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once and it's too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst.

As a writer, it's fun to create. And once you get into a long-running show with very established characters and a very established tone and format, after a while it's a really great job, but that's what it is - a job.

I felt pride, wonderful pride, when I was captain. It was an honour to take over from Labby. Anybody who has ever captained a big club, which Everton are, will tell you it's a great honour.

Directing is physically exciting because there's a ticking clock, you're working with people, it's very social, it's very enjoyable.

And as I stumbled onto Eastern philosophy and Buddhism, it was the first time I had ever read any sort of philosophy that really made a tremendous amount of sense. What I liked that was missing from my experience of Christianity growing up was a sort of acceptance, a sort of being OK with being imperfect and not focusing on the sin.

Once Everton has touched you, nothing will be the same.

We live in a time where there's an alienation factor. There's a certain disconnection. We don't have any real sense of community anymore.

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.

It's a great thing when you realize you still have the ability to surprise yourself. Makes you wonder what else you can do that you've forgotten about.

I would say try to tell stories that you care about as opposed to stories that you think will sell.

That's the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can't take it, and my heart is going to cave in.

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.

I certainly believe that what we perceive as humans is just the tip of the iceberg. I don't necessarily believe in vampires or werewolves or that kind of thing, but I believe there is definitely a realm we don't necessarily have access to.

In my own life, I think legends of supernatural, mythic things are really just a manifestation of the collective unconscious. So I don't really get freaked out. I mean certainly, you read about things people did to each other in the pursuit of some mystical or occult goal, and it's horrifying. But that's just human nature.

It’s hard to stay mad, when there’s so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst... And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life...

You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure.

Never underestimate the power of denial.

I'm a Buddhist, so one of my biggest beliefs is, 'Everything changes, don't take it personally.'

I believe forgiveness is possible for everybody, for everything, but I'm a Buddhist.

I am so spoiled. I cannot watch a show where it gets interrupted for ads. I have to TiVo it and skip through the ads, because the culture of advertising is so false and phony that I just... ugh, you know?

I think it's very difficult, and it requires a tremendous amount of spiritual integrity and discipline, to not be a narcissist in a culture that encourages it every step of the way.

If a scene is longer than three pages, it better be for a good reason.

I'm not a believer in luck, but I do believe you need it.

Life is suffering. We have desires and expectations and egos, and we compare the reality we have, which is miraculous and wondrous, with this reality we desire. That somehow distances us from actually taking part fully with the reality we do have, and that creates suffering. For me, the thing that I love is that it's all about the present moment.

Not everything is going to be successful. To strive for that is really naive. You just do the best you can do.

I really love storytelling, and I love the stories as they reveal themselves. It's an incredibly nourishing process; it's probably the closest I come to having a religion.

Happy relationships are boring. We all want them in our own life. But I don't want to watch them on TV.

I will say that the environment I grew up in was not the most progressive.

I'd seen 'Interview with A Vampire' and saw Dracula movies growing up, but I never thought, 'I love vampires; I have to do a show about vampires.'

Ultimately, physical resemblance isn't as important as whether this person can bring this character to life in a way that's compelling and makes me care about what happens to them.

The important thing is that he shook hands with us over the phone.

There are times when I am directing, and there are a couple of moments I didn't get the way I wanted, but I know I still have other angles to shoot and I have to be done by noon; I move on.

The ego is kind of a big, unwieldy thing. It's not so easily tamed or subdued.

Well, here's the thing with relationships on 'True Blood': Once they happen then you have to throw a monkey-wrench into them, because to have people be happy is not that exciting.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Life is too mysterious to try to map it out. I've certainly lived long enough to know it will take you places you never thought it would take you - and some of those places are kind of wonderful.

There is a fetishization of victimization in our culture. And I just am not interested in victimhood.

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.'

The fact that we die, that makes life important. It's hard to take, but it's the truth.

The idea of celibate vampires is ridiculous. To me, vampires are sex. I don't get a vampire story about abstinence. I don't care about high school students. I find them irritating and uninformed.

I'm 53. I don't care about high school students. I find them irritating and uninformed.

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

Racism is ridiculous no matter where it's coming from.

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.

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.

You know, I'm gay and I grew up being aware of that at a very early age, in a fairly repressed family.

Beauty is in the strangest places. A piece of garbage floating in the wind. And that beauty exists in America. It exists everywhere. You have to develop an eye for it and be able to see it.