Sympathetic Villain Quotes

Dear Julie: If I didn't feel that there is some good in your story, I wouldn't take the time to write a criticism of it. But there is some good in it, some points that make me feel that if you expend the effort(Look who's talking about expending the effort, I couldn't help thinking) you may well achieve your very worthy ambition. First of all, you have an ear for cadence. Your sentences flow rather smoothly, and the continuity of your paragraphs is quite good. Secondly, your imagery is sharp and clear-cut. I could smell that dank, rat-infested attic and I was more than a little in love with your pretty heroine by the time she emerged from her third paragraph. Furthermore, you occasionally achieve poetic effects which are pleasing. But, my darling niece, your villains have nothing but venom in their souls, and your sympathetic characters are ready to step right off into Paradise without one spot to tarnish their purity. People aren't like that, Julie. Take a look around you. Again, all your colors, your moods, your nusances, are essentially feminine, and it just doesn't ring true to be told that a man is responsible for them. No, Julie, it will be a long time before you speak and think and feel like an anguished old German musician of eighty! And, after all, what do you know about the problems of musical composition, or the life of an impoverised German laborer such as the landlord in his nineteenth-century environment? And how much do you know about sadism and brutality? I must talk to you about any number of points. When you get home from school tomorrow, I shall have some recommendations to make; also some assignments. I am quite excited. It well may be that I have the making of a future writer in my hands. Uncle Haskell

You want the reader to care about your characters — if they don’t, then there’s no emotional involvement. But at the same time, I want my characters to be nuanced, to be gray, to be human beings. I think human beings are all nuanced. There’s this tendency to want to make people into heroes and villains. And I think there are villains in real life and there are heroes in real life. But even the greatest heroes have flaws and do bad things, and even the greatest heroes are capable of love and pain and occasionally have moments where you can feel sympathetic for them.

Isn’t that what we all are?’ Martin asked, his voice sympathetic. ‘The victims and villains of our own lives? We have to come to terms with the good and bad inside of us, accept that we’ll never be all one or the other. And if we acknowledge we have a bit of Beast as well as Beauty in there, maybe we can find a way for them both to live together.

Dogs consistently win the part of square-jawed hero and sympathetic ear, while cats compete vigorously with British character actors for the role of effete villain, whining sidekick, and insufferable snob. Is this grossly unfair? I think not. By deed and association, cats have won a most unenviable reputation due to their predilection for uncivil disobedience and conditional affection.

Hitler is still a historical figure, but he’s predominantly a placeholder for cognitive darkness; he’s the entity we use in the same way people once employed the devil. But the devil is no longer a villain in pop culture. The devil is sympathetic. He’s charming. If you’re making a movie about the devil, you cast Al Pacino. In the pop world, the devil is mostly depicted as a fair-minded gambler; if you’re a good enough musician, the devil will give you a golden fiddle and concede his defeat, allowing you to peacefully live the rest of your days in rural Georgia. There really isn’t “another category of radical evil.” That category has a population of one.