Alan Ball's Quotes

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.

I think there's a lot of interesting stuff on TV. I feel much more optimistic about TV than I do about movies. There will always be good movies but I think, for the most part, it's always going to be a huge fight to get those movies made. TV is the best place to be as a writer, I think.

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.

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.

I'm at the point in my life where I don't want to work as hard. Actually, I've had to take a good hard look at workaholism and it's effect on one's mental health.

I'm aware of 'Twilight,' but I've never seen the movies or read any of the books. Frankly, the story leaves me cold - why do a vampire story about abstinence?

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.

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.

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 a lot harder to find fault with the mundane details of daily existence when you really, really know on a cellular level that you're going to go, and that this moment, right now, is life. Life isn't what happens to you in 20 years. This moment, right now, is your life.

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?

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.

Life is infinitely complex, and I feel like we live in a culture that really seems to want to simplify it into sound bites and bromides, and that does not work.

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.

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.

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.

'Six Feet Under' was about repressing our deepest, most primal impulses, and 'True Blood' is about giving full sway to them all the time. In a way they are like yin and yang.

Somebody asked me, 'Why do people like vampires so much?' This was right after Obama had been elected and I said, 'Because we just spent eight years being sucked dry by one.'

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.

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.

'True Blood' differs from 'Six Feet Under' in that there are way more characters and plot-lines, but fundamentally it's still about the characters and their emotions.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

I think sexuality is a window into someone's soul.

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

I think vampires are a timeless powerful archetype that can tap into people's psyches.

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.'

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

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

I'm a huge freak, and always have been. I spent the first part of my life trying really desperately not to be one, and it was just a waste of time.

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

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

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

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

Obviously death is a theme I'm fascinated by.

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

The difference between film and TV is the pace. You don't have the leisure of time in television.

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

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

Vampires are total sexual metaphors; there's just no way around that.

All of us in the Ball family in South Carolina, from the time we're children, hear stories about our ancestors, the slave owners.

Before the American Revolution there were frequent slave uprisings, and a lot of people would run away.

It's not a common thing for a Southern white family to go out and seek their black cousins.

Slavery in West Africa, and in Rome and in the Mediterranean, was something different than slavery in America.

The topic of slavery is like an electric fence. Touch it and people will react.

If you read the memoirs of slave-owning families, you'd be hard pressed to find evidence of black people in the lives of the whites, even though for most of the time on the plantations black people outnumbered whites by a ratio of seven to one.

There are, after all, between seventy-five thousand and a hundred thousand descendants of the Ball-family slaves. If I were to begin apologizing to every one of these families, it would quickly become a meaningless act.

There was a uniqueness to the American case of slavery. 10 million people, a conservative estimate, were brought to America... hundreds of people were set up in work camps, and hereditary-forced labor was put in place. That's a very different thing than the personal slavery that existed elsewhere.

Nostalgia is a seductive liar.

Most Americans approach the problems of the Middle East with a pro-Israeli bias - and rightly so.

Not only must Americans admire Israel, there can be no doubt that we have an interest in, and special responsibility for, that valiant nation.

The question is no longer whether the United States should contribute to assuring Israel's survival and prosperity; that goes without saying.

Until 1956, America treated Israel not much differently from other friendly states.

Yet the wonder of it all is that, while engaged in a seemingly endless struggle, the Israelis have managed to turn a desert into a garden.