Alan Ball Quotes

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

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

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

I know a lot of shows are like, 'Here's the pages,' right before they start filming. I'd have a heart attack. The anxiety would be way too much for me. I don't have as strong a backbone as those other show writers.

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.

A lot of times, the choice of the right song will save a scene. Or there will be a scene that's a little flat and you put in the right song and somehow it just comes alive.

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.

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

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

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

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 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 think all writers are armchair psychologists to some degree or another, and I think a character's sexuality is fascinating. It's a great way to really get at the root of their identity, because it's such a personal thing.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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