Quotes from Alan Ball


Sorted by Popularity


We live in a patriarchal culture. It's okay for women to be objectified but not for men.


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


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


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


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.


I always choose to look, as much as one can, at the supernatural not being something that exists outside of nature, but a deeper, fundamental heart of nature that perhaps humans... have lost touch with. It's a more primal thing than perhaps we are attuned to in our modern, self-aware way of life.


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


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.


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


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


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.


'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.


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?


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


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


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?


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


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.