Quotes About Complexity

I've always been very suspicious of the left-right dimension in politics.

Breughel is an example of an artist - I mean, this is true about artists and painters in general, but he is a specific example of an artist whose work contains more than you think it does at first glance. Whose work rewards, sustains attention and looking.

A story has to have several layers to sustain audience interest in each episode.

But now sustainability is such a political category that it's getting more and more difficult to think about it in a serious way. Sustainability has become an ornament.

The problems of the world, from immigration to populism to income inequality to sustainability to peacekeeping, require a well-functioning supranational body.

The most important problems we face are complex, and require sustained attention. But we don't speak in terms of nuance or complexity. Is that by accident? It's because our minds have been entrained to expect shorter and shorter bite-sized bits.

Mother' is something people can't swallow. It was about me visualising my connection with my mother, my journey through her belly, and it's 60 minutes long - it was never going to be understood by the masses.

One of the things I've come to appreciate about the brain is the importance of location. It's not just a set of interchangeable parts that you can swap in and out.

I swear to God, my career is like this weird origami thing.

People do see me as sweet and innocent. Not to say that I am not those things. But I have other sides to me.

People have this notion of me being this sweet, nice girl, but I'm kind of a pervert.

It's not all 'Jane Eyre' out there. In her sweet, honorable, slightly passive-aggressive way, Jane was as perfect as a protagonist can get while remaining interesting; in fact, she's one of my favorites. But most characters are more morally ambiguous.

None of my on-screen roles have been outright negative. They have all been grey, and that is how it is in reality, too. None of us are nice and sweet 24/7.

I think I can deceive people. I'm like, the nice, sweet girl when you meet me. And I don't have any bad intentions. But I'm a bad girl too.

Everybody is the way they are because of certain events that have happened in their life. Oftentimes you'll meet somebody who seems a certain way, and then you realize, 'Oh, that guy's actually the sweetest man I know. But I wouldn't have known that from the outset because that's hidden.'

'The Big Sleep' would have been a more effective study of nightmarish existence had the detective been more complicated and had more curiosity been shown about his sweetheart's relation to the crime.

If you have a lot of sweetness and quirkiness, someone's got to have a little bit of bite against that.

Democracy is rarely easy, nor swift.

One of the most beautiful things about 'Game of Thrones' is it's told from so many different points of view, and these characters can convince you that what they're doing is right. But they're only showing you a bit of the picture, and when you see it from another character's point of view you may switch allegiances.

People either think Hodor is a very easy character to play or a very difficult one; there's no in between. But it's a lot of fun having to completely switch personalities inside four seconds, with no words. That's a joy for an actor to get to show all that complex emotion in such a short space of time.

'Nice Guys' has darkness in it and parts that are kind of odd, but there are also parts where it's heartfelt and soulful. You can switch back and forth.

Everything in life is a double-edged sword.

I don't categorize characters into one syllable. These are fully-rounded characters that I don't judge; I just play them.

Every democracy is constructed day-to-day. And the electoral process reduces and minimalizes every single aspect of human complexity. We're putting it into pamphlets. We're doing a publicity show. We're becoming symbols.