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

Alan Ball

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Alan Ball
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: May 13
Director
Executive Producer
Film Director
Film Producer
Playwright
Screenwriter
Showrunner
Television Producer
Writer
Atlanta
Georgia
Alan Erwin Ball
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Three
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More quotes by Alan Ball

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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.
Alan Ball
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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.
Alan Ball
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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.
Alan Ball
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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.
Alan Ball
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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.
Alan Ball
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Beauty is in the strangest places. A piece of garbage floating in the wind. And that beauty exists in America. It exists everywhere. You have to develop an eye for it and be able to see it.
Alan Ball
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You know, I'm gay and I grew up being aware of that at a very early age, in a fairly repressed family.
Alan Ball
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I need to feel like the work I'm doing is not necessarily important, but meaningful, at least to me, because otherwise it just becomes a day job. It just becomes factory work and I get really frustrated.
Alan Ball
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I'm used to American actors who have a movie career thinking television acting is beneath them.
Alan Ball
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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?
Alan Ball
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I think the world is a place for oddballs and freaks. I'm only interested in oddballs and freaks as characters.
Alan Ball
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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.
Alan Ball
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That's the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can't take it, and my heart is going to cave in.
Alan Ball
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I think vampires are a timeless powerful archetype that can tap into people's psyches.
Alan Ball
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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.
Alan Ball
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It's a great thing when you realize you still have the ability to surprise yourself. Makes you wonder what else you can do that you've forgotten about.
Alan Ball
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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.
Alan Ball
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I would say try to tell stories that you care about as opposed to stories that you think will sell.
Alan Ball
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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.
Alan Ball
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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.
Alan Ball