Quotes & Sayings About Villains

It is not cynical to admit the past has been turned into a fiction. It is a story, not a fact. The real has been erased. Whole eras have been added or removed. Wars have been aggrandized, and human struggle relegated to the margins. Villains are redressed as heroes. Generous, striving, imperfect men and women have been stripped of their flaws or plucked of their virtues and turned into figurines of morality or depravity. Whole societies have been fixed with motive and visions and equanimity where there was none. Suffering has been recast as noble sacrifice! Do you know why the history of the Tower is in such turmoil? Because too many powerful men are fighting for the pen, fighting to write their story over our dead bodies. They know what is at stake: immortality, the character of civilization, and influence beyond the ages. They are fighting to see who gets to mislead our grandchildren. — Josiah Bancroft

There are new words now that excuse everybody. Give me the good old days of heroes and villains, the people you can bravo or hiss. There was a truth to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch. — Bette Davis

They have alls these laws and social boundaries to keep the worst of them in check. The problem is, villains and bullies just ignore that kind of thing. — Charles De Lint

Nowadays not even the villains smoke. Now smoking really is an expression of the rebel spirit - it's virtually sodding illegal! Yet what are we without our addictions? Insipid. Flavorless. — David Mitchell

And they have a problem with Dresden, I take it?" Murphy asked.
"Wanna kill him or something. I don't know," Thomas said, nodding. "They tried it on Jet Skis earlier today."
"Roger Moore Bond villains?" Murphy asked, her tone derisive. "Seriously?"
"Be silent, mortal cow," snarled one of the Sidhe.
Murphy tracked her eyes calmly over to that one, and she nodded once, as if memorizing something. "Yeah, okay. You. — Jim Butcher

When I approach villains, unless it's a drama, I'm a comedian, so I approach most things from a comedic point of view. — Rob Riggle

constitute a horror story wherein the villains of the piece stole power from a stable governance system in order to cast the population of the world into an ongoing lab experiment with no plan or boundary. A dismal science. — Warren Ellis

War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to "a war against" whatever-it-is, you divide the world into Me or Us (good) and Them or It (bad) and reduce the ethical complexity and moral richness of our life to Yes/No, On/Off. This is puerile, misleading, and degrading. In stories, it evades any solution but violence and offers the reader mere infantile reassurance. All too often the heroes of such fantasies behave exactly as the villains do, acting with mindless violence, but the hero is on the "right" side and therefore will win. Right makes might. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Innumerable soldiers have told me they don't want to be thanked for their service and they don't want to be seen as heroes (or, for that matter, villains). They want to be respected for the job they did and the pride they took in doing it well. — Elizabeth Heaney

Villains with a conscience have this sad realization of who they are, and the monster they've become - there's a sense of regret. So at the end of these movies there's a dramatic resonance that really stays with the audience. — Thomas Haden Church

It was so much more comfortable to be able to divide people into heroes and villains and expect them to play their allotted part. — Mary Balogh

I've seen knives pierce the chest,
Children dying in the road
Crawling things hooked and baited,
Rapists bound and then castrated,
Villains singed in public square.
Yet none these sights did make me cringe
Like when my Love cut all her hair. — Roman Payne

Much of what I learned about forgiveness I learned by inhabiting the lives of my characters. Even villains act with reasonable intent. Mercy is easier with understanding. Still, it helps that on paper I can kill them off. — Joyce Rachelle

If you look at the Disney Villains, I think you'll find that they do have mass appeal in some way, and it usually has to do with a voice quality that also matches very well with the animation. — Jonathan Freeman

It is a commonplace that every age, or almost every age, thinks that its own time is one of special difficulty. The barbarians seem always to be at the gate. Alas, in our present day this is rather too literally so. But what many fail to realise is that the barbarians are a more various and numerous group than just those unspeakable villains who behead hostages in the desert. Barbarians might also wear ties and travel business class, they might occupy seats of power in government. They might be us, ourselves, when we give up certain civil liberties and betray our own values in the spurious belief that this will protect us from terrorism, organised crime, unwelcome immigration. Forms of dismantling civilisation might differ, but the result is the same. — A.C. Grayling

I do play villains. — Giancarlo Esposito

I'm not saying a hunt isn't something we crave, but to a man, we hate to be manipulated. And this is our town, as much as any human's. Our home, and our neighbours and perhaps even our friends. You fall into the trap of thinking as Fallon does, that there are only heroes and villains, monsters and victims, and nothing between. We all stand in that space, crossing the line to one side, then the other. Even you. — Rachel Caine

When rich villains have need of poor ones, poor ones may make what price they will — William Shakespeare

It's difficult to root for America when the villains of the story live in a ditch and are armed with jagged rocks. At some point in recent years they looked up from their international heroism to realize they'd alienated the entire world. — Yahtzee Croshaw

I turned down the OBE because its not a club you want to join when you look at the villains whove got it. Its all the things I think are despicable: patronage, deferring to the monarchy and the name of the British Empire, which is a monument of exploitation and conquest. — Ken Loach

I don't believe in villains - just people who channel their energy in the wrong way. — Elizabeth McGovern

'Forever Evil' is my love letter to DC super villains. It's my chance to take all of the villains I've worked with and all the ones I've never worked with and put them into one gigantic, epic story that will bring together the bads of the DC Universe. — Geoff Johns

I tend to play mostly villains and twisted people. Unsavory guys. I think it's my face, the way I look. — Christopher Walken

I love playing all kinds of roles. I hope it doesn't sound too pretentious, but I always feel human nature is like a piano, and there are 88 keys, and there are some white keys and some black keys, and each character is a different chord on the piano. Basically, I hope that in the course of my life, I will have played all 88 keys. So, I'll have played heroes and villains and princes and kings and warriors and beggars and thieves and lovers and fathers and wizards and all of those things. That is why I'm an actor ... I love studying people. — Tom Hiddleston

Villains used to always die in the end. Even the monsters. Frankenstein, Dracula - you'd kill them with a stake. Now the nightmare guy comes back. — Benicio Del Toro

Once upon a time, during a time after all the happily-ever-afters, and perhaps even after the ever-afters after that, all the evil villains of the world were banished from the United Kingdom of Auradon and imprisoned on the Isle of the Lost. There, underneath a protective dome that kept all manner of enchantment out of their clutches, the terrible, the treacherous, the truly awful, and the severely sinister were cursed to live without the power of magic. King Beast declared the villains exiled forever. — Melissa De La Cruz

There are as many kinds of missionaries as there are human beings. There are the terrible, colonialist power-grabbers, still, and there are plenty of the sort of well-intentioned villains who do great harm and don't understand that they are doing great harm. — Kyle Minor

There have always been readers throughout history who have been drawn to villains. — Cassandra Clare

Fairy tales have always been about getting through the worst of everything, the darkest and the deepest and the bloodiest of events. They are about surviving, and what you look like when you emerge from the trial. The reason we keep telling fairy tales over and over, that we need to keep telling them, is that the trials change. So the stories change too, and the heroines and villains and magical objects, to keep them true. Fairy tales are the closets where the world keeps its skeletons. — Catherynne M Valente

People love villains almost as much as they love heroes. Nothing satisfies discontent so much as having a fiend to vilify, an embodiment of all that is wrong with the world. — Anonymous

Villains are fun. I think the important thing in playing them is that they don't see themselves as villains. It lets you be a little more expansive. — Rhys Ifans

The problem with heroes and villains is that it's not always easy to tell which is which. Particularly when you are one. — Jessica Meats

Heroes are more than just stories, they're people. And people are complicated; people are strange. Nobody is a hero through and through, there's always something in them that'll turn sour... you'll learn it one day. There are no heroes, only villains who win. — Joel Cornah

Villains made no special guest appearances in our Once Upon A Time story games. They scared Laura and bored me, so instead we made up heroines with ghastly itchy skin but magnificent tresses of hair, and the occasional sleeping disorder. Those heroines had enough on their hands without having to worry about warding off true evil. — Rachel Cohn

villains need to develop a villainous laugh, so that they may simultaneously celebrate their villainous deeds and frighten whatever nonvillainous people happen to be nearby. — Lemony Snicket

It's a movie, OK? I went to see GONE WITH THE WIND, but did I really believe there was a guy named Rhett Butler who said, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn"? No. Movies need heroes and villains, and real life doesn't usually have heroes and villains. Real life has a lot of shades of gray, and moves have black and white even when they're in color. — Don Hewitt

I've played villains on stage - you know, the Iagos and so on - but I think of myself as a funny person. I mostly did comedies before I did TV work. — Michael Emerson

The best villains are the nicest guys in person. — Finn Wittrock

He made my life hell. Him and Tonto over there." Daniel glared toward Nick. "Poor little Clay. He has problems. He's had a tough life. You should be nice to him. You should make friends with him. That's all I ever heard. All they saw was a cute little runt of a wolf cub. He bared his teeth and they
thought it was cute. He ordered us around like a miniature Napoleon and they thought it was cute. Well, it wasn't cute from where I was standing. It was - "
I held up my hand. "You're ranting."
"What?"
"Just wanted to let you know. You're ranting. It's kinda ugly. Next thing you know, you'll be laying out your plans for world domination. That's what all villains do after they rant about their motivation. I was hoping you'd be different. — Kelley Armstrong

I was never a cool person; in fact, cool people have always made fun of me. That's why I loved [the Robert Cormier YA novel] The Chocolate War - because the cool kids (not the establishment) were the villains. I totally identified with that. — Simon Rich

I didn't expect to feel pathos for the villains in our show. I feel quite moved in several of our episodes; I never realized that a show like 'Motive,' which aims for a broad appeal, could have that sort of emotional impact. — Kristin Lehman

I hate changes of administrations, because I have all my villains in place and they are all taken away and replaced with faceless wonders nobody knows. — Pat Oliphant

There are villains to overthrow, damsels to be saved ... This is no time to be laid low. — Nicole Sager

It was cool to me, as a fan of the comics, to see some of the villains that end up finding them there, and the way that they abuse Coulson before the superheroes come. I'm always, in the movies or in the animated series, getting into trouble that a superhero has to bail me out of. — Clark Gregg

There are so few true villains, just other screwed-up people who pass the damage on. — Laurell K. Hamilton

I'm not fond of immutable villains in stories. Most people try to do what they think is right or just, and that's what brings into this world the majority of its monsters. — R. Leib

He was knowledgeable and often frighteningly intelligent but he was also a dreamer. He had a mental library of a thousand stories and seemed to believe them all. Heroes, villains, princesses in need of rescue, monsters and magical swords. It all lived in his head, as vital and real as his own memories. — Anthony Ryan

I sympathize with the zombies and am not even sure they are villains. To me they are this earth-changing thing. God or the devil changed the rules, and dead people are not staying dead. — George A. Romero

Do you think people are born villains, or do they live long enough to fight for those they care for, those they love, before realizing what they become? — Eric Dulin

We always vilify what we don't understand. — Nenia Campbell

Dive for dreams
or a slogan may topple you
(trees are their roots
and wind is wind)
trust your heart
if the seas catch fire
(and live by love
though the stars walk backward)
honour the past
but welcome the future
(and dance your death
away at this wedding)
never mind a world
with its villains or heroes
(for god likes girls
and tomorrow and the earth) — E. E. Cummings

I will give them nightmares to haunt their dreams long after I'm gone. — Laini Taylor

Don't seek to be a person of fame, for even villains can be famous. Instead, be a person of value. Fame fades but value is honored. — Sidney Mohede

Human needs rules and penalties.
Lessons require heroes and villains.
Ignore them, then welcome to the jungle. — Toba Beta

If you go back all the way to the 1920s, filmmakers in Hollywood changed the identity of villains from German to Russian. — Evan Osnos

You want to believe in black and white, good and evil, heroes that are truly heroic, villains that are just plain bad, but I've learned in the past year that things are rarely so simple. The good guys can do some truly awful things, and the bad guys can sometimes surprise the heck out of you. — Karen Marie Moning

I have been sometimes way too attracted by my own villains because in a way they seem to hold the secret to the heart of the narrative. — Peter Straub

I mean," he said, "that by your own showing, the greatest threat to heaven comes from within the ranks of the angels themselves. Before you can prove to me that heroes can defeat villains with nothing but the purest chivalric ideals, you must convince me that heroes do exist, and that villains are not a fanciful tale for children. You must tell me, sir, if you dare, that you are incorruptible, and that your colleagues and commanders are as pure as you. — Suzannah Rowntree

I have played 50 different kinds of fathers and villains. Only mediocre actors play the part the same way. — Anupam Kher

There's no point running anyway. In t-minus ten minutes, you will have no where to run to."

Quinn tensed at the triumphant look in his eyes. ". . .what have you done?"

"I have entered launch codes in the computer. In exactly ten minutes, Alpha Star 9 will be a black stain in the middle of Utah."

Quinn's lips part in shock.

"Yes," said. Dr. Zorgone in amusement. "Dramatic gasp! — Ash Gray

There are no heroes and there are no villains. There are just opposing points of view. That's all history is...the viciously long battle between world views. — Peter J. Tomasi

The aim of his narrative is to remind all not to judge people without knowing their story. Even the worst of villains has a story that perhaps explains their actions, without condoning them. — Devdutt Pattanaik

Joss Whedon said to me, 'If you think you are taking over the show, you have got another think coming.' He said, 'You are here only because I don't want to kill a villain off every week. I want my villains to be more interesting and multifaceted and then die.' — James Marsters

For mine, the villains of the piece were always important. In a traditional sense, that's always an important role. — Ben Mendelsohn

Heroes ask questions and villains make arguments. QUESTIONS — Jeffrey Schechter

As I said, history is written by the victors. The truth is, the villains were less villainous, and the heroes less heroic, than you've been told. — Cinda Williams Chima

Daisy Bowman, Lillian's young sister, had an out-sized personality that belied her small, slight frame. Idealistic and possessed of a decidedly whimsical bent, she devoured romantic novels populated with rogues and villains. However, Daisy's elfin facade concealed a shrewd intelligence that most people tended to overlook. She was fair-skinned and dark-haired, with eyes the color of spiced gingerbread... mischievous eyes with long, spiky lashes. — Lisa Kleypas

The world is not a Disney movie where villains are obvious and one-dimensional. — Maggie Young

Villains fear me because I am unpredictable and broccoli. See what I mean? — Demetri Martin

It's supposed to feel good to throw a brick at the right people. There is a long tradition of naming and ridiculing and shaming and calling the villains what they are. Usually it was the artistocracy of the day and satire was the only way to speak truth to power. — John Cusack

Villains are a lot of fun. My villains have a lot of tongue-in-cheek. They are sometimes conscious of and a little bit gleeful of their villainy. — John Rhys-Davies

I love playing villains. — Alfred Molina

What many people don't know about 'Peter Pan' is that it's a very violent book and Hook is one of the most finely observed villains ever. — Eoin Colfer

I'm starting to think that most villains aren't evil - they are just misundertood.
Or victims of that manipulative force: Love.
Love causes war and causes death, breaks souls and breaks lives. It runs people into the ground, makes them behave like moronic, immoral beasts, before it dances off, leaving only destruction in its wake - hearts blown wide open for the whole world to see.
Love puts the blame on the poor souls who succumb to it.
Love, that ultimate villainess. She makes examples of us all.
And yet we still come back for more.
We keep playing the role she gives us.
For one more chance to feel alive. — Karina Halle

I used to think that I needed to be part of a story, a big story, one with trials and villains and temptations and rewards. That's how I would conquer it, conquer death."
She sighed again, and nestled in closer to me. "All that matters, in the end, is the little things. The way Mim says my name to wake me up in the morning. The way Bee's hand feels in mine. The way the sun cast my shadow across the yard yesterday. The way your cheeks flush when we kiss. The smell of hay and the taste of strawberries and the feel of fresh black dirt between my toes. This is what matters, Midnight. — April Genevieve Tucholke

I don't play just villains. I like to have parts that are not simply villains. — Tommy Lee Jones

There is always something about the villains that I'm able to play, quote unquote, that isn't villainous. — Ben Kingsley

Contrary to popular belief, I don't just play dreadful old villains. — Tim Curry

All the true heroes of history will be forgotten and all the villains will be remembered as heroes. — Leo Tolstoy

Cinema is much more than heroes and villains. — Anurag Kashyap

There are only two parties in France: the people and its enemies. We must exterminate those miserable villains who are eternally conspiring against the rights of man ... We must exterminate all our enemies. — Maximilien De Robespierre

Humans are the villains, they are the killers. That's the truth.... for god sake! — Deyth Banger

I love to make even villains people you can relate to. When you find out who did it, I think you almost like the person, which is not easy to do. — Harlan Coben

In a business that has exploited and ignored our people I have only found dead-ends. We need romantic comedies, gross-out and mockery comedies, horror and thrillers, teen movies and love-stories. All these and more will be a positive step towards the future of Native Americans in the world and film industry; an industry that that offers us not only the chance to play the parts of heroes, love interests and warriors, but also of villains, dorks and dangerous, brokenhearted products of circumstance. — Misty Upham

Perhaps this is what Henry James meant when he talked about the "irresponsibility" of characters. Characters are irresponsible, art is irresponsible when compared to life, because it is first and foremost important that a character be real, and as readers or watchers we tend to applaud any effort made towards the construction of that reality. We do not, of course, indulge actual people in the world this way at all. In real life, the fact that something seems real to someone is not enough to interest us, or to convince us that that reality is interesting. But the self-reality of fictional characters is deeply engrossing, which is why villains are lovable in literature in ways that they are not in life. — James Wood

It's nice to be in a world where you're not going to exhaust storylines with potential villains. — Donal Logue

The lessons of the past suggest that racism and resentment against people of color will continue to flourish in America as long as the history that is taught transposes the heroes and the villains. That is the unspoken truth at the heart of the nation's racial divide. — Susan L. Taylor

There is a dark side in all of us. And for us 'bad' people, the bad side dominates. I think there is a great sadness in villains, and I have tried to put that across. We cannot stop ourselves doing what we are doing. — Christopher Lee

You don't play villains like they are villains. You play them like you know exactly where they are coming from. Which hopefully you do. — Mark Margolis

Here is a children's film made for the world we should live in, rather than the one we occupy. A film with no villains. No fight scenes. No evil adults. No fighting between the two kids. No scary monsters. No darkness before the dawn. A world that is benign. A world where if you meet a strange towering creature in the forest, you curl up on its tummy and have a nap. — Roger Ebert

With any good story, you need the adversary, the heroes and villains. You need a good mixture to make it work. — Phil Keoghan

So these villains, who call themselves governments, well understand that their power rests primarily upon money. With money they can hire soldiers, and with soldiers extort money. And, when their authority is denied, the first use they always make of money, is to hire soldiers to kill or subdue all who refuse them more money. — Lysander Spooner

Calm, thinking villains, whom no faith could fix, Of crooked counsels and dark politics. — Alexander Pope

But I'm starting to think that most villains aren't evil - they are just misunderstood. Or victims of that most manipulative force: love. — Karina Halle

Like what? The things Literature was all about: love, sex, morality, friendship, happiness, suffering, betrayal, adultery, good and evil, heroes and villains, guilt and innocence, ambition, power, justice, revolution, war, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the individual against society, success and failure, murder, suicide, death, God. And barn owls. — Julian Barnes

We're the good guys. That we're scary doesn't mean we're the villains. — Patricia Briggs

Your life is like a play with several acts. Some of the characters who enter have short roles to play, others, much larger. Some are villains and others are good guys. But all of them are necessary; otherwise, they wouldn't be in the play. Embrace them all, and move on to the next act. — Wayne Dyer

I am not dead" argued Edward. "There are nefarious villains who would have you believe I died. But any accounts of my demise have been grossly exaggerated, I assure you, for here I am, very much alive. — Cynthia Hand

Soap opera seems to be a dirty word, but actually they are the most popular shows we have. People want to know what happens next, people hate the villains and love the lovers. It's good, fun TV. But I wouldn't call 'Downton' a soap opera as such. — Dan Stevens

It will not be possible for me to escape the past. But if I go back there, it will only be to find ways to make rich my present. To accept that there are no villains in my life, just broken people, trying to heal, stumbling in darkness and breaking each other...To stop living what has been, until now, this pale imitation of life. — Petina Gappah