Alan Ball Quotes

I felt pride, wonderful pride, when I was captain. It was an honour to take over from Labby. Anybody who has ever captained a big club, which Everton are, will tell you it's a great honour.

Once Everton has touched you, nothing will be the same.

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.

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.

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

I'm not a believer in luck, but I do believe you need it.

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.

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

Life is suffering. We have desires and expectations and egos, and we compare the reality we have, which is miraculous and wondrous, with this reality we desire. That somehow distances us from actually taking part fully with the reality we do have, and that creates suffering. For me, the thing that I love is that it's all about the present moment.

I really love storytelling, and I love the stories as they reveal themselves. It's an incredibly nourishing process; it's probably the closest I come to having a religion.

Happy relationships are boring. We all want them in our own life. But I don't want to watch them on TV.

Obviously death is a theme I'm fascinated by.

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.

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.

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

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 from the South, so while I personally find it impossible to live there, I still have a fondness for it as a geographical region.

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.

I'm used to American actors who have a movie career thinking television acting is beneath them.

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

The idea of celibate vampires is ridiculous. To me, vampires are sex. I don't get a vampire story about abstinence. I don't care about high school students. I find them irritating and uninformed.

It’s hard to stay mad, when there’s so much beauty in the world. 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... And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life...

Never underestimate the power of denial.

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.