“Nobody is a villain in their own story. We’re all the heroes of our own stories.”

—George R. R. Martin

“Life is not simple, and people can’t be boxed into being either heroes or villains.”

—Jessica Hagedorn

“The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture.”

—Alfred Hitchcock

I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of the villain, and how often the books I love best don’t delineate between a hero and villain. Both sides of every conflict believe themselves to be in the right. After all, as GRRM says above, antagonists in any conflict usually label themselves the protagonist. I’ve become more intrigued by that gray spaces between black and white. The gray feels more real, and in the complexity it introduces, more human.