Villains

(154 votes)   The experience of the gangster as an experience of art is universal to Americans. There is almost nothing we understand better or react to more readily or with quicker intelligence. In ways that we do not easily or willingly define, the gangster speaks for us, expressing that part of the American psyche which rejects the qualities and the demands of modern life, which rejects ''Americanism'' itself.

Robert Warshow

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(141 votes)   In the old days villains had moustaches and kicked the dog. Audiences are smarter today. They don't want their villain to be thrown at them with green limelight on his face. They want an ordinary human being with failings.

Alfred Hitchcock
1899-1980, Anglo-American Filmmaker

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(140 votes)   When it comes to the point, really bad men are just as rare as really good ones.

George Bernard Shaw
1856-1950, Irish-born British Dramatist

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(137 votes)   As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist

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(135 votes)   A villain must be a thing of power, handled with delicacy and grace. He must be wicked enough to excite our aversion, strong enough to arouse our fear, human enough to awaken some transient gleam of sympathy. We must triumph in his downfall, yet not barbarously nor with contempt, and the close of his career must be in harmony with all its previous development.

Agnes Repplier
1858-1950, American Author, Social Critic

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