“If there was a bad guy we could appeal to the people because, like it or not, we, the huddled masses, want our public figures to be good or bad but rarely allow them to mix the two. Not good an bad. We place people in these categories, which then creates a smooth story-line but also a dichotomy. It's why we like our male movie stars to be either bad boys or heroes, our leading ladies sluts or soccer moms. We like our politicians to be tough guys or saints. What we don't like are any signs of actual humanity, a mixture of the two. So we are left with the question: who is the bad guy? And is the bad guy in control of all that is bad?”

“We are told in fairy tales that evil always loses and good eventually will triumph. That is what makes those stories so desirable to the general population. They want to believe that karma works and the bad guys are always defeated in the end. But in a world where no one thinks they are the bad guy and everyone plays the victim, it is harder and harder to find the black and the white of a situation. We are all the hero, and we are all the monster.”

“The world is a dangerous place (...) There will always be blurred boundaries. There are plenty of good bad guys and bad good guys. Life's not clear and it's seldom fair (...) I don't want our child growing up under the illusion that it is. Shit happens.”

“We don't know how bad we are until we try to be good. Nothing exposes our selfishness and spiritual pwerlessness like prayer.”

“I learned the bad guys are not always bad, the good guys are not always good, and to quote Captain Barbossa, the parameters are like rules, mostly guidelines. And that it takes a little bit of bad boy to fight the evil in the world.--Terri Mitchell”

“We can't be as good as we'd want to, so the question then becomes, how do we cope with our own badness?”