“As an artist you look into yourself to understand the human potential to be all kinds of things that are not necessarily pleasant but are real - a criminal, a murderer, a sadist, a rapist; to be all of these things that many people are. You can't allow yourself to say, 'I'm a different species from those people.' Because you aren't.The criminal as monster is kind of common. That's very convenient because you can then say, 'Of course I'm not a monster, therefore I'm not a criminal therefore I have no potential in tern of criminality.' And that lets you off the hook. That gives you a nice wall between yourself and them.”

David Cronenberg

David Cronenberg - “As an artist you look into yourself...” 1

Similar quotes

“A real criminal mastermind isn’t known as a criminal mastermind, because how good can you be if you’re a known criminal? No, a real criminal mastermind is known by another name: politician.”

Jarod Kintz
Read more

“Remember particularly that you cannot be a judge of anyone. For no one can judge a criminal until he recognizes that he is just such a criminal as the man standing before him, and that ha perhaps is more than all men to blame for that crime. When he understands that, he will be able to judge...If you can take upon yourself the crime of the criminal your heart is judging, take it at once, suffer for him yourself, and let him go without reproach.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Read more

“You develop a kind of admiration for criminal genius and ruthless efficiency, and you forget that the criminal empire is built on human pain and suffering.”

Jake Adelstein
Read more

“If you make guns illegal, the only people who will have them will be criminals—and the government, which of course is the same thing.”

Jarod Kintz
Read more

“...stereotypes were self-reinforcing because unconsciously you were looking for things to confirm them. That was why policemen thought – based on so-called experience – that all criminals were stupid, and criminals thought the same about all policemen.”

Jo Nesbø
Read more