Will Allison Quotes

I did improv at Yale, with the Exit Players. It was great, but they played a little rough.

I've met a surprising number of comedy writers whose parents are scientists. Both have an antiauthoritarian slant - they're both skeptics.

I do love science. My father is a scientist.

In high school, I was performing "forensics." You take a section of a play and portray all the characters. I even went to camp for forensics.

I operate with this sense of needing to live up to what I am asking of people. I am, by far, my own worst critic.

I would prefer to keep my clothes on. Unless there's a brisk breeze or something, I tend to keep them on.

I'm a big Aqua fan. "Barbie Girl" was a big deal growing up.

My whole background is character acting: weird costumes, fat suits, playing men, playing animals - I've never played anyone with whom there's any overlapping Venn diagram.

I love making people uncomfortable, and when people say, 'I cringed watching [that] scene,' that's the biggest compliment you can give me.

I'd be worried about myself as a human if I hadn't been nervous.

I auditioned for 'Girls' the fall after I graduated from Yale. The show has been amazing - as close to perfect as it gets!

I started out really into musical theater. So you can imagine I was super popular. I wasn't awkward looking at all.

It's safe to say I'm a comedy nerd. I listen to so many podcasts. I just love to laugh.

I was only allowed only to watch public television until I was 12 years old.

It's very weird waking around a corner and being nose to nose with myself on the side of a bus. And Times Square - that's the craziest one.

I just have always been so interested in the way actors and actresses present themselves to the world because I think it is very important and it affects the way people see you as an actor.

There's always more than one path, and to think otherwise is what resigns you to fate.

I like to take inspiration from people who do things that I could never do.

I might have felt broken, but at the end of it all, I didn't allow myself to break.

There's no time to hold grudges when you've seen how fragile things can really be.

Eventually kids become grown-ups too, and from there, the world is whatever they choose to make of it.

Garry Hill is a pleasure to be around, and his work is a rewarding reflection of my career.

stories are the one sure way I know to touch the heart and change the world.

she got a reputation for an easy smile and a sharp tongue, and using one to balance the other, she seemed friendly but distant

The bottom line is I'm writing to save the dead. I'm writing to save the people I have lost, some of whose bodies are still walking around.

It's fun to tease people about where fiction and life intersect.

I fell into shame like a suicide throws herself into a river. (253)

He never said "Don't tell your mama." He never had to say it. I did not know how to tell anyone what I felt, what scared me and shamed me... (109)

I'll tell you the secret. When you begin with a character, you want to begin by creating a villain.

Don't go taking that gospel stuff seriously. It's nice to clean you out now and then, but it ain't for real. It's like bad whiskey. Run through you fast and leave you with pain.

... survival is the least of my desires.

It's important to set challenges that you're not sure you're equal to.

I'm still very blunt: If you want to be a writer, get a day job. The fact that I have actually been able to make a living at it is astonishing.

I have a terrible memory.

Mama learned to laugh with them, before they could laugh at her, and to do it so well no one could be sure what she really thought or felt.

fiction is the great lie that tells the truth

Every kid I meet who's a reader has got something like that, their fantasy world. And science fiction is the best, especially for girls because it's the one place where you can do the forbidden.

I claimed myself and remade my life.

People begin to write in order to create what they have not found and, a little bit, to give something back.

...I have come to make distinctions between what I call the academy and literature, the moral equivalents of church and God. The academy may lie, but literature tries to tell the truth.

I do not write about nice people. I am not nice people.

I wanted her to to go on talking and understand without me saying anything. I wanted her to love me enough to leave him, to pack us up and take us away from him, to kill him if need be. (107)

Life ain't the movies.

I was born trash in a land where the people all believe themselves natural aristocrats.

Behind the story I tell is the one I don't...Behind the story you hear is the one I wish I could make you hear.

And while it is true that I got the best woman in the world, I don't think love saves you.

That was what gospel was meant to do - make you hate and love yourself at the same time, make you ashamed and glorified.

I can't write what I don't believe in.

People don't do right because of the fear of God or love of him. You do right because the world doesn't make sense if you don't.

Age doesn't matter. Obstacles don't matter. Winning is the challenge. Bottom line, inspiring others is the goal.