Character Quotations | Page 5

Well, I go to the theater today, and its curtain - there is no curtain in this play; the lights go down and go up - and we start. And I live this character for two hours. There are only two of us in the play. And It's a complete experience

Short stories are my favorite art form. A good one is compact and complete, a telling little slice of life, capturing a moment in time that - for the character - defines her, changes her, is the tipping point for all that will follow.

Cancer Boy probably has the saddest, noblest, sweetest heart of any character I've ever done.

It's always been a dream for me to play a comic book character.

Once upon a time there was a widow who had two daughters. The elder was so much like her, both in looks and character, that whoever saw the daughter saw the mother.

'Mad Men' still lives in my life as the best job that I've ever had because I thought the character was genius. It was so well-written.

It's not like my old self - I'm not in character anymore, I'm me. I'm not hiding behind that anymore.

I've written original material before, where I've come up with the idea and the characters myself, and that's definitely very different to working with someone else's characters and stories.

You will be better advised to watch what we do instead of what we say.

When there is a strong woman character in a story - that always grabs me

Quite often my narrator or protagonist may be a man, but I'm not sure he's the more interesting character, or if the more complex character isn't the woman.

We started a movement... to build character, citizenship and confidence in young people.

If you create an act, you create a habit. If you create a habit, you create a character. If you create a character, you create a destiny.

No government can be strong and flourishing while the national character is weak and degraded. A government must flourish and decay with its subjects; and, when a prince makes a law or performs an action which has a tendency to injure the character or prosperity of the nation, he injures himself.

Non-fiction, and in particular the literary memoir, the stylised recollection of personal experience, is often as much about character and story and emotion as fiction is.

I worked at Barney's selling clothes to lonely, rich white women. Every time I would look down on myself - hating my job, hating my life - I would think, 'It's a character study. Study these people, and you'll have your SNL audition ready in, like, five minutes.'

I always knew I'd be more of a character actor than a leading man, and I always wanted to take that and run with it.

'The Good Wife' was definitely the biggest surprise and gift that I've had in a long time, and that did come out of some other work that I had done. That whole adage of 'work begets work' actually worked in that case - it was at the very end of their first season that my character was first introduced.

Everybody's going to approach a character differently, depending upon what they bring to it on their own intellectual level or their feelings from their heart and soul.

I don't like to read novels where the novelist tells me what to think about the situation and the characters. I prefer to discover for myself.

Hitman does well and it certainly does well enough to survive, but at the same time I don't want to involve the character into the DC Universe even if it meant more sales, to the point where we sort of upset the balance that we have at the moment.

Easy was, like, spending time with Jennifer on set. Difficult stuff about character is, it was a little bit like just being the only one with no superhuman powers.

Actors will say, 'My character wouldn't say that.' Who said it was your character?

I always believed in my characters. I lived them

The Japanese have a strong tendency to suppress their own feelings. That's the Japanese character. They kill their own emotions.

There is nothing new, from Greek mythology to Shakespeare to every romcom ever made, we're just reimagining the same 12 story plots over and over again - so what makes people keep watching and listening? It's all about the character.

I always play these rodent type characters - skittish and hyper like a chipmunk. It's a complete act though. I'm a very normal person.

Any time you get to dig deeper into your character, you welcome it, especially on a TV show.

I just want to portray a very honest character that displays traits that people can truly relate to and can help them - the audience and myself because I learn from the characters as well - help them see themselves in a perspective that is outside of what they know already, and grow from that experience.

Movies don't look hard, but figuring it out, getting the shape of it, getting everybody's character right and having it be funny, make sense and be romantic, it's creating a puzzle. Yes, having been a writer for so long, I have an awareness of when things are going awry, but it doesn't mean I know how to fix them.

Costume design is so important and really helpful, and I really love that aspect of character development, just figuring it out.

I think if you play a character that is fearless, then it's boring. I think that's what was so incredible about Harrison Ford, is that he always seemed like he was never going to survive it, he's always scared, and yet he always does survive it somehow.

The skyscraper style first advocated by Louis Sullivan - a tower of strongly vertical character with clear definitions among base, shaft, and crown - has remained remarkably consistent throughout the history of this building type.

I was a very quiet, shy child. I grew up in a small town, Louisville, Kentucky, and there weren't too many Hawaiian-Filipino girls, so I stuck out like a sore thumb. I didn't look like everyone else and didn't feel I belonged... But these things only build character and make you stronger. It taught me to grow into the woman I was to become.

The American character looks always as if it had just had a rather bad haircut, which gives it, in our eyes at any rate, a greater humanity than the European, which even among its beggars has all too much a professional air.

It may, however, be said that the level of experience to which concepts are inapplicable cannot yield any knowledge of a universal character, for concepts alone are capable of being socialized.

The trite answer is that everything is true but none of it happened. It is emotionally true, but the events, the plotting, the narrative, isn't true of my life, though I've experienced most of the emotions experienced by the characters in the play.

I would rather be called a character actor than a star.

I tend to think that good and evil exist and that the quantity in each of us is unchangeable. The moral character of people is set, fixed until death.

It's why you create characters: so you can argue with yourself.

Hopefully, any character I play has an anchor in reality.

There are expectations in how you play your character as a black woman, to be sassy and the same kind of feel, as if there are no quirky black women. I struggle with those things constantly, trying to add dimension to my work, and that's the goal, too.

The one thing I could do was voices and impersonations and weird characters, and there was really no call for that, except on Saturday Night Live.

On 'Swingtown,' I think that's when I was able to blend the character-slash-leading lady roles, and that's what I'm doing on 'Once Upon a Time' as well. She's a leading lady, but she's also this character.

And my father was a comic. He could play any musical instrument. He loved to perform. He was a wonderfully comedic character. He had the ability to dance and sing and charm and analyze poetry

I realized that I wanted to play characters and do traditional theatre. I wanted to make believe again. I like putting on a costume and pretending to be someone else for a few hours, and I have a great respect for playwrights.

I'm a massive daydreamer. I'm constantly lost within my own fantasies and my own thoughts personally, and I think maybe that is sort of represented in what we do for a living, the fact that we make believe everything and we escape into these other characters for a living.

On the whole, the psychological work of the last quarter of the nineteenth century emphasized the study of consciousness to the neglect of the total life of intellect and character

I've had some marvelous parts, but I'm also asked to play characters who are kind of superficial people.

With historicals, the research is half the fun. Contemporaries are especially easy. People are right out there in front of you; you meet them every day. You can concentrate wholly on the story and characters.

The minute I ever start thinking about what a character would do is the minute I bring my ego into play. It's the minute I'm putting a judgment on something.

Strength of character may be learned at work, but beauty of character is learned at home.

Character is greater than talent, genius, fame, money, friends - there is nothing to compare with it. A man may have all these and yet remain comparatively useless - be unhappy - and die a bankrupt in soul.

I have to know the killer, the victim and the motive when I begin. Then I start to create the characters and see how the novel takes shape based on what these people are like.

There's nothing like getting yourself into character and seeing a different person. It really wears on your vanity.

Every phase of our life belongs to us. The moon does not, except in appearance, lose her first thin, luminous curve, nor her silvery crescent, in rounding to her full. The woman is still both child and girl, in the completeness of womanly character.

I was born with an adult head and a tiny body. Like a 'Peanuts' character.

In writing a series of stories about the same characters, plan the whole series in advance in some detail, to avoid contradictions and inconsistencies.

I like strong female characters. I try to write them as role models for young girls.

The way glass can be molded or blown or cut into any kind of shape made me think about how we as people - our characters or souls - can be shaped or changed by outside influences.

Wit is the appearance, the external flash of imagination. Thus its divinity, and the witty character of mysticism.

Acting offers me an outlet. Here is the perfect opportunity to spend fleeting moments becoming an entirely different person; to experience a character entirely unlike myself, but to also make such a character a part of me. There is no routine here; there is no boredom. How does one get bored of life?

Definitely they write themselves. It's an amazing experience. It's like the characters have come alive and are sitting on my shoulder talking to me, telling me their tales.

I hope that doing truthful portrayals of people in a variety of circumstances gives people a kind of subterranean link to those characters.

I always prefer to write songs about emotional situations and heartbreak because I like getting into the character.

There's more pressure to be famous for being yourself than if you're being a character.

The movies that work are the ones in which somebody very smart figured out how to take all the thematic material, all the character material, all the filigree, all the beautiful writing, and put it into a story.

The core character of Victorians is one of aspiration and ambition, and Victorians have, since first settlement days... demonstrated that core character over and over again.

From a writer's standpoint, each character and story presents its own unique challenges and delights. I'm deeply curious about all of my characters, and I love peeling away their layers to see what's underneath their skin, or secreted deep within their hearts.

Once you've established where you are, you go to the character and elaborate on expressions and action.

Now, personally, I like a car with some sort of character.

I don't try to live the life of my character but I think it's inevitable that there is some carry-over into your life.

I love playing characters, so I'm always telling my agents, 'Don't worry if the character description is something you think I'm not. Let me try to be that person.

I love accents; I would love to find more characters with a variety of vocal intonations. It creates a character. It's like you're singing a song. Some people find their character through walking or movement - for me, voice is one of the ways I find parts of the character.

I grew up in a community where it was not the exception to be a good girl. It was sort of expected. And all of my friends were good girls too, and my boyfriends were good boys. Everybody was pretty nice. And that affects how I write my characters. There aren't very many bad guys in my novels.

To me, it's the kiss of death when you start winking at the audience as an actor. I just never liked it. I don't like it when we do monologues, looking into the character.

I actually did an Agatha Christie monologue for my audition showcase at Guildhall, and that's how I got my agent. Some people said 'ooh it's old hat' and 'too risky'. Some people think she's all about the narrative and thriller aspect at the expense of character and I disagree. I did it anyway and it worked well.

But at the same time, the commonplace statement about them is true: every character is the hero of his own story. Each has a justification for his actions that is convincing to him. It's fun to give these people voices.

The long-established and noble rule of Law, one of the greatest products of the character and tradition of British history, has suffered a deadly blow. Blackmail has become respectable.

I always look for contradiction in a character.

This idea that a book can either be about character and feeling, or about politics and idea, is just a false binary. Ideas are an expression of the feelings and the intense emotions we hold about the world.

He's meant to be that classic Homer, Ulysses, Hercules - a character who goes out or has some gift of some kind. He goes on a journey of discovery and part of that is falling into darkness - the temptations of life.

Success is always temporary. When all is said and one, the only thing you'll have left is your character.

Funny story: I was hanging out with Adam Shankman for Samantha Ronson's birthday, and Lance Bass was there. I don't really know Lance, but he comes over to me and goes, 'Hey, I just wanted to let you know I'm a fan of 'Pretty Little Liars' and I'm rooting for your character.' It was surreal! That's how 'PLL' has changed my life.

Are right and wrong convertible terms, dependant upon popular opinion?

Now, there are a very large number of bodily movements, having their source in our nervous system, that do not possess the character of conscious actions.

I tend to be attracted to characters who are up against a wall with very few alternatives. And the film then becomes an examination of how they cope with very few options. And that's, I guess, what interests me in terms of human behavior.

Getting to meet people that I've admired my entire life, and getting to meet them in such a way where they're coming in to play completely different characters than I had ever seen them do is just wonderful.

I don't like to do too much psychological research because it might turn a character into a patchwork.

All I want to do is write songs about funny characters I made up.

Religion may become a fashion as well as anything else; and, when it does become so, it has as little to do, in those who thus hold it, with the heart and the character as any other fashion.

I think it's a novelty for cartoon characters to cross over into another strip or panel occasionally.

All observers not laboring under hallucinations of the senses are agreed, or can be made to agree, about facts of sensible experience, through evidence toward which the intellect is merely passive, and over which the individual will and character have no control.

I've never played a character where I've had so much fun on the physical end. I don't want to say I like it too much but it's fun having a gun on you and getting to manhandle men.

My thing about looking good is that it should be the character. If I'm playing a character who's concerned about his body - an athlete, say - I'll get in shape. If I'm playing a character who doesn't or wouldn't, I don't. I almost never get in shape for a movie, even though I know it would be a good career move.

I love telling stories. I love the intimacy between the writer and reader. When you write sketches it's over in two minutes. When you write a book the characters have to have a bit of emotional depth.

Vulnerability is huge. I love to see that in characters. It's something I feel like a lot of my comedic heroes have always done.

In a novel, I could submerge my ego in a characters and let his perceptions take over.

I really don't know what I'm doing... I don't. It's terrible. I go in there and I learn how to be like the character and do the best I can, and that's all I really do.

When I write, I try to capture one of those pivotal moments. If I succeed, I have shifted the reader's view of the world, just a little. The character is not the only one to experience change. That is my job, shifting perceptions, one story at a time. The trouble is, I don't like writing. But I love having written.