Characters Quotations | Page 4

I don't like two-dimensional characters who are obviously villains from the moment they walk on stage.

In world mythology, there are countless examples of tragic characters whose greatest strength is also the source of their undoing. But the ancient Greeks and Romans also held the view that acceptance is the beginning of wisdom.

I just want to keep writing characters who are interesting and complicated people and interesting roles for women, in TV or film or in theater. I think that's like my 'Blues Brothers' mission.

I don't see why it's such a stretch for distributors, buyers, and studios to put cartoon characters into adult situations on film.

I usually dislike second books in series. The only second installment I ever loved was 'The Empire Strikes Back,' and I think that was wonderful because it evolved the characters while not seeming like a bridge.

I'm always sorry to finish a book, to let go of characters I love, people I've struggled to understand for years, people who evolve before me.

I don't understand that, because I think that what people like most about the show is that they recognize themselves in the characters and their problems, so the more believable the family is, the more we can draw the audience in.

I'm much more interested in lesser-known eccentrics and characters and performers. Like Matthew Buchinger, who was born in Germany in 1674, had no arms or legs and yet did magic, and had 14 kids, and made the most extraordinary calligraphy.

I have always been a fan of Jim Henson, and I love his Creature Shop creations, the skill of the puppets and the characters he creates.

A lot of times I think the cast members, the lead characters in a show really set the tone for the show. On some shows, the stars of the show will just be whining and complaining and spending the whole time texting their boyfriends on their Blackberries, and there's just no attention given to the work.

When my characters are questioning things, it's not me leading up to an answer; it's me asking those same questions and letting the characters' lives unfold and seeing where it takes them.

As the director, I try to go in and know as much as I can about the material. I really try to go in and understand what all the characters are about, what the movie's going to look like.

Women remain dramatically under-represented as characters in film when compared to their representation in the U.S. population.

All of the trickster, rascal characters that I write have the voice I aspire to. In real life, you can't be that obnoxious and get away with it.

'Red Lanterns' is obviously about rage, but more it's about how rage affects people - alien and human. I'll be getting into the characters of some of those insane Red Lanterns whom we've generally only seen spitting vomit in the background.

He invented this idea of telling the life story of a great writer through becoming his characters and becoming him. It was such a pleasure and I thought we must find another writer.

I'm a little hesitant to make my characters sentimental or to risk having the work labeled sentimental. It's something that I resist as a reader, and I don't resist it in life. I'm not an unmoved person by any stretch, but I think I don't want, I guess, to indulge those kinds of things sometimes in fiction. I can't tell you why exactly.

My characters tend to be more dynamic because they're reaching that point in their lives where their old way of being is breaking down. They're conflicted by the idea that they don't know what's next. You could call it Kierkegaard's leap of faith, when you get tired of sort of reinventing yourself on a very superficial level.

One of the things I really love about TV is this symbiotic relationship you can get between the writers and the actors, and the characters start to come to life because you start to collaborate.

'Pigeonholed' isn't the right word, because I feel like I've had a very wide range of characters that I've been allowed to play.

Finding the discipline, the motivation, the focus, the passion to sit down in front of a blank piece of paper or a blank computer screen every day and then to make it come alive with characters and with plot is incredibly exciting and at the same time terrifying and frustrating, and sometimes it comes easy and sometimes it comes really hard.

When I wrote 'Your Republic Is Calling You,' it was Franz Kafka's writing that I had most in mind, and James Joyce's 'Ulysses.' Entirely out of the blue, Kafka's characters receive an order to go somewhere, and when they try to comply, they never quite manage it. Ki-yong in 'Your Republic Is Calling You' is precisely that sort of character.

I think a fictional invention grows according to its own development, not the author's. Characters in fiction are not simply as alive as you and me, they are more alive. Becky Sharp, Elizabeth Bennett, and Don Quixote may not outlive the burning out of the sun, but they will certainly outlive the brief candle of our lives.

I think about 'The Simpsons,' which has been going on for 25 years. Homer is still in his late 30's. Lisa is 8, Bart is 10. Their stories are told. Yet the series keeps going on and on like a zombie that won't lie down and die. That feels forced and unnatural. The characters never change, grow, age.

How it works for me is that a scene comes to mind, usually a scene between the hero and heroine, that depicts the emotional conflict. From that scene, the characters come alive for me. I don't do a lot of preplanning in any way when I write.

Unlike other enduring characters such as 'Sherlock Holmes' or 'Tarzan,' being the 'Doctor' allows you a certain freedom that is both very demanding and very thrilling. It allows you to make the character using elements of yourself.

I think about the characters I've created, and then I sit down and start typing and see what they will do. There's a lot of subconscious thought that goes on. It amazes me to find out, a few chapters later, why I put someone in a certain place when I did.

I often talk with other actors about that time when you've just finished a job, because I think you do take on the characteristics of some of the characters you play. Sometimes it can be a great thing and sometimes it's a bit haunting because you're not quite sure how to leave it on set. My dad talks about it as being 'de-personalised.'

I'm fortunate to be famous for two rather imposing characters like Magneto and Gandalf.

To me I don't deal with stress well at all, and it is stressful enough for me to deal with my own one character. So if I had to deal with all the characters and the special effects, and the editing and make the writing tweaks and do everything the director does, that would drive me to an early grave, and I just can't do it.

I started out as an artist, and what I do is verbal paintings. I paint a picture. Hopefully, you'll see the characters and what they're doing and what they're saying.

When you put your characters in a dire situation, they often do things that surprise even you, so you have to go back and revise your original conception of who they are.

Every drama requires a cast. The cast may be so huge, as in Leo Tolstoy's 'Anna Karenina,' that the author or editor provides a list of characters to keep them straight. Or it may be an intimate cast of two.

It's something I'd find rather distracting in a historical piece, looking at characters that have obviously just gotten off their Ab Blaster. You see a piece set in the 1300s or the 1800s, and you've got characters who have perfect abs and are incredibly well-groomed, not a hair out of place, and it just doesn't make sense.

I do build my own backstory as an actor. It's important to know where your characters have come from in order to know where they're going - in order to exist in that state of being.

We have defined these characters - people always expect to see me in a pencil skirt. When they see me out of one - much like when they see Jon Hamm's hair when it isn't slick - they say, 'Wait a minute, you're all 2010!'

Every time I write a book, I think how I could be doing it better to please people - a nicer book with nicer characters - but I just can't.

I'm not likely to be attracted to characters I've already done. I have to be almost frightened by the possibility of taking it on. Over the years, I realise I must enjoy walking that edge; I keep doing it.

I can't sleep in an isolated place without pills, earplugs, and both my children in bed with me for fear of scary, feral characters with a hankering for the wilderness.

When I watch cop shows, I really enjoy them because you can really follow the story and get involved, and the characters are always really interesting.

In television writing, you want to hear what the characters say as opposed to giving them something to say. It's the same with the cartoons.

You have to have empathy, knowledge and compassion for your characters if you're a writer.

I understand why creative people like dark, but American audiences don't like dark. They like story. They do not respond to nervous breakdowns and unhappy episodes that lead nowhere. They like their characters to be a part of the action. They like strength, not weakness, a chance to work out any dilemma.

'Community' is a comedy show, and one of the characters happens to be a Christian. I do think they have been very careful to make sure everyone is the butt of the joke for various reasons.

Before there was any talk of a movie, people would sometimes ask me what actors I would imagine playing these characters. And the only thing I could ever say is: I have such a clear idea of these characters that they'd have to play themselves.

Teenagers, especially girl ones, seem like the perfect canary-in-the-coal-mine characters to me. They capture American culture and its perversion, its hypocrisy - how absorbed we are with youth and beauty and sexualized imagery, for instance, while preaching abstinence and modesty.

The characters in the book grow up with us. My voice has broken as well.

They are imaginary characters. But perhaps not solely the products of my imagination, since there are some aspects of the characters that relate to my own experience of a wide variety of people.

In the old days, I just could not leave characters alone. Now I just try to keep the ones that still have something in the way of stories to tell.

I wanted to live the life my characters were living, so I rented a yacht and sailed from Naples to Capri before taking a helicopter back. Got to write the whole thing off as research on my taxes.

When people write fan-fic sequels to one of your books, it gives you a very strange feeling. It is very flattering but strange, as if the characters have come to life again without you knowing.

Our goal at Home Theater Films is to inspire and entertain our audience. We want to make great movies that everyone can enjoy and elevate them with contemporary, relatable characters that naturally demonstrate their faith in real world situations.

I've never thought of my characters as being sad. On the contrary, they are full of life. They didn't choose tragedy. Tragedy chose them.

My father gave me an old Olympia portable when I was in fourth grade. Our ancestors came from Ireland. Our family stories of immigration helped me understand more about my characters in 'The Lemon Orchard.'

I'm interested in a lot. Like right now, I'm just really excited for 'Catching Fire' and 'Mockingjay' Part 1 and 2. But I love playing characters like Prim - I mean, Prim is like my dream character - but after 'The Hunger Games', it would be fun to look and see what else I could do well. But right now, Prim is like my dream role.

Perhaps summer's ephemeral nature is what inspires us to embrace the beach read. We tell ourselves that these twisted plots and wild characters are literary ice cream sundaes - extravagant treats that aren't as calorie-laden when we're wearing flip flops.

The characters in my stories all have quite loud lives in my head. It's a relief to get them on the page. Often they come from people I've noticed or overheard - but that is only a part of them. It's only by writing that I discover who these people really are.

The SF genre, of course, is really an organically evolved, marketplace-determined, idiosyncratic grab bag of themes and signifiers and characters and icons and gadgets, some of which hew to the realistic parameters and paradigms embraced by science, others of which partake more of fantasy and magic.

I am tired of our characters being so incomplete. When do we ever save the day in a film? When does a Latino actor get to be the hero?

Everyone seems agreed that writing about sex is perilous, partly because it threatens to swamp highly individualised characters in a generic, featureless activity (much like coffee-cup dialogue, during which everyone sounds the same), and partly because it feels... tacky.

The emotions triggered by fiction are very real. When Charles Dickens wrote about the death of Little Nell in the 1840s, people wept - and I'm sure that the death of characters in J.K. Rowling's 'Harry Potter' series led to similar tears.

Every film is faced with the enemy of time. Only so much story can fit into the 90-150 minutes of time that moviegoers are willing to stay in their seats. Naturally, compression is necessary. So are the exclusion and amalgamation of characters so that the viewer does not become bewildered.

I think Caesar is one of the most empathetic characters that I've played. I think that's the key to a successful leadership. Being able to keep your ears open at all times.

Most of the books that feature supernatural characters blending with the modern world and are usually set in big cities.

'Not Another Happy Ending' is a romantic comedy starring Karen Gillan and Stanley Weber. It is about these two characters and their relationships.

Revising stuff lately, I was shocked to see how often my characters scratched their ankles, felt their feet, and touched their own ears.

Your structure and format may not be perfect, and you may not have picked the perfect franchise, but if I pick up a script, and the characters are real, whole, complicated and come from a place of somebody who really is feeling it, that's what people remember.

The physical journey in my films is indicative of the internal journey that my characters take.

I read a blog about this young filmmaker in the Philippines who made a short film, and one of the characters in the film reads my novel and then starts discussing the novel with someone. The idea that my book can inspire another artist and be part of that other artist's work... that's the reason I write.

There are no black and white, good or bad characters in 'Game Of Thrones,' but Joffrey was an exception. Just pure evil.

When you're doing characters from famous novels, you have a responsibility as an actor to make it what the writer intended. And then you add and expand from there to create a three-dimensional performance.

When my lady and I sit down and watch TV, I find she gets annoyed at characters because they don't do what she would do in the situation. I'm always like, 'Well, she has to do that because that's what the story is.'

It's the same as any role and I find that you can't lump characters together; because they all have different life experiences, different reasons for being the way they are.

It's true that it's a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them.

I always shoot my movies with score as certainly part of the dialogue. Music is dialogue. People don't think about it that way, but music is actually dialogue. And sometimes music is the final, finished, additional dialogue. Music can be one of the final characters in the film.

One of the things that's important for anybody adapting source material that is primarily a male buddy picture is to find ways to latch on to strong female characters in the piece and bring them to the forefront and celebrate their point of view alongside the men; otherwise, it becomes a sausage party, and it's a singular point of view.

I do not choose characters because I think, 'Wow, that woman is so strong.' I chose these characters with utmost conviction because I think they were realistic enough to exist, and I really liked the scripts.

There are some characters in 'The Names' who are very much heroes and others who can only be called villains. But generally, as we get to know them, we see most of the characters are, or at least become, quite nuanced.

I tend to play strong characters and people just assume that I would want to play romantic comedies, which I would love to do, but there are other women that do it so great and they maybe couldn't do what I do, play the kind of characters that I play.

There are plenty of secondary characters that I had always hoped to write, but I don't know if it will ever happen. The way contracts work, if you leave one publishing house for another, the characters tend to stay with the previous publishing house.

What I look for these days is that I don't have long speeches, the characters gets to sit down a lot, I don't have to learn any foreign languages, and it doesn't shoot in Minneapolis in February. That's mainly what I look for.

People are patronizing the theatres with renewed enthusiasm - there is an entire picnic-like attitude when families go out to see movies, which is a very good sign. They want to see larger-than-life characters on the big screen and not just watch movies on television or on DVDs.

I don't start with the characters. I start with the series of events that will provide the conflict and how it can be resolved. Characters are incidental.

It's important to find characters that share sympathy with a young audience, not just in the story but their role in the world.

As for my looks, if I didn't look the way I do, I would probably be one of those many faces doing a romcom, which I detest. The way I look has somewhere defined the characters I played. My weakness has become my strength.

So much of what I do... is coming up with new characters and trying to invent voices for them, and to have people fully fleshed out in my head and to know who can say what in the scene and who these characters are... I love it.

I want to continue to play characters that are not like me at all, and transform.

There's so many different people that I'm fascinated by. Different kinds of characters that I meet in, like, everyday life, that I'm like, 'I don't know how you exist. Like, you're so fascinating.'

Of course I consider myself a Jewish writer - I am one! All of the protagonists in my five books have been Jewish, and I wouldn't be surprised if all my future main characters were as well.

I went to Colby College in Waterville, ME and did picture it when I was writing 'Cum Laude.' So many of the physical details were included, like the loop where people jogged. The story of the chapel is also borrowed from Colby... but the students and cast of characters are fictional.

'True Blood' differs from 'Six Feet Under' in that there are way more characters and plot-lines, but fundamentally it's still about the characters and their emotions.

I loved Gwyneth Paltrow in 'The Royal Tenenbaums' and Reese Witherspoon in 'Election.' I love quirky films and characters like that.

I wanted to show those characters discovering it is possible to find common ground, as they make their way through a plotline that I hope is engrossing enough to keep the reader a willing participant.

I love thinking of movie stars who could play the characters in the books I write.

I'm very interested in writing an actual series, that doesn't have too much to do with my music - a world I create that has characters in it. I'm just trying to get there by doing things that I want to do.

The best fiction is geared towards conflict. We learn most about our characters through tension, when they are put up against insurmountable obstacles. This is true in real life.

Even if I see 300 'X-Files' fans together, I can't fathom - I cannot imagine - the audience itself. All I think about is the show and all I think about is why I like it and why I like to write it and why I like the characters and what I have to say through them.

When I was asked to compose a score for... 'Palo Alto,' I first thought to myself, 'What is the house that these characters would want to live in?' I wanted to paint a picture and color scheme that I could work around. I gently apply different daubs to see what fits to match the color I have in mind with these characters.

I devote most of my day to writing, and try to turn out at least four pages a day. As for what triggers the creative process, it's a mystery to me! Characters often just walk on the page, and I wait to see what they do and say while I'm writing them.

What I always studied in screenwriting from my mentor John Glavin was that the most interesting characters are characters with shades of gray.