Quotes & Sayings About Characters

I talk to myself on paper about my characters - sometimes writing in first person ... I keep lists of unanswered questions that I can always turn to in order to get myself going. — Phyllis A. Whitney

Okies who had just stepped into the corridor long enough to get a tin can of water for our boiling radiator. There are other stories, other dilemmas, but the characters never change. We're always standing around, unwashed, uncurled, harried, penniless, memory gone, no lipstick, no hose, unmatched shoes, and using the dirtiest cloth in the house to bind our wounds. Makes — Erma Bombeck

A writer can't just be well-educated or good at research; to build a living, breathing world with interesting characters, you have to write from the gut. I'm not saying you have to live your life like a fantasy adventure. The trick is the ability to synthesize your own everyday experiences into your fiction. Infuse your characters with believable emotions and motivations. Infuse your world with rich sensory detail. For that you have to be in touch with your own existence and your own soul, the dark and the light of it. — Lynn Flewelling

For certainly old age has a great sense of calm and freedom; when the passions relax their hold, then, as Sophocles says, we are freed from the grasp not of one mad master only, but of many. The truth is, Socrates, that these regrets, and also the complaints about relations, are to be attributed to the same cause, which is not old age, but men's characters and tempers; for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden. I — Plato

I love playing these characters that are crazy tough, though. Because I am not in real life. Not at all. — Katee Sackhoff

I, Lesley, I like looking nice. I like doing my hair and wearing makeup and wearing nice clothes. But I don't care what my characters look like. — Lesley Manville

My characters are always utterly sympathetic to me. — Donal Logue

The game created a parallel world, Sidney thought. It was drama; it was excitement; it was a metaphor for the vicissitudes of life. It was also quintessentially English: democratic (there were teams with all levels of ability), communal (the cricket 'square' was often at the centre of the village green), and convivial (the game was full of eccentric characters.) It was the representation of a nation's cuisine, with its milky tea, cucumber sandwiches, Victoria sponge and lashings of beer. It was also beautiful to watch, with fifteen men, dressed in white and moving on green, creating geometrical patterns that looked as if they had been choreographed by a divine choreographer. As — James Runcie

Playing characters who are wonderful and beautiful is hard because you don't feel like that most of the time ... well, I don't. It's like this whole heart-throb nonsense. It's flattering, but that's not how I feel in the morning. It's something that goes with the job. — Hans Matheson

Go to any Shinto temple in Japan and you'll see it: a simple stand from which hang hundreds of wooden postcard-size plaques with a colorful image on one side and, on the other, densely scribbled Japanese characters in black felt-tip pen, pleas to the gods for help or succor. — Hanya Yanagihara

I go to see plays all the time, and whenever I see Chekhov, I'm amazed at how this Russian play strikes home to me living 100 years later in New York City. I'm drawn to him because of his way with characters and their relationships with each other. — Neil Simon

Well, I think in my own work the subject matter usually deals with characters I know, aspects of myself, friends of mine - that sort of thing. — Martin Scorsese

Thiel rejects the small-mindedness of most of the Valley's entrepreneurialism. The motto of Founders Fund is: "We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters." But — Richard Byrne Reilly

It's a real challenge to complete a story arc and end up with a cool punchline in 120 characters. — Mark Hoppus

We live today amid ritualized anithumanisms. Among those intelligent enough to feel despair, some seek salvation in the literary artist. Artists love flattery; and the scam doesn't work without mystifying the process.

The weather is unpredictable, but it is not mysterious.

Wall Street is unpredictable, but it is not mysterious.

Writing is unpredictable, (like street and sky, there are too many variables.) Its mystery vanishes, like a shadow, the moment the light aimed at your characters turns back upon yourself. — Doran Larson

You definitely do not do films for that particular reason. You do them for yourself, for your satisfaction of creating this thing with characters and watching these characters take on real life - that's all you care about. — Clint Eastwood

You travel life has the aspect of a dream. It is something outside the normal, yet you are in it. It is peopled with characters you have never seen before and in all probability will never see again. It brings occasional homesickness, and loneliness, and pangs of longing ... But you are like the Vikings who have gone into a world of adventure, and home is not home until you return. — Agatha Christie

When people say to me, 'Why are you so good at writing at women?' I say, 'Why isn't everybody?' Obviously there are differences between men and women - that's what makes it all fun. But we're all people. There's a lot of good writers who are very humanist, but still manage to kind of skip fifty-five per cent of the race. And I just don't get that. Not to be able to write an entire gender? To me, the question isn't how do you do it? It's how can you possibly avoid doing it? — Joss Whedon

All the great writers root their characters in true human behaviour. — Ben Kingsley

What happened tonight won't change a thing."
"You're mistaken, Lila. Everything started changing the moment we met. — Stephanie Witter

There's something in psychology called the narrative paradigm, which essentially means that we think of our lives as stories in which we are the main characters. — Aleksandar Hemon

One aspect of Samantha's personality that drove me nuts was her tendency to reveal herself via literary allusions. She called it a quirk, but it was more of a compulsion. Her mother was Lady Macbeth; her father, Big Daddy. An uncle she liked was Mr. Micawber, a favorite governess, Jane Eyre; a doting professor, Mr. Chips.
This curious habit of hers quickly made the voyage from eccentric to bizarre when she began to invoke the names of literary characters to describe moments in our relationship. When she thought I was treating her rudely, she called me Wolf Larsen; if I was standoffish, I was Mr. Darcy; when I dressed too shabbily, I was Tom Joad.
Once, in bed, she yelled out the name Victor as she approached orgasm. I assumed she was referring to Victor Hugo because she'd been reading 'Les Miserables.'. It didn't really bother me that much though it was a little odd being with a woman who thought she was having sex with a dead French author. — John Blumenthal

I loved Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton's 'Inside No 9.' The way that they constrained each episode to a single location, then tasked themselves with including completely new characters every week, within a single half-hour. — Tom Riley

Apparently, I'm very good at firing a gun without blinking, which is unusual. That's why so many action characters have to wear sunglasses during shoot-out scenes. That's my party trick. — Kate Beckinsale

It is hard work to give life to new characters every single day. It is not as if I am God. I am just a tired, middle-aged woman trying to keep going. — Karin Fossum

Men have external genitalia, while women have internal genitalia. This simple difference makes a lot of difference in how they write about themselves - and how you might write about your characters. Male writers don't often address internal sensation in a character, because they don't experience it (and probably often don't realize consciously that it's there). This accounts for a lot of Really Terrible sex scenes written by men (if you look at the "Bad Sex-Scene Awards" in any given year, you'll see that the vast majority are done by male writers). — Diana Gabaldon

My characters are driven by a passionate desire for justice. They are rebellious and incorruptible. — Tahar Ben Jelloun

The value for me being in a mainline tradition is history and memory, which is not just Christian tradition but denominational tradition, and characters, you know, with real distinct flavors of ways to be Christian. — Barbara Brown Taylor

Certain characters, mostly heroes, have to be the straight silent type; that is part of the make-up. — Sylvester Stallone

But we did see the process develop. I remember going to the Rocket Pictures base and they had something like 40 people there, drawing. They didn't know what the characters looked like yet and I remember on the walls seeing 30 or 40 different versions of Juliet. So, it was then that I realised that someone's got to come in and make some really executive decisions. — Matt Lucas

But keep characters in propinquity long enough and a story will always develop a plot. — Keith Miller

They discuss the characters as though they were living people, and ask frequently, 'What happened to so-and-so?' ... as if I got letters from them every now and again. — Stephen King

I never, never lend any of my own clothes for parts any more because you lose your clothes; they become the characters' clothes, and you can never wear them again. — Hannah Murray

The established characters are easy to recall. I don't know why, but they come back to me instantly when I need them. It's the one-time-only characters that I don't remember where the voice I used came from. — Jim Cummings

I like the idea of having a film that is choreographic in all its aspects, not only in the dancing scenes, but also in the way the camera and the characters move in order to have that feeling that it's always musical. — Pascal Chaumeil

For me it's about the character, not as much about the genre of it [movie]. I'm excited that I get to work and play interesting characters and I'm not just the girl who gets to play the girlfriend or the wife. I get to play real women who have struggles and troubles and passions and that's always what I hope to do no matter what format that lies in. — Ali Larter

I think as a filmmaker and as a director, you shortchange yourself if you inhibit the ability of your actor to bring their own personal experiences to the characters. — Joe Carnahan

When I was writing my first draft, and feeling grandiose, I e-mailed an artist/clothing designer I know and suggested we collaborate on a fashion line inspired by the outfits my characters wore. I regret that we never did that. — Heidi Julavits

I've been telling everyone for weeks now about how I get to play Lois Lane. It's a big deal. There are a few characters throughout your life which everyone knows and this is one of them. I can't wait. — Christina Hendricks

It was the duty of every thinking man to expose himself to a great range of characters, situations, and points of view. He had read extensively, and although he favored the Romantics above all others, and never tired of discussing the properties of the sublime, he was by no means a strict disciple of that school, or indeed, of any school at all. — Eleanor Catton

This is the difference between an ordinary scribe and a literary writer. The highest level of literary creation is when the characters in a novel possess life in the mind of the writer. The writer is unable to control them, and might not even be able to predict the next action they will take. We can only follow them in wonder to observe and record the minute details of their lives like a voyeur. — Liu Cixin

Good fiction often gives us characters in extremity, which ironically gives us a clearer mirror in which to see ourselves. — Sarah Van Arsdale

I hate it when characters know things but only reveal them when it's convenient to the story. I'd never do that. That's cheating. — Simon Toyne

I firmly believe, only because I've been doing this for so long, every show takes three years. 90% of them don't get three years. It just does. It takes a long time to build a community, build a friendship with your characters. It's hard for people to grasp on and make them care about you. — Kaley Cuoco

I think I've always been drawn to the second person. When I was growing up and playing with my friends, the usual way we interacted with imaginary worlds was as characters: a bench was 'your' boat, leaves on a lawn were the fins of sharks out to get 'you.' — Mohsin Hamid

Always when I directed the play, I was always trying to cast people not who were necessarily like the characters, but people who I felt had the essential component that the character had, some kind of soul for it. — Patrick Marber

I have a lot of people in my life who are truly ridiculous characters, and they're very, very funny people, but they don't really try to be. They're not cracking jokes. — Emile Hirsch

The Story Girl was written in 1910 and published in 1911. It was the last book I wrote in my old home by the gable window where I had spent so many happy hours of creation. It is my own favourite among my books, the one that gave me the greatest pleasure to write, the one whose characters and landscape seem to me most real. All the children in the book are purely imaginary. The old "King Orchard" was a compound of our old orchard in Cavendish and the orchard at Park Corner. "Peg Bowen" was suggested by a half-witted, gypsy-like personage who roamed at large for many years over the Island and was the terror of my childhood. — L.M. Montgomery

It's good netiquette to judge others by the the intent of their words not content of characters. — David Chiles

All the people in Star Trek will always be known as those characters. And what characters to have attached to your name in life! The show is such a phenomenon all over the world. — Nichelle Nichols

I do have some kind of gravitational pull towards young characters with more responsibility than they should have. — Jennifer Lawrence

I love doing characters that challenge me. I'd love to do something that requires me to change physically or learn a skill. — Charlotte Riley

I'm interested in gay characters - not trying to sensationalize gay characters, just [representing] who are in my personal life. I'm interested in exploring my world and my friends, and a lot of them happen to be gay. — Jamie Babbit

Discover everything about your characters that you can before you write your story. If you get stuck at any point, they will write your dialog for you. — Michael J. Kannengieser

I think some of the big characters, you know, they do these adventures, but they've got something about them, they've got this charisma, and they've got to have a sense of humor. Because whether it be very dry, or very silly, they've got to be likable. — Rhys Darby

What I think is wonderful is that women are not just avengers or victims in films. They are people. They are characters. It's so refreshing. They're playing different kinds of characters, and they aren't being typecast. — Madhuri Dixit

The characters in my films try to live honestly and make the most of the lives they've been given. I believe you must live honestly and develop your abilities to the full. People who do this are the real heroes. — Akira Kurosawa

We watched these auditions and could only pick one. Sometimes we would add new characters 'cause we wanted to use another actress. There were so many people who were just waiting for something like this. — Jenji Kohan

We started getting the script to different people and we were in the business of trying to fund it so we could get it off and running, and all the characters and sets designed and everything. — Don Bluth

The way to succeed is giving people a noble reason to do something despicable. And my patients ... my clients, my characters are doing kind of scamming, deceptive things but they're doing them for noble reasons. Typically to be loved, to be accepted, to trick someone into embracing them and care for them. — Chuck Palahniuk

When I look at my body of work, I've played a lot of characters who are morally conflicted - 'I'm right, no I'm wrong, I don't know what to do!' I want to play more characters who don't care as much, and who aren't as measured. They are what they are, no apologies. — Idris Elba

Growing up, I loved the tale of Peter Rabbit and also books on Pippi Longstocking. Pippi was a girl who had so much fun and was very daring. My sons loved all the Dr. Seuss books — Soraya Diase Coffelt

The thing I'm writing now, I have various characters, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, this couple dies. And they have a daughter ... I thought, 'OK, we have to do something with the daughter' ... then I realized she's not really their daughter. She has her own story. And she's become the most interesting character. She was this throwaway character that I didn't even conceive of before I started writing her into it, and now she's become very important in this book. — Sandra Dallas

It is commonplace to say that silent films are more "dreamlike," but what does that mean? In Nosferatu, it means that the characters are confronted with alarming images and denied the freedom to talk them away. There is no repartee in nightmares. Human speech dissipates the shadows and makes a room seem normal. Those things that live only at night do not need to talk, for their victims are asleep, waiting. — Roger Ebert

All novels must be autobiographical because I am the only material that I know. All of the characters are me. But at the same time, a novel is never autobiographical even if it describes the life of the author. Literary writing is a completely different medium. — John Banville

When you describe the miserable and unfortunate, and want to make the reader feel pity, try to be somewhat colder - that seems to give a kind of background to another's grief, against which it stands out more clearly. Whereas in your story the characters cry and you sigh. Yes, be more cold ... The more objective you are, the stronger will be the impression you make. — Anton Chekhov

I think almost always that what gets me going with a story is the atmosphere, the visual imagery, and then I people it with characters, not the other way around. — Ann Beattie

I've played four characters now, my latest one being Sandor the gypsy. — Thayer David

I wasn't into fairytales when I was little. I was of the generation of the earlier Disney films where many of the female characters, with the exception of the Maleficent's, were not little girls that I admired ... the little princesses. They weren't characters that I identified with. I think that's very different now for my girls and more recent films. — Angelina Jolie

Journeys become very good metaphors. They always have the character put into circumstances that reveal him. If I had based my characters in New York and had them just sitting and thinking about life, it would be like what contemporary U.S. fiction is about. That is very heavy, literally, for me. It doesn't become mainstream enough because the pages don't turn themselves. — Karan Bajaj

The constrained lives of his characters made me wonder how my own existence might appear in his hands. — Ian McEwan

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. — Bruce Eric Kaplan

I like the idea of bringing cartoon characters to life ... and although the Americans have already attempted this, their culture is not sufficiently humane to make it work. — Gerard Depardieu

No writer besides Shakespeare has created more memorable characters attached to vices and virtues. In even their least sympathetic characters, one senses a kind of helplessness to passion quivering between the poles of good and evil. — Roger Rosenblatt

There's also something happening in television similar to what happened in the '80s, when people stopped taking so many drugs and wanted to hear real instruments in music again. I think people want plot, story and characters. Those are more important than having a big star. — Jessica Pare

There's a certain magic about writing even when the characters refuse to act the way I want them to. — Gloria Bevan

I don't know about ground rules; but I create the world that arrives with the characters or situation or voice in my head that instigates the piece, whatever form it may take. — Norman Lock

And I have to credit David Jacobs with the opportunities he gave me. He was totally into sharing the creation of characters. David put together a show that told the story of people over many years' time and that was greatly enjoyable. Though nowadays that is frowned upon. — William Devane

I love these kind of movies as a kind of cinema-going geek myself. Those characters, you want to be like those characters when you go to the movies. You know, when you see a movie with a guy who's really cool and the killing's slick and easy. I don't know. There's something intoxicating about it. — Pierce Brosnan

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.' — Tatiana Maslany

I don't know if directors go, 'Hey! We've got another suicide-let's call Robin Tunney! It's weird, but they're all different, and I guess it gives the characters some kind of power ... At least I play women who are strong enough to take the power into their own hands! And kill themselves! So many women in films just shoot themselves in the head anyway, because they're not really there for any reason. — Robin Tunney

Women are always murdered and maimed, and they're never given their rightful place as lead characters! And I think [creator Michael Hirst] has just written what should have been written a long time ago. There shouldn't be anything that different about Vikings, but there is, because there've just been so many shows that have not stepped up to the plate and given female actors and female characters equal footing. — Clive Standen

I love working with male actors, and I think there's a tendency to write really interesting characters that would work solely alongside men where they would be in a man's world and have to deal with that, and it creates a lot of interesting storylines. For me, it's kind of circumstantial, but I definitely enjoy it. — Elisabeth Moss

When I use people I know, all of my instincts seem to go dead, and if I'm getting anywhere near myself then I can't do it. It's actually a real weakness! I hate writing personal essays, I don't think I'm especially good at it. I like just encountering [my characters], discovering them. I love the escape of just being surrounded by all these people who are nothing like people I know. But I don't find it hard to be in the middle of a different life, with a different set of habits and way of thinking and talking. That seems to come easily to me. — Jennifer Egan

Old characters never die, but I do need to take a break from them in order to create new ones. — Lurlene McDaniel

I do like when you find a true personal relationship with any of the characters, you like to make that honest connection. And every once in a while, there's that glimmer where you got that line in where something happens, where you get to really talk. — Jonathan Banks

I never want to write something until I know every scene in the movie. I don't want someone hiring me and then me not being able to write it. Which is always a fear. So I like to figure it out, know all the characters, and know almost every scene in the movie before I start writing. — Stephen Sommers

I always try to keep in mind that while the characters in a farce may find themselves in outrageous dilemmas, and may behave in a way that the audience finds amusing, the characters themselves don't have the consolation of knowing they're in a comedy. — Rupert Holmes

Anne DeGrace is a gifted story teller and Far From Home contains some of her most intriguing characters. Thoroughly enjoyable. — Paulette Jiles

I'm really proud of the characters I've been able to play. Certainly, playing the character on 'CSI' as Dr. Sherman Hawkes is a wonderful stereotype-busting role. — Hill Harper

Me, i'm going to write ass-kicking trans* characters. I think I might end up writing not a single thing that is "pure" by some people's standards. Just because, and because I can. — Aleksandr Voinov

I was born in Paris in the mid-1960s, and by the time I was 12 I had started going to the movies by myself. Most of the movies of that period never appealed to me. I didn't like the 'naturalism,' the sad or the 'down-to-earth' characters. What I wanted from film was fantasy, dreams, funny situations, extravagant decor - and beautiful women. — Christian Louboutin

I have great editors, and I always have. Somehow, great editors ask the right questions or pose things to you that get you to write better. It's a dance between you, your characters, and your editor. — Patricia MacLachlan

Writers tend to hate recurring characters; there's this writer snob thing about it. But I don't have that. I feel like the challenge is always to find a cool and innovative way to do it and, obviously, to not repeat your jokes. — Ana Gasteyer

Secret Saturdays ought to be required reading at middle schools everywhere. Maldonado gives us both voice and heart. His young characters navigate a challenging world with endearing earnestness, lively style, and a heartening desire for true friendship and dignity. — E.R. Frank

My father was a drill sergeant, and I've always had that mentality drilled into me of 'you've got to do better, you've got to do better.' I just try to listen to the characters. That's what works for me. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

The Nature of Familiar Letters, written, as it were, to the Moment, while the Heart is agitated by Hopes and Fears, on Events undecided, must plead an Excuse for the Bulk of a Collection of this Kind. Mere Facts and Characters might be comprised in a much smaller Compass: But, would they be equally interesting? — Samuel Richardson

With every book I write, I give the Hera Leick Promise. I will never weave into my stories: cheating; sex outside the main characters; sexual abuse; cliffhangars; years of separation; man whores; and lastly my worst pet peeve, insta-love. If one sneaks in, I give you permission to shoot me. Please make note, however, guns are not legal in England. Neither is murder. I hope. — Hera Leick

As an actor it's like, go with whatever excites you as an actor. What are you're going to invest yourself in as a character? What are you going to get into? Have a variety of characters to play. — Milo Ventimiglia

Television's so quick, and there's so many other fun elements to it, but you don't get such good scripts and the time to really make much more three dimensional characters. — Lydia Leonard