Different Character Quotes & Sayings

I try to play characters who are different from myself, so I feel like this character is someone who is really different. I actually think that if I did what he did in this movie, I would get a restraining order put against me. — Ryan Gosling

No writing is effortless. I'm not saying you can't have a good day where the words just kind of flow, but even those words have to be edited. Probably more than once. And I'm not saying a character hasn't somehow gone in a different direction that I wanted her to go, but that was me, not her. I let her get away from me. I let her roam free and nine times out of ten, the result is not good. I have to go back and start over because she veered off the path of my book. She changed the vision. And I did that. Not her. — Darynda Jones

What I enjoyed about being in the world of Jessica Jones, as Luke Cage, is that I wasn't front and center because it was Jessica Jones' story, but it allowed me to find the character from a different perspective. — Mike Colter

Described by Harold Bloom as "the beginning of the end of the traditional novel of social morality" (xii), George Eliot's Middlemarch is nonetheless replete with a kind of authorial intervention that modern readers might find tiresome. Readers today are accustomed to the contemporary fictional maxim of "show, don't tell" but Eliot had different aesthetic ideas, for she always tells us right away who we are dealing with. At the beginning of Middlemarch, the character of one of its protagonists, Dorothea Brooke, is laid out. Eliot writes, — George Eliot

In adopting these attitudes and practices, a parent will accomplish a large part of educating a child for responsibility. And yet, example alone is not enough. A sense of responsibility is attained by each child through his or her own efforts and experience. While the parents' example creates the favorable attitude and climate for learning, specific experiences consolidate the learning to make it part of the child's character. Therefore, it is important to give specific responsibilities to children matched to their different levels of maturity. In most homes children present problems, but parents find the solutions. If children are to mature, they must be given the opportunity to solve their own problems. — Haim G. Ginott

As actors, sometimes we want our character to go somewhere different than it goes, but that's being an actor. — Holland Roden

Tyrants are willing to commit to anything ... including mass murder to maintain their domination over every human being alive. They abuse the lives of the people they are entrusted with by the perverse dictates that they, themselves, would never live by. And they feel justified in this by their own self-righteous elite morality, which sets them high above everyone else in their own minds.
You and I, however, are made of quite different stuff. Our words are filled with our true beliefs and backed by the honesty of our actions. We take great pride in not only who we are ... but overcoming the struggle it took to make us this way. We are men and women of character ... principles ... and courage! — R.G. Risch

At the heart of Christian ethic is humility; at the heart of its parodies, pride. Different roads with different destinations, and the destinations color the character of those who travel by them. — N. T. Wright

Modern biblical scholars have established that the bible is a wiki. It was compiled over half a millennium from writers with different styles, dialects, character names, and conceptions of God and was subjected to haphazard editing that left it with many contradictions, duplications and non-sequiturs. — Steven Pinker

My American accent is really, really good. I started out in the theater, doing all different characters with all different accents. When I first came to America, I thought I would be playing American, all the time. It was just weird how it worked out that I played more international characters. — Rebel Wilson

I'm definitely not a dancer. I can move well, but it's more about the acting and the singing for me. Acting and singing are completely different, so I can't say which one I love better because I love them both. I love acting because I get to play different characters. But I also love my music because I get to portray me. — Vanessa Hudgens

Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and I were so different from each other. I was doing very young movies, and Marilyn, who was ahead of me, was doing a lot of homogenized movies that weren't quite as wild as the ones I was doing. Jayne was more of a character of herself. — Mamie Van Doren

So, it's a delicate thing, but at the same time our producers and writers are very much aware of the potential downfall that could ensue so I think they're going to be very careful about how they do that. At the same time I don't think they want to leave the characters in the same holding pattern that they've been in for a while. I think that they're all trying to put the characters in a different situation. — Emily Deschanel

I found very interesting - trying to separate the different facets of Superman in that way. When you're aware of how people perceive you, you can't always remain true to yourself, and that was an interesting thing for me to apply to the character as well - exploring these different facets of his personality while having certain bits of it stripped away. The arrogance of a person who would have the kind of power that Superman does - we see that in The Return of Superman. Superman is not that character, but since he has all of those powers, he has that capacity for arrogance. — Henry Cavill

In theater, you are there, you have a character, you have a play, you have a light, you have a set, you have an audience, and you're in control, and every night is different depending on you and the relationship with the other actors. It's as simple as that. — Diego Luna

I didn't want to argue with my hosts. I wanted them to talk. But I felt like reminding Li that perhaps forty million Chinese people had died of starvation a half century earlier because they followed their government's orders. It was the largest famine in history. A snapshot taken then would have given a very different picture of the supposedly essential character of Chinese people, and it would have entirely missed the point. Governments matter. Markets matter. History matters. International circumstances matter. — Howard W. French

There's usually a sense of humor about all of it. It is what it is. I had two characters that were equally detestable, in very different ways, that hit the airwaves, at the same time. It was a very interesting year in my career, in that way. But I have no fear, on that note. I have a new project for HBO, where I'm going to play the good guy. That's going to be fun and exciting, and shift the paradigm a bit. — Pablo Schreiber

If you speak in a different accent, you begin to move in a slightly different way. You think in a slightly different way. I think it's part of trying to find what makes a character. — David Tennant

One thing about our show that wasn't even in my awareness, but was brought to my attention by other people, is that our show is about these love-based relationships. Even though the characters are obviously going through different conflicts, you can really feel that the characters love each other. And they really try their best. — Steve Zissis

Each character I play has different dimensions. I'm not interested in words that pull them together. — Alan Rickman

I'm never going to tell the reader what to believe; I'm going to examine these characters that believe different ways, and examine their motives. — Barbara Kingsolver

I think television is really incredible because of the fact that you get to sit with a character for so, and the character does something different, every week. I think that's really interesting. — Cristin Milioti

The most important thing to having a long career, as an actor, is diversity and being able to play different types of characters in different types of movies. I want to keep acting, all my life. In order to do that, I think it is important to go and do the bigger tentpole box office movies, and then also do more character roles. — Josh Hutcherson

It's usually easier for me to begin writing in a character's voice if that person is different from me in some significant way. — Nell Freudenberger

I love science fiction, and one of the things I love about it is that it's so very different. You can read stuff that's just fast-paced adventure, and the characters are cardboard, but who cares, because they're heroes, and we love it. And you can read stuff that's really deep character, and everything in between. — Ann Leckie

I consider it as a foreshadowing of modernity in many different respects, and the consistency of character is interesting to the emerging modern psychology. The emphasis on dream knowledge relates quite deeply to psychoanalysis, although I suppose psychoanalysis wouldn't like to say that ... Freud was always saying he was a scientist. — Marina Warner

The Missouri is, perhaps, different in appearance and character from all other rivers in the world; there is a terror in its manner which is sensibly felt, the moment we enter its muddy waters from the Mississippi. — George Catlin

I usually play characters that are a lot different than me. I mean, I'm never in a fight in a movie and if I'm in them, I'm usually losing. — Matt Damon

When I have to play the same role every day, I have the flexibility to play the character in so many different ways. It's almost like playing five different roles. — Simon Baker

I don't really approach stories to make them different from other stuff I've seen, I just try to get into the character, into his or her head. Try to make it as funny, as scary or as wild as I can so that I really like it. — Sam Raimi

My favorite part about working in theater is the rehearsal process. I absolutely love the rehearsal process. Working out the characters, figuring the character out, and the relationships between the different characters. I love all of that, which, unfortunately in film, you get very little opportunity to have. — Joseph Gatt

Well, the medium of film is so different than a book that just by bringing it into visual storytelling is to change it up. I think in a book, in any book, you can have a reactive character. Some of the great novels of all time have had that, but in a film you can't do that. — Melissa Rosenberg

I've always thought of myself as more of a character actress. I've tried to do different things, but I've always been under the radar and that's how I like it. I've been really blessed to work this long and I just hope I continue to get better and better and better and better. — Rose Byrne

I did a lot of work with early 20th century attitudes, the kind of superficial notions and behavior that prompt people who don't know history very well to think that "people were different back then" - but beneath all that are characters who react in ways that we can all recognize, and will always be able to recognize. — James Vance

Every pill change your personality, as much you take as more you become different character. — Deyth Banger

I can tell by my own reaction to it that this book is harmful. But let him only wait and perhaps one day he will admit to himself that this same book has done him a great service by bringing out the hidden sickness of his heart and making it visible. - Altered opinions do not alter a man's character (or do so very little); but they do illuminate individual aspects of the constellation of his personality which with a different constellation of opinions had hitherto remained dark and unrecognizable. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I love my job. It's such a privilege to be able to play such complicated characters. Growing up, I wanted to be a billion different things. I realized in order for that to happen, I don't have to be them all because the characters I want to play require such research and such a transformation to make that work - that's something that I love doing. — Ashley Bell

The comic book, and I've said it before, is a treasure trove. It's a grab bag. We certainly have characters and story lines that we really want to do - but to get there in a TV series, you have to take your time. Sometimes you can't get right to it. They're two different mediums. So we make it our own and really own the material. I like to think of it as an alternate universe. — Glen Mazzara

The Enneagram is not a system of personality, as it is so often presented, but rather a definition of character fixation. The same character fixation can manifest across a full range of personalities. Jack Nicholson and Slobodan Milosevic have the same character fixation but different personalities. — Eli Jaxon-Bear

I think it actually makes more sense for a new audience than the old show did because we're focusing on one character at a time. It's all conjecture why somebody didn't watch, but one of the theories was that there was just so much information, even in the trailers and promos, of all these different people. — Mitchell Hurwitz

There is no way to understand the character of the taboo rules, except as a survival from some previous more elaborate cultural background. We know also and as a consequence that any theory which makes the taboo rules ... intelligible just as they are without any reference to their history is necessarily a false theory ... why should we think about [the theories of] analytic moral philosophers such as Moore, Ross, Prichard, Stevenson, Hare and the rest in any different way? ... Why should we think about our modern use of good, right and obligatory in any different way from that in which we think about late eighteenth-century Polynesian uses of taboo? — Alasdair MacIntyre

I don't hate anybody. My character is one thing, but me as an individual is completely different. — Larry The Cable Guy

I tend to play every color in the Southern rainbow, and the challenge is to make each character different so I'm not doing any generic 'Southern acting.' — Carrie Preston

The true magic of novels dwells within us individually. Each reader will interpret every single character, scene, and metaphor in a slightly different way — Carl Henegan

I find that at almost every press junket I get that comment, "this character's different from what you generally play ... " And that's OK! But I think "generally play" stems back to Mr Darcy. I'm fine with it but I tend to find that if it's a departure, which in other people's words it always is, it's always a departure from that. — Colin Firth

There are species that retain their characteristics even in conditions that are relatively different from their natural ones; other species in similar circumstances instead become extinct; otherwise what takes place is racial mixing with other elements in which no assimilation or real evolution occurs. The result of this interbreeding closely resembles Mendel's laws concerning heredity: once it disappears in the phenotype, the primitive element survives in the form of a separated, latent heredity that is capable of cropping up in sporadic apparitions, even though it is always endowed with a character of heterogeneity in regard to the superior type. — Julius Evola

I watch a lot of different films. A lot of different performances and I find a lot of little things from the films or things that actors do or people in real life who have behaviors or idiosyncrasies that I like or find interesting and I try to remember that. And then I'll do a prayer. I'll do a prayer to ask the character or the spirit of the character to come and visit me. And let's work together. — Wesley Snipes

The way people respond to struggles or express their feelings in difficult situations are very different. I like imagining how characters would react in certain situations. — Lee Yoon-ki

The American university inherits the missions of two very different institutions: the English college and the German research university. The first pattern prevailed before the Civil War. Curricula centered on the classics, and the purpose of education was understood to be the formation of character. With the emergence of a modern industrial society in the last decades of the nineteenth century, that kind of pedagogy was felt to be increasingly obsolete. Johns Hopkins was founded in 1876 as the first American university on the German model: a factory of knowledge that would focus in particular on the natural and social sciences, the disciplines essential to the new economy and the world to which it was giving rise. — William Deresiewicz

It is notable how little empathy is cultivated or valued in our society. I put this down to our traditional racism and obsessive sectarianism. Even so, one would think that we would be encouraged to project ourselves into the character of someone of a different race or class, if only to be able to control him. But no effort is made. — Gore Vidal

The specific character of [women's] oppression cannot be explained away by equating different situations through superficial and childish simplifications[:]

It is true that both the woman and the male worker are condemned to silence by their exploitation. But under the current system, the worker's wife is also condemned to silence by her worker-husband. In other words, in addition to the class exploitation common to both of them, women must confront a particular set of relations that exist between them and men, relations of conflict and violence that use physical differences as their pretext. — Thomas Sankara

That's when you're laughing the hardest because you're not really in character. You're just trying to learn the moves, but once they call action, you're in it and it's like you transport yourself to a different place. — Malin Akerman

Superman is such an old character. He's an old character with this huge legacy behind him. And one of the awesome things about the fact that he's been around for these decades is that he's gone through these different phases. — Gene Luen Yang

I do always like to do things I haven't done before, so I'm always looking out for things in a different genre, or a different sort of character. — Jim Broadbent

Sometimes I am a different character in different languages. I have different enjoyment from them. Sometimes different answers come out of me. Like, I didn't even know that about me. I get to know myself through different languages, actually. — Roger Federer

I'm extremely happy, but I don't do love songs for the most part. It feels weird; that's such a personal thing to me. I'd rather live that in my real life and play a different character outside of that. — Carrie Underwood

Acting is a bigger step into modelling in a way. Modelling is easier when you don't look like yourself. When you look like a different person, you feel different. Acting goes deeper into that; you have to move and talk like that character. I love it. — Liberty Ross

Plot is certainly a part of constructing a story. It's a factor in outlining. But believe it or not, it's the least important factor. If you focus your efforts on the Three Legs - character arc, pacing, and theme - you can change the specifics of the plot a hundred different times, and you'll still have essentially the same story. — Libbie Hawker

Each character requires different language, and these issues become inseparable. You have all these balls in the air: language, character, narrative. For me, the primary focus must be words, sentences, paragraphs. — Dana Spiotta

People are always thinking that I'm the main character in my books, but each one has been different, and sometimes they've been men. — Sue Miller

I'm looking for richness, complexity, and characters that have different layers and that you don't really get bored of. — Julian Jarrold

If I'm really considering doing film from now on then that is the smart thing to do, or you can go either way. You can just do the same character over and over again and make a different comedy like over and over again. — Ray Romano

When I'm in the studio, I write the music, I play the different instruments, I produce it, I arrange it, and it's a self-indulgent exercise. It's the way I make my music. And when I'm acting, I get to leave myself behind, which is a relief. I get to collaborate with a director; I respect the director's medium and all the actors and actresses. So at the end of the day, it's about a character and it's about a director's vision. It's a really good balance for being so intense and alone in my personal process of making music. — Lenny Kravitz

I just love to act. I like to get away, totally play a different character, someone you can get really involved in knowing. I've gotten really involved in some characters and written down little summaries of where they live and what their families are like. — Amanda Peterson

Characters in animation do not cheat. They do not let you go for another. Animation is on certain points, very close to the pornography industry. All your physical needs are met. You can watch different animations and find anything you desire. — Hideaki Anno

Other kinds of movie stars, it's a different thing, they bring their persona to the part and that's what people like to see, and they are not really transforming in terms of their character. — Joel Coen

But being able to talk to so many patients from so many walks of life gives a tremendous window into people's lives. This is not to say I want to write about individual patients, but I think that after listening to the concerns of people who are so different from me, I can more realistically portray characters who are so different from me. — Daniel Mason

The movement for women's liberation was about an emotional transformation, an explosion, a feeling all over the country that things must be different, and ideas about how they should be. I think fiction can capture that kind of thing better than other genres because in fiction you can explore the feelings of your characters - the before and the after. — Alix Kates Shulman

The Foxy character and Inga Marchand are two different people. My fiance calls me Inga. No one around me calls me Foxy. I go to church every Sunday. I go to Bible study every Friday night. I'm saved. — Foxy Brown

Each director is different. Clint Eastwood and Chris Nolan are completely different, and I need to adjust to the story and character and the director and just my duty as an actor. — Ken Watanabe

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

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

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

I just try to put myself in the sense of being a character, sometimes male. I suppose I just like the idea of trying to be different people coming from all kinds of different angles. Most of it was just from my imagination. — Kate Bush

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

I wanted to make a film about anorexia. I thought about it for a long time, but then gave up on this idea as I felt that this theme would be so hermetic and closed that it would not reach an audience. However, the plot about the character of Olga and the idea that a body has a lot of different meanings were still present in my mind. — Malgorzata Szumowska

Sometimes the character will go into a completely different direction than I expected once the cameras start rolling. That's what I love about what I do. — Lorraine Toussaint

I think that different actors bring different qualities to the Batman character. It's such a wonderful mantle to put on that I think it's a lot of fun for different actors to see how they play it. — Kevin Conroy

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

My dad says that when I was two or three I used to go out dressed as a different character every day. I remember thinking it was perfectly normal to wear different coloured shoes and carry a pink umbrella. But now I've got a goddaughter of that age; I realise it's not normal at all. — Alice Eve

Obviously, my life and my job in 2010 is very different from Peggy's experience in the 1960s. I exist in a world that enjoys more equality between men and women. But I don't take any of that into my performance. I just want to play the character as who she is as an individual - scene to scene. — Elisabeth Moss

When you have a character to work with, you carry them around in a strange way - they make you look at the world in a different way. — Ben Whishaw

The main thing about improvising is listening so if something happens that wasn't expected and you know your character, you know what has to happen in this scene, you can react to that in a way that's honest and it might take you in a different direction to go to the same place. — Vince Vaughn

A lot of people don't think about it, but the Bible has every horror element that you can imagine. It's got the devil, the Antichrist, Lucifer, and Satan - which are four different characters. It's got the end of the world. You've got zombies, giants, demon possession, a lot of murder. — Marilyn Manson

Experience itself, to our own great loss and bane, affords us sad proof that Satan seizes as many opportunities of deceiving and destroying mankind as there are different moods and affections natural to the human character. Demonolatry, Nicholas Remy — Phillip W. Simpson

We now possess four principles of morality: 1) a philosophical: do good for its own sake, out of respect for the law; 2) a religious: do good because it is God's will, out of love of God; 3) a human: do good because it will promote your happiness, out of self-love; 4) a political: do good because it will promote the welfare of the society of which you are a part, out of love of society having regard to yourself. But is this not all one single principle, only viewed from different sides? — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Never jeopardize who you are for a role. Now, I'm not saying you should never change for a role, because the fun of being different characters is adapting different nuances and different parts of the character, but never jeopardize your moral compass or anything like that to have a role. — Yara Shahidi

Being an actor is a lot more involved than many people realize; there are hundreds of ways to play any character. Even for a stylized bad guy, there are 4 or 5 different personalities I can play off the top of my head without thinking - better and more experienced actors can do dozens or hundreds. — Conan Stevens

I love playing characters that go to extreme places, and I love to explore different kinds of psychological landscapes, so it is ultimately a kind of fun, but it's also complicated and colored by the depth of the nastiness of it, at certain times, as well. — Zachary Quinto

I always considered myself as a character actor. I always try to be versatile to show different sides of human experience. — Robert Duvall

I think being a character actor is exciting in that it allows you to embody completely different things, whether it's through wild accents or a crazy bad guy or a drunken good guy. — Jackie Earle Haley

I loved playing Walternate because he was completely the same character, version 1985, and then it developed in such a different way, physically and mentally. So, to be able to play that, in the same television series, as playing the other ones was a fantastic gift for me. — John Noble

I just like a good story. I want the story to be good and I want the character to be different than the last one I played. That's not always possible, but that's what I want. — Garret Dillahunt

Working on camera is a different ballgame in the sense that it's far more intimate work, but the basics and the foundations of being able to create something that isn't necessarily your own instincts - is a character that you have inside your head - whether you're talking about television or film or theater, that still has to be the grounding work. — Rose Leslie

The little girl's sense of secrecy that developed at prepuberty only grows in importance. She closes herself up in fierce solitude: she refuses to reveal to those around her the hidden self that she considers to be her real self and that is in fact an imaginary character: she plays at being a dancer like Tolstoy's Natasha, or a saint like Marie Leneru, or simply the singular wonder that is herself. There is still an enormous difference between this heroine and the objective face that her parents and friends recognise in her. She is also convinced that she is misunderstood: her relationship with herself becomes even more passionate: she becomes intoxicated with her isolation, feels different, superior, exceptional: she promises that the future will take revenge on the mediocrity of her present life. From this narrow and petty existence she escapes by dreams. — Simone De Beauvoir

Look, every actor has a different way of preparing or creating a character and yeah, we all are from different backgrounds. — Alex Pettyfer

After I play every character, I always walk away and feel a little different. I've experienced something that's not my life, but I've made it my life. — Brittany Snow

With any other movie, you're entering new territory, so it's quite different to be involved in something where it's the same characters, and the same people. — Anna Kendrick

Basically, I only play one character; I just play him at different volumes. — Chris Farley

Every character in each of my movies is a different side of myself. — Ralph Bakshi