Person And Character Quotes & Sayings

It takes a great deal of character strength to apologize quickly out of one's heart rather than out of pity. A person must possess himself and have a deep sense of security in fundamental principles and values in order to genuinely apologize. — Stephen Covey

To us he's like... like scenery, in the background of our lives, but for him, he's the main character. He has a life and a job and a whole story. He's a real person. And to him, we're the background scenery. — Dan Wells

It was easy to be good and kind in times of plenty. The trying times were the moments that defined a man.
And love? Love was something that did much to change a person. It brought joy as it brought suffering, and in turn brought about those moments that defined one's character. Love gave life to the lifeless. It was the greatest of all living powers.
But, as with all things, love had a dark side to it. — Renee Ahdieh

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

Every single experience, every single thing that's happened in my life, struggle, obstacle, trials and tribulations, I think they've all molded me to become the character and the person who I am. — Apolo Ohno

People seem to sometimes have a difficulty drawing that line between the character and the person. — Clark Duke

What a person praises is perhaps a surer standard, even than what he condemns, of his own character, information and abilities. — Augustus Hare

A self-confident person isn't boastful or pushy but is secure with herself in a way that inspires confidence in others. She values herself regardless of her physical attributes or individual talents, understanding that honor and character are what really matter. — Peggy Post

Maya's character was different. Although she was beautiful and stood out of the crowd, she was a very shy person. The siblings got along quite well, but in many ways they were absolutely opposites. Maya was always hesitant and thought before she started anything new and Joey was very spontaneous. He acted before he thought about consequences and so they disagreed often and it took them always a while to agree on something. — Gloria Tesch

For me, the beauty of a person is a matter of the whole package. You have to look at the whole thing, not just a matter of outward appearance or whatever. It has to do with one's character, personality, upbringing and so on. — Gong Li

The fact that God can bring character development and personal growth out of any situation is conditional on people's willingness to submit to God's will. God is sovereign over every life, but those who yield their will to him will be shaped according to his purposes. When God directs a life for his purposes, all of life is a school. No experience, good or bad, is ever wasted (Rom. 8:28). God doesn't squander people's time. He doesn't ignore their pain. He brings not only healing but growth out of even the worst experiences. Every relationship can be God's instrument to mature a person's character. — Henry T. Blackaby

There is a stage you reach, Deagle thinks, a time somewhere in early middle age, when your past ceases to be about yourself. Your connection to your former life is like a dream or delirium, and that person who you once were is merely a fond acquaintance, or a beloved character from a storybook. This is how memory becomes nostalgia. They are two very different things - the same way that a person is different from a photograph of a person. — Dan Chaon

The common mistake that bullies make is assuming that because someone is nice that he or she is weak. Those traits have nothing to do with each other. In fact, it takes considerable strength and character to be a good person. — MaryElizabeth Williams

Brandon: How does the character fit into the story, how will people expect them to fit into the story, and how, therefore, can I make them incongruous for those expectations? I'm looking for incongruity. Ask yourself why this character cannot fill the role in the plot that they are expected to fulfill. Ask yourself who would be perfect for this role. I'm not going to use that person. — Brandon Sanderson

My mom's brother was gay, and he actually passed away from AIDS when I was 13. He was quite a character, but he also worked at the electrical plant, so he was this complicated guy with a big laugh who would wear a trucker hat and do impressions. He was gay, but to me, Uncle Alan was just the funniest person in the world. — Casey Wilson

As a writer, I have to admit, there is something darkly compelling about Alzheimer's because it attacks the two things most central to a writer's craft - language and memory, which together make up an individual's identity. Alzheimer's makes a new character out of a familiar person. — Charlie Pierce

When you have a grasp on eternity your eyes won't ever see the battle or the lost people that hurt you. You will see a beautiful story of hope, in every character. It is not one person god loves. He loves us all and this is his story, our story and theirs. — Shannon L. Alder

If in some cases a bit of a nautical Murat in setting forth his person ashore, the Handsome Sailor of the period in question evinced nothing of the dandified Billy-be-Dam, an amusing character all but extinct now, but occasionally to be encountered, and in a form yet more amusing than the original, at the tiller of the boats on the tempestuous Erie Canal or, more likely, vaporing in the groggeries along the towpath. — Herman Melville

I think every role you take on, you should take on the responsibility of doing the best representation of that person or that character or that role. When it is a human being that has actually existed, and it is a person that people know of, yeah, you feel an even more amount of pressure to do a good job. — Luke Evans

It seemed to me ... that the only valid people to deal with crime were cops, and I would like to make the lead character, rather than a single person, a squad of cops. — Evan Hunter

The Miguel Syjuco character is not me. I wanted him to represent my own fears and frustrations and guilt, my own worst tendencies and my optimistic expectations. He's a cautionary tale for me. But he's also an examination of the darkest things that haunt me as a person. — Miguel Syjuco

Redwing had read somewhere that one of his favourite writers, Ernest Hemingway, had been asked what was the best training for a novelist. He had said "an unhappy childhood." Redwing had enjoyed a fine time growing up, but he wondered if this whole expedition was unfolding more like a novel, and would be blamed on one person, one character, the guy in charge: him. Maybe you got a happy childhood and then an unhappy adulthood, and that's how novels worked. — Gregory Benford

But all the feelings that evoke in us the joy or the misfortune of a real person are only produced in us through the intermediary of an image of that joy or that misfortune; the ingeniousness of the first novelist was in understanding that, in the apparatus of our emotions, since the image is the only essential element, the simplification which consists of purely and simply suppressing the factual characters is a definitive improvement. — Marcel Proust

There is no stronger test of a person's character than power and authority, exciting as they do every passion, and discovering every latent vice. — Plutarch

Pastor and radio broadcaster Tony Evans says, "If you want a better world, composed of better nations, inhabited by better states, filled with better counties, made up of better cities, comprised of better neighborhoods, illuminated by better churches, populated by better families, then you'll have to start by becoming a better person." That's always where it starts - with me, with you. If we focus on personal character, we make the world a better place. If we do that our entire lives, we've done the best thing we can do to improve our world. The — John C. Maxwell

When a potter bakes a pot, he checks its solidity by pulling it out of the oven and thumping it. If it "sings" it's ready. If it "thuds," it's placed back in the oven. The character of a person is also checked by thumping. Been thumped lately? — Anonymous

The only person who had any control was Jonathan Harris. His character was so flamboyant that he was able to make things happen. My character was fairly one-dimensional, so I had my relationship with Dr. Smith and with the family. — Mark Goddard

I just adored Peter Medak, the director. He's such a character, but he was so much fun. Some directors come in and they truly get angry about things.Peter was still in a fantastic mood. He's a delightful person. He threw a big party at the end of the pilot, which was so sweet. And his wife is an opera singer. He's just a very warm, crazy beautiful individual. — Brigid Brannagh

If you want to do your version, go off and write it. You bring your knowledge to it, and you can use that to shape it and color it, but it's someone else's version of that character. You're not actually playing the real person. — Jared Harris

Often our self-esteem is tied to our work. In our culture, men and women often define themselves by the jobs they hold ... But a person's job tells you nothing about a person's character or value. — Billy Graham

I always tend to like the characters that I play. I'm convinced that I am this person and I'm OK with whatever they do. — Mark Wahlberg

The main character and the most important character are not always the same person - you have to know the difference. — John Irving

One of the scariest things to me was, I really feel like I'm a pretty even-keeled person with a good outlook and respect level, but in that environment, deep within the character, you see how easy it is to go to that place because you're one-upping each other and it's this heavy environment filled with young men trying to make an impression. It's dangerous. It's something that I became very conscious of afterwards. — Nick Jonas

The best index to a person's character is how he treats people who can't do him any good, and how he treats people who can't fight back. — Abigail Van Buren

I had given thought to acting, but I never really had a good enough opportunity or a character who made sense and paralleled my life a little bit. I feel like I'm one of the poster boys for a bad guy in a movie. I feel like I'm a good person to play a bad guy in a movie. I can say that. — Gucci Mane

With thought, patience, and discrimination, book passion becomes the signature of a person's character. — Nicholas A. Basbanes

there is no such thing as a character in a script, only words on a page. An actor speaks these words of dialogue, and so the reader forms a sense of an actual person, though the character himself is an illusion. — Karl Iglesias

I don't think I ever relinquish a person I have known, and surely not my fictional characters. I see them, I hear them, with a clarity that I would call hallucinatory if hallucination didn't mean something else ... A character whom we create can never die, any more than a friend can die ... Through [my characters] I've lived many parallel lives. — Marguerite Yourcenar

It's important to me that the reader goes on a ride with the characters, that you set context enough to know, "Okay, here's where we are in the world. Now we're just going to go inside this person's head, this guy's heart, this woman's ambitions and take it down to very, very small scale." — Don Winslow

Do you know that when one who has influence with youth- be he teacher, leader or parent- seriously weakens the foundations upon which a young person has built, by faith-destroying challenges the youngster is not yet equipped to meet, he fashions a disciple who has been effectively cut loose from fundamentals at a time when he needs most to rely on them? The challenger may himself be a moral, educated, well-meaning person of integrity, doing what he does in the name of honesty and truth. His own character may have been formed in an atmosphere of faith and conviction which, through his influence, he may now help to destroy in his young follower. "Disenchanted" himself in his mature years, he turns his powers on an immature mind and leaves it ready prey for nostrums and superstitions and behavior he himself would disdain. — Marion D. Hanks

Names generate meaning in a short amount of space - they provoke thoughts, questions. That's something I like doing. Of course, you have to be careful. Sometimes it can alienate the reader, it can be another level of mediation, to make a character carry the great burden of a metaphoric name. The character can be a device before he or she becomes a person, and that can be a bad thing for a writer who wants to offer up a kind of emotional proximity in the work. It's a constant struggle, the desire to be playful and the desire to communicate on some very stark emotional level. — Joshua Ferris

I don't base any character on a real person, and really don't do composites either. I make them up. — Nora Roberts

As a believer, I know that Jesus Christ has a plan and it's not going to be my plan. It's not always succeeding and looking back it's amazing looking back to see how God works in mysterious ways, not always good ways, rough ways but those rough times, those rough patches, and those swamps and all those things that I went through are looking back, were such an incredible life lessons for me not only to shape and build me as an athlete but most importantly, my character as a person. — Jennie Finch

What a person says and does in ordinary moments when when no one is looking reveals more about true character than grand actions taken while in the spotlight. Our true character is revealed by normal, consistent, everyday attitudes and behavior, not by self-conscious words or deeds or rare acts of moral courage. — Michael Josephson

Whenever I've done a sketch in which I'm asked to play a mom, my brain goes to Minnesota. It makes the character seem matronly, warm, the kind of person that takes care of you and brings you Campbell's soup when you're sick. It's a great shortcut. — Allison Tolman

Many people will profess faithfulness, but few will demonstrate it. The virtue of faithfulness is often costly, and few people are willing to pay the price. But for the godly person, faithfulness is an absolutely essential quality of his character, regardless of what it might cost. — Jerry Bridges

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

Love was something that did much to change a person. It brought joy as it brought suffering, and in turn brought about those moments that defined one's character. — Renee Ahdieh

Jesus is not honored most by the exploration of various christologies, any more than your wife would be honored by your indecision concerning her character. Jesus is honored by our knowing and treasuring him for who he really is. He is a real person. A fact. A fixed, unchanging reality in the universe, independent of our feelings. Our feelings about him do not make him what he is. Our feelings about him reflect the value of what we think he has. And if our knowledge of him is wrong, to that degree our enjoyment of him will be no honor to the real Jesus. Our joy displays his glory when it's a reflex of seeing him for who he really is. — John Piper

I can't judge the characters I play, because it's for the audience to do. What I can try to do is to understand and embody what were they going through? How did they make the decisions they made? That to me is a more interesting way to approach something, rather than saying this person is a villain and that person is this and - because it's not very interesting to play that anyway. — Kevin Spacey

The major problem in our lives is to decide and clarify our responsibilities. To truly be committed to a life of honesty, love and discipline, we must be willing to commit ourselves to reality. This commitment, according to Peck, "requires the willingness and the capacity to suffer continual self-examination." Such an ability requires a good relationship with oneself. This is precisely what no shame-based person has. In fact, a toxically shamed person has an adversarial relationship with himself. Toxic shame - the shame that binds us - is a core part of neurotic and character disordered syndromes of behavior. — John Bradshaw

We must learn and then teach our children that niceness does not equal goodness. Niceness is a decision, a strategy of social interaction; it is not a character trait. People seeking to control others almost always present the image of a nice person in the beginning. Like rapport-building, charm and the deceptive smile, unsolicited niceness often has a discoverable motive. — Gavin De Becker

When you're playing a real character, you want to honor that person and receive inspiration from that person. They need to anoint you in some way that allows you to borrow just a small piece of their soul. That is the flame. — Lorraine Toussaint

A person of character seeks true happiness in living a life of purpose and meaning, placing a higher value on significance than success. — Michael Josephson

I play a character every day of my life, and I don't want to play a character as myself. They can judge me as an actress, not as a person. I'm not a spokeswoman for Anna. — Anna Friel

You can't write good characters if you can't imagine what it's like being in another person's skin. And if you can imagine that, you naturally want other people's lives to be better. You want to make that happen. — Patrick Rothfuss

Cars do not reflect the character of a person. A car is tangible, while a soul is spiritual. How can one represent the other? If cars represent our character, then we should all be driving convertibles. Because people change depending on if things are good or bad, and so are as fickle as the weather. A car can never fulfill someone the way a solid friendship, memorable experience or a good lamb roast can. — Simon Williams

Mary J. Blige is the Queen Latifah character. Her voice in this movie [Rock of ages] is, she just gives it this incredible warmth, and she's just this person who blows out of the screen. She's just incredible. — Adam Shankman

Leadership is the sum of those qualities of intellect, human understanding, and moral character that enables a person to inspire and control a group of people successfully. — John A. Lejeune

Freedom and diversity guard each other, and if a country could form the whole of one's character, Napoleon III and Victor Hugo would have been the same person ... if national identity means anything, it means something that comes with you wherever you go, and stays with you no matter how long you stay away. — Clive James

For modeling, I was always creating characters. I dress like a tomboy. So, when I'd go into a shoot, there'd be all these dresses, and I'd say to myself, 'Okay, this isn't me. It's somebody else. So, who is this person?' Acting is the next level of that. — Agyness Deyn

Character is just another term for "good person." A person of character lives a worthy life guided by moral principles. A person of character is a good parent, a good friend, a good employee and a good citizen. — Michael Josephson

There are times when I look over the various parts of my character with perplexity. I recognize that I am made up of several persons and that the person that at the moment has the upper hand will inevitably give place to another. But which is the real one? All of them or none? — W. Somerset Maugham

After that, all the while Millie was eating the pudding ... we both tore Christopher's character to shreds. It was wonderful fun ... He drove everyone mad in Chrestomanci Castle by insisting on silk shirts and exactly the right kind of pajamas. 'And he could get them right anyway by magic,' Millie told me, 'if he wasn't too lazy to learn how ... But the thing that really annoys me is the way he never bothers to learn a person's name. If a person isn't important to him, he always forgets their name.'
When Millie said this, I realized that Christopher had never once forgotten my name ... — Diana Wynne Jones

Playing those one-dimensional characters is actually really difficult because you're not dealing with somebody you would ever really know. I don't think anybody here could imagine actually knowing Cindy Campbell from Scary Movies. So, in a way, your job is so much easier when you're playing a person that you really understand and that seems very relatable. I think I was coming to a place in my career where I was like, "I'd like to do something a little more rewarding." — Anna Faris

When I get the possibility of using a character like Bruce Wayne or Dick Grayson, I try and think about what's most exciting or interesting about them as a person, so I try and think what they are at their core, or what piece of their psychology do I gravitate toward that I respect, and I'm excited by it when I read books about them. — Scott Snyder

Love is a form of energy, and similar to all forms of energy, it is both essential for life and dangerous. Love can enrich a person's life or destroy a person's world. Love is a catalytic agent of change because it makes us dare to become the best person that we can be. Falling in love for the first time drives a person to the cusp of madness, while the bitter aftermath of a love lost irrevocably alters the positive and negative aspects of a person's character. Withstanding rejection by a lover, we discover within us those ingredients that we will need in order to find our life mate and complete ourselves as man and woman. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I kept going deeper and deeper into this world of repetition ... The sad thing is, people don't want to believe that the person they're in love with is out of his mind, drinking and using, so if you give them even half an excuse, they're going to want to believe it. A girl with no prior exposure to the disease had to be blissfully unaware of the nefarious tricks of the dope fiend. That's how I was able to get high all summer and autumn and pretend like it wasn't happening. I was saying, 'I'm sick.' I was deteriorating physically and emotionally. Jaime was tolerant, and it did speak well of her character, because she was not the type to abandon ship during a crisis. She didn't consider backing off or bowing out, she was just there, which I can't say about everybody. I don't know if I could say it even about myself. — Anthony Kiedis

To know the true nature of a person unknown, just see closely and correctly the character of known people who truly like him or her. — Anuj

When young we think there will come one person who will savor and sustain us always; when we are older we know this is the dream of a child, that all hearts finally are bruised and scarred, scored and torn, repaired by time and will, patched by force of character, yet fragile and rickety forevermore, no matter how ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall. — Brian Doyle

I decide what character I am. I allow myself to become another person. Because if I'm just Stephanie, I'm not comfortable. When I have to jump and do all these things, I feel so silly, but if you become someone else, it's okay. — Stephanie Seymour

He joined Jude in the kitchen and began making a salad, and JB slumped to the dining-room table and started flipping through a novel Jude had left there. "I read this," he called over to him. "Do you want to know what happens in the end?"
"No, JB," said Jude. "I'm only halfway through."
"The minister character dies after all."
"JB!"
After that, JB's mood seemed to improve. — Hanya Yanagihara

I've found that the way a person feels about cats-and the way they feel about him or her in return-is usually an excellent gauge by which to measure a person's character — P.C. Cast

But in short, the recipe for a growing person is always grace plus truth over time. Give a person grace (unmerited favor) an truth (structure), and do that over time, and you have the greatest chance of this person growing into a person of good character. Grace includes support, resources, love, compassion, forgiveness, and all of the relations sides of God's nature. Truth is the structure of life; it tells us how we are supposed to live our lives and how life really works. — Henry Cloud

It was Ernie Haller, who had photographed Bette Davis in Jezebel and Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind, who was solely responsible for the visuals in Mildred Pierce, said Crawford. "Ernie was at the rehearsals. And so was Mr. [Anton] de Grot, who did the sets. I recall seeing Ernie's copy of the script and it was filled with notations and diagrams. I asked him if these were for special lights and he said, 'No, they're for special shadows.' Now, that threw me. I was a little apprehensive. I was used to the look of Metro, where everything, including the war pictures, was filmed in blazing white lights. Even if a person was dying there was no darkness. But when I saw the rushes of Mildred Pierce I realized what Ernie was doing. The shadows and half-lights, the way the sets were lit, together with the unusual angles of the camera, added considerably to the psychology of my character and to the mood and psychology of the film. And that, my dear, is film noir." "Mildred — Shaun Considine

Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man's character. Only a brute or an altruist would claim that the appreciation of another person's virtues is an act of selflessness, that as far as one's own selfish interest and pleasure are concerned, it makes no difference whether one deals with a genius or a fool, whether one meets a hero or a thug, whether one marries an ideal woman or a slut. — Ayn Rand

My way in for photographing people is really their work. I'm always interested in what people make, and then I photograph the person. Sometimes the person is a disappointment. But that's the risk. It informs me a lot about the character of a person if I know their work first. — Anton Corbijn

A person can transfigure the disquiet of solitude in a positive or negative manner. Periods of enforced solitude can cause a person to develop eccentricities of conduct and character, parley with a number of mental aberrations, partake in self-destructive diversions, or use their time productively to contemplate worldly issues and diligently work on self-improvement. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I take my time to get into the mindset of the character and say my lines. I really have to be the person that I am playing. — Hrithik Roshan

Certain people do need to stay in character the whole time, and that's just what they require as a person. — Michael Angarano

You're playing a character in a drama who happens to be based on someone who existed. It's never going to 'be' that person, but it's based on someone well-known, and you want to create enough of that person for it not to be a distraction. — Toby Jones

I wish I could ask God to give
me another personality, one that doesn't antagonize everyone. But that's impossible. I'm stuck with the character I was born with, and yet I'm sure I'm not a bad person. I do my best to please everyone, more than they'd ever suspect in a million years. When I'm upstairs, I try to laugh it off because I don't want them to see my troubles. — Anne Frank

Once Addie let someone in, she was impossible to forget. There was something about her that crawled inside a person and built a nice comfy home there, her goodness expanding until it filled every limb. — Kasie West

Like every normal person, I hate my voice. And I am not the only one who hates my voice. The voiceover gets a lot of strong reactions. A lot of people love it, and a few people truly hate it and pronounce the films are unwatchable because of my Latvian accent. But it also has a certain level of theatricality, and everything is important for a manic character. — Signe Baumane

Sport, properly directed, develops character, makes a person courageous, a generous loser, and a gracious victor; it refines the senses, gives intellectual penetration, and steels the will to endurance. It is not merely a physical development then. Sport, rightly understood, is an occupation of the whole person, and while perfecting the body as an instrument of the mind, it also makes the mind itself a more refined instrument for the search and communication of truth ... . — Pope Pius XII

Whenever I play a role, whether it's good or bad, an evil person or nice person, I believe in being a purist and going all the way with the role. If I'm going to be a villainous wrestler, I believe in going all the way with it and not breaking character and not giving away to the audience that I'm playing a role. I believe in playing it straight to the hilt. — Andy Kaufman

Kindness toward the voiceless or the vulnerable, like animals and children, usually denoted good character in a person. — Jeaniene Frost

In my opinion, character is the most important determinant of a person's success, achievement and ability to handle adversity. — Tom Landry

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

Education lays hold of what is best in a person, but character lays hold of what is worse. It takes hold of a failing and by very skillful manipulation and training turns it into a perfection. — Fulton J. Sheen

I am never disappointed in Jobe Watson ... (who) is a man of the highest integrity, highest character and a great person for our footy club ... I have no concern for Jobe. — James Hird

In this consists the difference between the character of a miser and that of a person of exact economy and assiduity. The one is anxious about small matters for their own sake; the other attends to them only in consequence of the scheme of life which he has laid down to himself. — Adam Smith

Every character and person in life needs a voice and every once in a while I get to inhabit the voice of the misunderstood. — David Koechner

Character refers to dispositions and habits that determine the way that person normally responds to desires, fears, challenges, opportunities, failures and successes. — Michael Josephson

I read that they have buried his body like a dog's - without funeral rites, without tribal wail, with no solemn song or act. That is the deed of to-day. That is the best that this generation has to give to this noble historic character, this man who in his person ends the line of aboriginal sanctities older that the religion of Christian or Jew. Very well. So let it stand for the present. But there is a generation coming that shall reverse this judgement of ours. Our children shall build monuments to those whom we stoned, and the great aboriginals whom we killed will be counted by the future American as among the historic characters of the continent. — Bill Yenne

This story ["The Depressed Person"] was the most painful thing I ever wrote. It's about narcissism, which is a part of depression. The character has traits of myself. I really lost friends while writing on that story, I became ugly and unhappy and just yelled at people. The cruel thing with depression is that it's such a self-centered illness - Dostoevsky shows that pretty good in his "Notes from Underground". The depression is painful, you're sapped/consumed by yourself; the worse the depression, the more you just think about yourself and the stranger and repellent you appear to others. — David Foster Wallace

I will now claim - until dispossesed - that I was the first person in the world to apply the typewriter to literature ... The early machine was full of caprices, full of defects- devilish ones. It had as many immoralities as the machine of today has virtues. After a year or two I found that it was degrading my character, so I thought I would give it to Howells ... He took it home to Boston, and my morals began to improve, but his have never recovered. — Mark Twain

The idea that I am a bad person or exhibiting poor character traits by my disdain for someone can be irrelevant and false. If I meet someone I immediately dislike, for what ever reason, but I am polite and courteous, helpful and pleasant then I have been polite, courteous, helpful and pleasant. This is not at all the same as then finding someone else to gossip with and verbalize my disdain for that person. It is certainly not the same as being outright rude to that person. What I have thought is of no consequence here. My actions show who I am, not my thoughts. The same can be said of the basic premise of being spiritual itself. If I seek to be spiritual and yet find no time in my life for reflection on what this should and does mean to me am I being spiritual at all? The actions we relate to as being spiritual are the natural outcome of such reflection in our lives. When we are true to our own sense of integrity we naturally find compassion for others. — David Carlyle

A person's personality can only be known by learning about his background, because this is where he generates his character. Your character for instant was shaped back when you were a small child, and that applies to everybody else. — Jack Roberts

It's very difficult to find the time or the money for people to organize rehearsals for some movies. It staggers me how little preparation often goes into these scenes which are difficult and complicated. You think, "God, it's crazy. I've never met this person before and here I am having to work at how to do a whole performance on the set." It was great to have a few days of just talking to Michael [Caine]and Daniel [Barber] and thinking about the characters and the relationship between them before we started shooting. — Emily Mortimer