Shows Character Quotes & Sayings

In some ways, a novel isn't as structurally rigorous as a screenplay or a TV show, which have finite real estate. In a novel, you can more deeply illuminate a character's interior and get away with digressions. — Howard Gordon

That's why I love doing television because it's something that fans and viewers can sit down each week and get to know your character and get to know the show and get to know what's going on and fall in love with you all over again, like they did in previous shows. — Tahj Mowry

I've been in a lot of trouble and come out of it. I think it shows a lot of good character. — Stefan Edberg

I've always liked game shows - the competitive aspect and the character-driven personalities you see. — Apolo Ohno

The acting is more of a secondary thing for me now. I will be in it, if I'm the best man for the job, but it really is about creating characters and shows. — Jason Gann

You take yourself too seriously, " he said slowly. "You are too damn important in your own mind. That must be changed! You are so goddamn important that you feel justified to be annoyed with everything. You're so damn important that you can afford to leave if things don't go your way. I suppose you think that shows you have character. That's nonsense! You're weak, and conceited!" - Dom Juan — Carlos Castaneda

There's a lot of kids' shows that are really popular ratings-wise, but they don't sell a lot of stuff. A character on a backpack just doesn't have the same appeal as watching it on TV. — Tom Kenny

I hate shows, personally, where people stand around tossing stuff at each other, and any character can say any line, because you don't believe any of these characters care for each other. I used to fight with my friends who wrote on 'Seinfeld,' because they had such great pride in saying it was a show about nothing. — Bill Lawrence

Mostly, I have to say as an actor, to find a character that's been rich enough for 10 seasons of shows ... that's very rare. — Jon Cryer

Unlike other books or TV shows or sometimes life, my narrative worlds are stripped of implicit moral centers. There is only what you bring. That makes the characters risky in every way and the narrative, a journey of change for the reader. But I make the journey as fun as I can. — Chris Abani

Futurists are already predicting the day mankind builds its replacement, Artificial Intelligence. Daniel Wilson shows what might happen when that computer realizes its creators are no longer needed. Lean prose, great characters, and almost unbearable tension ensure that Robopocalypse is going to be a blockbuster. Once started I defy anyone to put it down. — Jack Du Brul

I'd say that what I do is like a crack in the mirror. If you go back over the books from Carrie on up, what you see is an observation of ordinary middle-class American life as it's lived at the time that particular book was written. In every life you get to a point where you have to deal with something that's inexplicable to you, whether it's the doctor saying you have cancer or a prank phone call. So whether you talk about ghosts or vampires or Nazi war criminals living down the block, we're still talking about the same thing, which is an intrusion of the extraordinary into ordinary life and how we deal with it. What that shows about our character and our interactions with others and the society we live in interests me a lot more than monsters and vampires and ghouls and ghosts. — Stephen King

What made us different from other westerns was the fact that 'Gunsmoke' wasn't just action and a lot of shooting; they were character-study shows. — James Arness

Colin Morgan gives a stunning performance in Parked; he plays Merlin in the BBC TV show and he says the two characters are like night and day. Watch him. He's got everything it takes to be top notch. — Colm Meaney

I'm still kind of a hapless character in my everyday life. But when it comes to the writing, my influences are very old influences. I love American music of absolutely all stripes, including show tunes, advertising jingles, theme tunes from quiz shows, all kinds of American music. — Nick Lowe

Did you ever think how a bit of land shows the character of the owner? — Laura Ingalls Wilder

It has been said that self-respect is the gate of heaven, and the most cursory observation shows that a degree of reserve adds vastly to the latent force of character. — Henry Theodore Tuckerman

Whatever your present circumstances, my sincere prayer is that this book may help you to do the following: Believe and experience daily God's infinite love for you. Hear when God is speaking to you. Identify God's unmistakable activity in your life. Believe Him to be and to do everything He promises. Adjust your beliefs, character, and behavior to Him and His ways. Identify a direction He is taking in your life, and recognize what He wants to do through you. Know clearly how to respond to what He shows you. Experience God doing through you what only He can do. — Henry T. Blackaby

To adorn our characters by the charm of an amiable nature shows at once a lover of beauty and a lover of man. — Epictetus

Cable series have more time to focus on characters, and a structure that allows for a development in character as you go along. Network shows have a pressure of time and space that is completely different. — James Frain

Reputation shows who people think you are. Character shows who you really are. — Craig Groeschel

Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Bigfoot understood - as I came to understand - that character is far more important than skills or employment history. And he recognized character - good and bad - brilliantly. He understood, and taught me, that a guy who shows up every day on time, never calls in sick, and does what he said he was going to do, is less likely to fuck you in the end than a guy who has an incredible resume but is less than reliable about arrival time. Skills can be taught. Character you either have or don't have. Bigfoot understood that there are two types of people in the world: those who do what they say they're going to do - and everyone else. — Anthony Bourdain

I do think that people get really emotionally involved in the TV shows that they love and I think that is fantastic. Of course they are going to have opinions. The other thing is that people project onto their television shows. They see a character and layer on many traits that are actually their own or their idea of what that character is. — Lisa Edelstein

A person's ethics and character are not tested in good times. It is only in bad times that a person shows how steadfast he is to his dharma. — Amish Tripathi

Character is what is hidden deep, shows up in the worst of times, be it good or bad, and reflects the heart of a man. — Robin M. Bertram

To a large extent: it's about economy of space. You have so little real estate when you're writing a half hour show. It's really twenty minutes. So you have to with a pilot introduce all your characters, set up the premise in a way that shows the potential for a series and make it funny and do it all in about thirty-five or forty pages. It's very hard. — Jonathan M. Goldstein

I don't really like to arrange shows by best performances. That's why Emmy season is kind of a chore for me. Unlike movies, where it's easier to decide who was the best performance, a TV show goes up and down, including characters/portrayals. — Hank Stuever

Even though I had a great deal of respect for children's TV and theatre, it wasn't my intent to specialize solely in that area. I did indeed want to work on shows like "Sesame Street" and I am honored to be even a small part of that legacy, but I also wanted to do characters that had wider vocabulary and satirical humor. — Stephanie D'Abruzzo

I learned a long time ago that you don't have to go around using bad language and trying to hurt people to show how macho you are. That stuff won't get you anywhere, it just shows lack of vocabulary and character. — Bobby Bowden

It's right he's paying you, as you were hurt on his job, and he can well afford it. Doing so shows his character, just as fretting over it shows yours. — Nora Roberts

In the courageous standing of uncertainty, faith shows most visibly its dynamic character. — Paul Tillich

I'm less concerned with how hard you can work and how much time and effort you can dedicate to a project when everything is going right.
Plenty of people can do that.
I'm more concerned with how hard you can work and how much time and effort you can dedicate to a project when everything is going wrong.
That's a rarity and shows true honor, true character and will lead you that much closer to success. — Loren Weisman

If you act, you show character; if you sit still, you show it; if you sleep you show it. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'm always amazed by people like David Simon or the people at The Simpsons or J.K. Rowling who can create dozens and dozens of memorable characters. It seems so effortless, and even people who have just three lines in the shows or in the book have a very distinct personality, and you can feel the richness of their personal history. — Drew Magary

When you come to knowing God, the initiative lies on His side. If He does not show Himself, nothing you can do will enable you to find Him. And, in fact, He shows much more of Himself to some people than to others - not because He has favourites, but because it is impossible for Him to show Himself to a man whose whole mind and character are in the wrong condition. Just as sunlight, though it has no favourites, cannot be reflected in a dusty mirror as clearly as in a clean one. — C.S. Lewis

I think you can find yourself on one of these shows for a long period of time and think that all you'll ever be able to do is that character. Certainly people think of you that way. — William Petersen

I'm a huge fan of good, procedural-type shows on television ... there are a lot of roles for women. But there aren't a lot of great network television roles for girls that will let you start a character in one place and finish up with her in a totally different one. — Rachael Taylor

The statistical method shows the facts in the light of the ideal average but does not give us a picture of their empirical reality. While reflecting an indisputable aspect of reality, it can falsify the actual truth in a most misleading way. This is particularly true of theories which are based on statistics. The distinctive thing about real facts, however, is their individuality. Not to put too fine a point on it, once could say that the real picture consists of nothing but exceptions to the rule, and that, in consequence, absolute reality has predominantly the character of irregularity. — C. G. Jung

Get to know two things about a man. How he earns his money and how he spends it. You will then have the clue to his character. You will have a searchlight that shows up the inmost recesses of his soul. You know all you need to know about his standards, his motives, his driving desires, his real religion. — Robert J. McCracken

The greatness of a popular character is less according to the ratio of his genius than the sympathy he shows with the prejudices and even the absurdities of his time. Fanatics do not select the cleverest but the most fanatical leaders as was evidenced in the choice of Robespierre by the French Jacobins, and in that of Cromwell by the English Puritans. — Alphonse De Lamartine

There's people who watch shows while they're preparing their dinners, and they don't want to focus, and they don't want to be challenged, and whatever. And then there's people who want to really sit down and get into a character in a world, and feel like they're expanding, or they have complex relationships, or whatever. — Rashida Jones

It sounded nothing like the classic "That's all folks" that the character did. So everytime I'm asked to do it - and nine out of ten "Looney Tunes" shows ends with Porky coming out saying "That's all folks" - I'll say to them, which one do you want? — Bob Bergen

Isaacson's biography can be read in several ways. It is on the one hand a history of the most exciting time in the age of computers, when the machines first became personal and later, fashionable accessories. It is also a textbook study of the rise and fall and rise of Apple and the brutal clashes that destroyed friendships and careers. And it is a gadget lover's dream, with fabulous, inside accounts of how the Macintosh, iPod, iPhone and iPad came into being. But more than anything, Isaacson has crafted a biography of a complicated, peculiar personality - Jobs was charming, loathsome, lovable, obsessive, maddening - and the author shows how Jobs's character was instrumental in shaping some of the greatest technological innovations — Walter Isaacson

A man shows his character just in the way in which he deals with trifles
for then he is off his guard. — Arthur Schopenhauer

A man who shows no defect is a fool or a hypocrite, whom we should mistrust. There are defects so bound to fine qualities that they announce them,
defects which it is well not to correct. — Joseph Joubert

When I sit down to talk to men's magazines, there's a certain character that I play. She's not fully fleshed out - she doesn't have her own name - but she shows up to do men's-magazine interviews. — Megan Fox

The shows I've been working on, especially 'Parenthood' and 'Friday Night Lights,' I think are completely character-driven stories. I think, for most writers, that's a privilege to be telling those kinds of stories. It's erroneous to me. — Jason Katims

It's tough. We don't have a character-driven show so I think the fans get really frustrated because they don't get to see any consistency in terms of what's happening romantically. We kind of just have to take it with a grain of salt. It shows up where it shows up. — Eva LaRue

Knowledge becomes really such only when it is assimilated in the mind of the learner and shows in his character. — Inazo Nitobe

People say that you want to be varied in your career, and I've done so many things and am very appreciative. But, the one thing I've never done and wanted to do was to be a regular on a TV show, where you get 22 weeks of the year to develop and play a character. I've done arcs of five or eight episodes on shows, but I'd like to have a character that's rich enough and deep enough to want to explore and live with for a few years. Playing the same character, but doing different scenes seems very exciting to me. — Jim Piddock

The nice thing is that, at least in Los Angeles, I'm known as a character actor and I do auditions for other things besides just cartoon shows. — Dan Castellaneta

I'd always wanted to do a film than TV show because film is always where my heart has been. I like diving into the character for a few months, and then leaving it behind. I love the idea of that. — Shailene Woodley

When you do a TV show, the cumulative intimacy you develop with the audience through your characters is pretty profound. It may be the most profound storytelling there is, because the character gets to live and roll around in the audience's mind week after week. — Howard Gordon

If I was a bad character that got away with murder like we see on other shows, I do not think I would like it because that sends a message that you can do these horrible things and never pay for it. — Hunter Tylo

A ghostly side note Soldier boy Miller played a Lucifer-like character in the final two episodes of Joan of Arcadia. Coincidence I do find it strangely poetic, ... that a character who shows up on a show about God to play something kind of satanic winds up in the very last two episodes of that show, and then appears in the show that replaces that show on its exact time and night the following season. — Wentworth Miller

There's the argument that you can relate to someone who's completely unrelatable. In the way that a director shows you his imagination on a film, then I get to show you my imagination in a big dumb character. — Idris Elba

Golf shows your character. — Victoria Brown

Practically every movie that shows the pope or even a bishop as a character, and in much of western literature of the last 300 or 400 years, these are portrayed as awful figures. — Michael Novak

I won't be doing the new show in character, so we'll all get to find out how much of him was me. I'm looking forward to it. — Stephen Colbert

Cheers was one of the first shows where I paid attention to the writers because their [work] was better than everything else I was watching. The writers weren't afraid to let a joke fall slightly flat if it advanced the characters. — Shawn Ryan

It was easy for viewers to identify with our show. The characters were believable. — Desi Arnaz

The way you handle your problems shows your character. — Kishore Bansal

TV is a big business. In some ways, it's surpassed films, in terms of the way people invest in these shows and invest in these characters, and give up so much of their time to follow these people's stories. — Jamie Bell

Whether it's a lower or higher budget project, a TV show or a film, the words on the page are the same to me and I approach the work in the same way. My job is to lift the character from the page, whether it's a TV or film script. — Michael Eklund

If a misplaced admiration shows imbecility, an affected criticism shows vice of character. Expose thyself rather to appear a beast than false. — Denis Diderot

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

If you expose what it is that we're doing, if you inform your fellow citizens about all the things that we're doing in the dark, we will destroy you. This is what their spate of prosecutions of whistleblowers have [sic] been about. It's what trying to threaten journalists, to criminalize what they do, is about. It's to create a climate of fear, so that nobody will bring accountability to them.
It's not going to work. I think it's starting to backfire, because it shows their true character and exactly why they can't be trusted to operate with power in secret. And we're certainly not going to be deterred by it in any way. The people who are going to be investigated are not the people reporting on this, but are people like Dianne Feinstein and her friends in the National Security Agency, who need investigation and transparency for all the things that they've been doing. — Glenn Greenwald

I grew up watching 'Magnum, P.I.' and shows like that, where you could develop a character over eight seasons, with stories along the way. — Jonathan Nolan

The deepest-lying and most pervasive part of character is disposition: it accompanies us everywhere, and shows itself in all we do. It is the attitude of the soul toward life, the way in which we accept our situation and our daily experiences. On the inner side it gives color and tone to our own conscious life: on the outer side it pervades and modifies our conduct toward others and our reactions to events. A good disposition is indispensable to good character, though of course not all of character; without it one cannot hope for perfection; even with it one may fail through lack of higher elements. It is a sort of foundation layer. — Edward O. Sisson

I did 125 films, and over 100 television shows, and you've never seen the same character twice. — Brion James

A man who takes into consideration the feelings of others even when arranging the manner of his own death shows a nobility of character which compels the admiration of all classes. — Flann O'Brien

I think that by now, in the very beginning when I first joined the show, General Landry was like a new kid in school. I was coming into a situation I didn't really know much about, and now, after a couple of years, the character's kind of mellowed and gotten comfortable working at the command center and very comfortable with his troops. What they always do with these shows is they always leave them open-ended. The SG-1 franchise has been so successful for the network, that they always want to keep it open, an option to do it again in some way, whether that's a movie or a series, or whatever. — Beau Bridges

If it weren't for Criminal Records, Wax-n-facts and other indie record stores I could have only sold my CD's at my shows and by mail order as an independent artist. The greatest stores that have character and include a much wider range of music of music are all independent, mom and pop stores. — Shawn Mullins

Writers, good ones, don't tell stories.
Characters show stories. — Robert Newton Peck

I started my career in Portugal, and the longest I've ever played a character was for about a year, which is how long our TV shows last. — Daniela Ruah

Adversity shows our true character. — Lailah Gifty Akita

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

Man shows his character best in trifles. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Virgil has very finely touched upon the female passion for dress and shows, in the character of Camilla; who though she seems to have shaken off all the other weaknesses of her sex, is still described as a woman in this particular. — Joseph Addison

I love the idea of animation just because it removes the actor from the character, and you can be anything. I've been devouring 'Adventure Time' and 'Archer.' I'd love to get my hands dirty on either of those shows. — Jack Falahee

Keeping or holding on to a concept shows belief but building or adding to it shows confidence and depth of character. — Delma Pryce

The manner of giving shows the character of the giver, more than the gift itself. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

The gospel shows us that our spiritual problem lies not only in failing to obey God, but also in relying on our obedience to make us fully acceptable to God, ourselves and others. Every kind of character flaw comes from this natural impulse to be our own saviour through our own performance and achievement. On the one hand, proud and disdainful personalities come from basing your identity on your performance and thinking you are succeeding. But on the other hand, discouraged and self loathing personalities also come from basing your identity on your performance and thinking you are failing. — Timothy Keller

I'm a character-driven director, and I tend to fall in love with the characters in my movies and TV shows. — Doug Liman

I think that television lately has been extremely dark and, in some ways, cynical but I also think that people who are writing those shows probably feel exactly as I do - that sometimes the darkness of a story can highlight the light in a story. There's a lot of cynical stuff but I think it may be even more in movies now where you see so many movies about cynical and corrupted characters. That's the state of many movies right now but movies, television, all of culture, there's always going to be a battle between the stories that are cynical and stories that are hopeful. — Randall Wallace

What people like are things to laugh at. Funny shows. It's all in the execution, the writing and the characters, not the setting. And the writing and the execution and the characters are GREAT on (Everybody Loves Raymond). — Joe Rogan

Setting aside the vast herd which shows no definable character at all, it seems to me that the minority distinguished by what is commonly regarded as an excess of sin is very much more admirable than the minority distinguished by an excess of virtue. My experience of the world has taught me that the average wine-bibbler is a far better fellow than the average prohibitionist, and that the average rogue is better company than the average poor drudge, and that the worst white-slave trader of my acquaintance is a decenter man than the best vice crusader. — H.L. Mencken

If I'm doing a talk show or an interview, or pretty much anything where I can't control the context, I'm loath to do the character. — Stephen Colbert

Those traumas when it comes to the historical past generation to generation; our children, our grandchildren, our future grandchildren learn these behaviors. We have to know that they exist and we have to take care of those traumas and learn to heal from them. This movie shows that perspective from Scott's character, and I love it. It shows the American Indians as the ones who respect and help out when people are needed. It's a nice little twist. — Adam Beach

Besides, killing all the humans will totally trash the cable schedule, and there are some shows I'm really excited to have back on the air. — Mira Grant

The inclusion of consequences in the conception of what we have done is an acknowledgement that we are parts of the world, but the paradoxical character of moral luck which emerges from this acknowledgement shows that we are unable to operate with such a view, for it leaves us with no one to be. — Thomas Nagel

To be an actor for 30-odd years trying to become recognized, and to end up playing a full prosthetic and a character 3 foot 9', or something like that, is ... well, it just shows that you can get actors to do anything. — John Rhys-Davies

One of the outstanding ironies of history is the utter disregard of ranks and titles in the final judgments men pass on each other. The final estimate of men shows that history cares not an iota for the rank or title a man has borne, or the office he has held, but only the quality of his deeds and the character of his mind and heart. — Samuel Logan Brengle

After doing this, going away, trying other things and working on other shows, this character, and working within Days of Our Lives, has been one of the most enjoyable experiences in my career. — Matthew Ashford

Positively, he [Heidegger] shows that the prospect of death doesn't of itself destroy all possibilities of meaning but calls instead for these to be relocated from fantasies about a future post-mortem life. However, I don't think he does enough in this work to show that this relocation has - I believe - a primarily ethical character (in Levinas's sense of 'ethical'). — George Pattison

You can't be beautiful and hate because hate is a corroding disease and affects the way you look ... You can't hide it - ever. It shows in your eyes. It warps your expression. It affects your character, your personality. — Bess Myerson

Shows should just be able to be shows without hyphenating their lead characters. — George Lopez

Character shows itself apart from genius as a special thing. The first point of measurement of any man is that of quality. — Thomas Wentworth Higginson

I think there's something about supernatural shows that people see and just want to put me in them! I don't know. I just finished another show - 'The Nine Lives of Chloe King,' with Skyler Samuels, who was my girlfriend in 'The Gates' - and I play another supernatural character on that show. — Colton Haynes