The real self is who you are when you're at home, when you're comfortable, and the false self is what you're pretending - and the reason you pretend is because you want to create a character for the surroundings you're within.

I want a character to wake up one day and feel like, I can face it. That, to me, is happy. I want the characters to rescue themselves, though you use the relationships you have, to make you strong enough to be able to do that.

Whoever feels pain in hearing a good character of his neighbor, will feel a pleasure in the reverse. And those who despair to rise in distinction by their virtues, are happy if others can be depressed to a level of themselves.

It is hard to describe the thrill of creative joy which the artist feels when the conviction seizes her that at last she has caught the very soul of the character she wishes to portray, in the music and action which reveal it.

I'm always thinking about story, and the development of ideas or images, so with all types of media, I'm simply trying to communicate the feelings and ideas in the story or characters in the most appropriate and effective way.

Pixar's short films convinced Disney that if the company could produce memorable characters within five minutes, then the confidence was there in creating a feature film with those abilities in story and character development.

A nation ignorant of the equal benefits of liberty and law, must be awed by the flashes of arbitrary power: the cruelty of a despot will assume the character of justice; his profusion, of liberality; his obstinacy, of firmness.

I've thought a lot about the power of empathy. In my work, it's the current that connects me and my actual pulse to a fictional character in a made up story, it allows me to feel, pretend feelings and sorrows and imagined pain.

Characters on stage, like people in what we refer to as "real life," do not speak to reveal themselves. They do not speak to conceal themselves. They speak to get whatever it is that they want. It is the only reason they speak.

Trust is a function of two things: character and competence. Character includes your integrity, your motive and your intent with people. Competence includes your capabilities, your skills, and your track record. Both are vital.

The growing tide of anti-Semitism shocks the conscious of everyone who values freedom, and the ugly, hateful acts particularly stain the character of democracies where liberty and religious freedom are supposed to be respected.

The wonderful thing about digital process is that I can be cast in films that I would never be cast in. If I have it in my soul to play the character it doesn't matter what my face looks like, or my age. It's really liberating.

Sometimes my interest in working on a film is not always dictated specifically by the character. Sometimes it's simply about wanting to be a part of a vision that I love, or a script that I love. I find exciting and gratifying.

You have very accurately described the difficulty of presenting my books on film: many of my characters are alone most of the time, and when they do talk, what they say is mostly lies. That can make for a pretty confusing film.

My characters live inside my head for a long time before I actually start a book. They become so real to me, I talk about them at the dinner table as if they are real. Some people consider this weird. But my family understands.

I always like to try different things, different genres; stories that have a dramatic element and can generate conflict which I find appealing; where the characters have to overcome obstacles. That kind of thing is challenging.

Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform.

Contrary to what we've been taught, genes do not determine physical and character traits on their own. Rather, they interact with the environment in a dynamic, ongoing process that produces and continually refines an individual

Nobody's really unsympathetic, I think. People do good and bad things. If a character's totally unsympathetic, they're not real and I'm not interested. Even the real monsters have to have a spark of something you can relate to.

One job I did turn down was 'How I Met Your Mother.' My character was 'creepy gay guy.' That was the character. The script said, 'Creepy gay guy gets in elevator every day with Jason Segel character and he's just being creepy.'

I recurred on Grey’s Anatomy for three years, and at the same time, I recurred for eight episodes on Rescue Me. And I’d recurred for nine episodes on The Practice. Frankly, the guest star is often the most compelling character.

Marcus Aurelius appoints personal character and conscience the ultimate refuge of happiness-seekers: the only place where dreams of happiness, doomed to die childless and intestate anywhere else, are not bound to be frustrated.

The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell, together, as quickly as possible.

I have a little bit of a temper, but it's ... a useless temper, ... It doesn't accomplish anything, generally. It's just a lot of ranting and raving and nothing, so David (Chase) probably saw that and put it into the character.

I actually think it's helped me as a writer to have to act. It's only when you actually start putting yourself out that you appreciate the anxiety that comes with having to try to sell a line, or with trying to own a character.

Character is both developed and revealed by tests, and all of life is a test... You will be tested by major changes, delayed promises, impossible problems, unanswered prayers, undeserved criticism, and even senseless tragedies.

There are two reasons why I propose to make myself thoroughly and unashamedly happy by talking about myself. The first is that on several occasions, both in England and America, I have been told that I am a legendary character.

Get out of the office. Roam the frontline. Be observant. Hold your people accountable for creating the new narrative, a new story, in which your customers are the most important "characters". Because, you know, they really are.

You can't argue that hip-hop rots away the moral character of kids or rots their brain and still see middle-class white kids going to college who are listening to hip-hop. Going on to become healthy adults listening to hip-hop.

All fiction is about people, unless it's about rabbits pretending to be people. It's all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that's what we call 'the plot'.

An expense of ends to means is fate;Morganization tyrannizing over character. The menagerie, or forms and powers of the spine, is a book of fate: the bill of the bird, the skull of the snake, determines tyrannically its limits.

I don't want to say I hear voices; well, actually I do hear voices, but I don't think it's supernatural. I think it's just that when characters are given enough texture and backbone, then lo and behold, they stand on their own.

I don't know if it's the sunshine, or the fact that I actually have a job, but I do like L.A. a lot. In New York, it can be gray and rainy and cold, and you still don't have any money, and you feel like a bad Dickens character.

The truth is, the personal ends up becoming part of your professional. As an actor, much of your work happens at home as you try things out on your family. Sometimes you stay in character unbeknownst to you and keep practicing.

Even if you've sworn to yourself never to read vampire fiction again, do yourself the favor of reading Motherless Child. Glen Hirshberg has crafted a compelling, heartbreaking thriller full of character, grit, and sorrow. Bravo

The hardest thing for me to do, and the best thing I've done and learned as an actor is to sacrifice being funny in certain circumstances in order to do something that makes sense for the story or the character, or emotionally.

I think it's a wonderful thing to have African-American characters. Look at life. It's not a white world or a black world; there are all kind of people in it. It's showing growth, and in today's world there are so many outlets.

When you film in Africa, it's almost like a character in and of itself because it is so beautiful and has this special magic that I've never experienced anywhere else. There is something so incredibly beautiful about the light.

A lot of people think that writers are much cleverer than they actually are. No, they're not. But they're emotionally clever, and they go into a character, and they feel something that they weren't entirely aware of beforehand.

When you introduce a character and show him for the first time, don't show him fully lit. Don't show him one hundred percent to the audience. Show maybe fifty percent or sixty percent so the audience can fill in the dark spots.

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.

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

In fiction, I tend to write fairly realistic dialogue-not always, and it tends to vary from book to book. But in many books, there is a colloquialism of address. The characters will speak in a quite idiosyncratic way sometimes.

As a writer you see the big picture and how you can tell as one character, how your storyline is going to meet up with all these other storylines. And as an actor you're thinking of all the minutiae, all the very small details.

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.

A philosopher may try to prove the truth of something he believed before he was a philosopher, but even if he succeeds, his belief never regain the untroubled character, and the settled place in his mind, which it had at first.

I like the fact that we're stripping the icons away. They're the WikiLeaks for the age that we're revealing, with the transparency of the characters. We're unearthing the truth beyond or underneath the myth. I love that aspect.

When you have to play a character that seems to be a relatively decent person and seems to be like yourself, I think the trick in that kind of character, so that you don't become a cliche, is to find where their weaknesses are.

The notion of this universe, its heavens, hells, and everything within it, as a great dream dreamed by a single being in which all the dream characters are dreaming too, has in India enchanted and shaped the entire civilization.

Originally when I went off to work on 'The Lord of The Rings' I got a call from my agent saying that I was just going to do a voice. But I couldn't really approach it like that. To get Gollum's voice I had to play the character.

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