Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Sometimes I know what my characters are moving away from or toward; more often I just wait and see. For instance, though I knew Sinkler in 'The Trusty' was going for water, I did not know that he would meet a fetching young farm wife until I got him into her front yard.
Women have a faith in themselves that is unpragmatic and in each other that's just emotional and f - ing strong. Both of those characters are criticized for being weak, for being subject to a man, but I think that that's a really bold and natural thing that we all want.
Simplicity is the character of the spring of life, costliness becomes its autumn; but a neatness and purity, like that of the snow-drop or lily of the valley, is the peculiar fascination of beauty, to which it lends enchantment, and gives what amiability is to the mind.
The character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art. Eliot said that art is the escape from personality, which I think is right. We know that Velázquez embezzled money from the Spanish court and wanted power and so on, but you can't see this in his art.
The role of my agent has just been to get me in the room. If I can get in the room - say the character is just a charming man who lives next door - then I'll walk in there and be as charming as I can and they will think to themselves, 'I don't see why we can't cast him.
When I go and speak now at all sorts of conferences, later in the night there's always a better Maxie Walker than me. Billy Birmingham's legendary for basically being able to verbally kneecap any of a number of Australia's characters, particularly in the commentary box.
And as a character, what I found very inspiring about playing Dharma, especially at that time, is that the women on television were more neurotic than they were free. And I thought, this is a rare bird and this is unique on television and I think it's really refreshing.
You don't try any less hard on the ones that don't. I've gotten lucky to work with some amazingly talented people that have helped the ones that have worked work. I think you just have to keep doing the stories you love and the characters that you love and are drawn to.
Comedy and drama are different sides of the same coin. And the thing about comedy and drama is about likability. It's about character first. It's about story. And for me, it's about empathy, and I think the realer someone is, the further you can go either way with them.
I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.
... what is really inspiriting and ennobling in the doctrine of freewill, is the conviction that we have real power over the formation of our own character; that our will, by influencing some of our circumstances, can modify our future habits or capabilities of willing.
It is a good plan, with a young person of a character to be much affected by ludicrous and absurd representations, to show him plainly by examples that there is nothing which may not be thus represented. He will hardly need to be told that everything is not a mere joke.
I walk away from writing what I consider to be a good song - with a good character, a good story in it - with all I'm gonna really get out of that song. My greatest pleasure is to create it, not to record it, not to hear anyone else play it, though that can be nice too.
I always say that the characters in Jane Austen's original books are rather like zombies because they live in this bubble of immense wealth and privilege and no matter what's going on around them they have a singular purpose to maintain their rank and to impress others.
Madame Bovary is timeless. It is not just about the female condition in France in the 1840s. It's not a simple cautionary tale. Emma is more than a character; she gives us an insight into human nature. With Emma, we are diving into the complexities of Flaubert's psyche.
I see characters lying all the time in a lot of Hollywood movies. They can't do this because it would affect the movie this way or that or this demographic might not like it. To me a character can't do anything good or bad, they can only do something that's true or not.
Ever hear the expression "write what you know?" My version says "write what you want to know." If you want to know about the history of Spain, write about the history of Spain - fiction or nonfiction. If your fascinated by the old west, maybe your character lives there.
I suppose I look for humor in most situations because it humanizes things; it makes a character much more three-dimensional if there's some kind of humor. Not necessarily laugh-out-loud type of stuff, just a sense that there is a humorous edge to things. I do like that.
The two things that I thought were really interesting about this character [Bow] for me were that she actually loved her husband, and he loved her. The comedy was not coming from the fact that they hated each other. Which is what television couples are usually based on.
As Baudelaire said it so beautifully, Emma Bovary is an androgynous character. She cannot be reduced to a gender or a sociological type. She represents something bigger than herself. That was the genius of Flaubert: the ability to combine the general and the particular.
I was given the ability to create stories and characters. That's my part of the long chain of writers, publishers, agents, booksellers, librarians, and a host of others who eventually deliver literature to the world. I want to do for others what Eudora Welty did for me.
You want to try and bring a character to life in an honest a way as you possibly can. It doesn't matter whether he's a doctor, an actor, a car salesman or a captain of a starship. If you can bring truth and honesty to that character, then your audience will believe you.
I worked with and became close with these characters [in Twilight] and the people who are portraying them and it's kind of, I think, a safety net that we had, and it's going to be kind of strange not going back to set with these people that I've become so familiar with.
I’m not super-comfortable with it. I feel the less you project of yourself the more you can be believable as a character. I also think it’s just better for your own mental health. Then you can be a human being and change your mind and nobody asks you questions about it!
Why not provoke some thought and get people talking about things? I like characters that are flawed because we all are. When people break up in a script, you think, Oh, right, there must be tears shed here. But maybe the fact of the matter is that they're both laughing.
Writing a story requires you to understand how the world works, how characters think, how their emotions drive them to do surprising things, and so on. In other words, as a writer, you have to be more than a stylist. You need to learn to become a master of storytelling.
Those in public office who do not love the people are thieves stealing salaries. Those who teach but do not themselves practice what they teach are mere talkers. Those who try to do successful work without considering development of character will find it insubstantial.
Theater is all about the rehearsal process. In fact, I think a lot of times opening night there's a mixed sadness because you're finished with a lot of people's favorite part of the process, which is finding the character and discovering it, and then you get to live it.
Somerset Maugham said that it took at least six human beings to make one fictional character. That is true of landscape as well, I think. We have to make our landscapes, change streets, create new turnings, rebuild or tear down, change time, and even nature, if need be.
Because I write the screenplay entirely and precisely, there is the danger that an actor might feel that this finite role is being imposed on them. I want the actors to feel that this is their own role, and that they can go back to point zero and develop this character.
The most difficult part of any crime novel is the plotting. It all begins simply enough, but soon you're dealing with a multitude of linked characters, strands, themes and red herrings - and you need to try to control these unruly elements and weave them into a pattern.
Well I mean I think everybody was devastated because my last day on set was my death scene and so it was just sad altogether because my character was taking her last breath and I was kind of taking my last breath of air on set with everybody so it's definitely very sad.
When you're actually feeling a character and you're going through the real emotions, and you're not fake acting, that energy stays with you and sometimes you can't get it off for days. It just resonates in your body, unless you have some sort of release, whatever it is.
Artists with the lack of proper education and experience of working from life will copy whatever is visible on the photograph, without knowing what's underneath. As a result, instead of creating the in-depth and full of character portrait, they draw a mask with no soul.
I came from the stage so it was a different kind of acting, or a different arena of acting, and I just loved to do it as a kid. It's really gratifying to get to create these different characters and to get to create different voices and to get to wear different clothes.
A great novel is concerned primarily with the interior lives of its characters, as they respond to the inconvenient narratives that fate imposes on them. Movie adaptations of these monumental fictions often fail because they become mere exercises in interior decoration.
I wanted to make an Indian character who wasn't either a) the savage that must be eliminated, the force of nature that's blocking the way for industrial progress, or b) the noble innocent that knows all and is another cliche. I wanted him to be a complicated human being.
The cemetery has ... an inscription: 'Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I will Fear No Evil, For Thou Art With Me.' Yes, it does feel deceptively safer with two; but Thou is a slippery character. Every Thou I've known has had a way of going missing.
In these two things the greatness of man consists, to have God dwelling in us as to impart His character to us, and to have Him dwelling in us, that we recognize His presence, and know that we are His, and He is ours. The one is salvation; the other, the assurance of it.
If you connect emotionally with the plight of those characters, ou feel what they feel and you walk away with a sense of understanding and empathy, and hopefully, something has been illuminated for you. And I tink that's what happendd for a lot of readers with my novels.
I was introduced to Mr. Davy, who has rooms adjoining mine (in the Royal Institution); he is a very agreeable and intelligent young man, and we have interesting conversation in an evening; the principal failing in his character as a philosopher is that he does not smoke.
Understand, my own politics aren't necessarily interchangeable with what any of my characters believe. You could take each of the characters in On the Ropes, and I'd probably be in sympathy with a different one on any given day, depending on what's going on in the world.
There is a Steve [Jobs] that Apple would like to actually present to the public. They have a character, Steve, and they want to keep that story going. And it's very important that writers challenge that occasionally and not just trust their parent companies to tell them.
I have spent my life in the study of military strength as a deterrent to war, and in the character of military armaments necessary to win a war. The study of the first of these questions is still profitable, but we are rapidly getting to the point that no war can be won.
The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.
I try to attach myself to people who really inspire me, and directors who are really passionate. That way, I can give myself more fully and trust the impulse behind why the film is being made, and I can be a little more irresponsible in finding out what the character is.
The way Jacques Brel writes a story, getting into the character, bringing out all his faults and qualities in the same song.... Not that I could ever write in such an epic way, but it really is a different way to go about writing lyrics...and I find that quite inspiring.
My basic mistake in 'The World's Greatest Lover' was that I made the leading character a neurotic kook and sent him to Hollywood. I should have made him a perfectly normal, sane, ordinary person, and sent him to Hollywood. The audience identifies with the lead character.
Whatever it is that I feel, I express it! I am free with my joy, my laughter, my pleasure, my pain, and I am blessed in that way as an actress that I can access those feelings within myself and not be ashamed to show whatever that is that's appropriate for the character.
If you can get an audience to identify themselves with a character, they will subconsciously feel that their own lives are in danger. People tend to pay attention in situations like that. I think fear is the easiest, and most visceral, emotion to activate in an audience.