Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Contact with men who wield power and authority still leaves an intangible sense of repulsion. It's very like being in close proximity to fecal matter, the fecal embodiment of something unmentionable, and you wonder what it is made of and when it acquired its historically sacred character.
The Prophet (peace be upon him) said, 'The signs of a hypocrite are three: 1. Whenever he speaks, he tells a lie. 2. Whenever he promises, he always breaks it (his promise). 3. If you trust him, he proves to be dishonest (if you keep something as a trust with him, he will not return it).'
Universal empire is the prerogative of a writer. His concerns are with all mankind, and though he cannot command their obedience,he can assign them their duty. The Republic of Letters is more ancient than monarchy, and of far higher character in the world than the vassal court of Britain.
One of the joys of this show [Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency] is that each of those characters could be starring in their own show. It's only as the show goes on that you realize how they interconnect. They're all moving towards one another inexorably, to meet at a certain point.
All I liked to do when I was a kid was draw. My childhood was like my adult life: drawing pictures with my brother, putting the comics up on the glass window, and tracing the characters onto tracing paper or drawing paper and then coloring them. That and making things was all we ever did.
I should love to do a novel, about one abnormal character seeing present-day life, very ordinary life, yet arresting through it, abnormality, until at the end the reader sees, and with little reluctance, that he is not abnormal at all, and that the main character might as well be himself.
I have even taught classes on writing about sex, and I've looked closely at different writers' sex scenes. On the level of craft I've given it a lot of thought. The pitfalls are simple: It can sound clinical or medical, which isn't right, or pornographic, because the characters disappear.
I've made movies on every part of the spectrum, and you do understand when you go into certain movies that you're trying to elicit a certain kind of response from the audience, and people get a real sense of satisfaction when they're rooting for a character and the character pulls it off.
I like to mix the real and the imaginary. Sometimes it is characters inspired by real people I know or know of. Sometimes it is a named person from the common cultural dreamscape. And it is tricky, because they have a lot of associated ideas that come with them, and a lot of actual facts.
Even men of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the physical charms of others. Modern, no less then Ancient History, supplies us with many most painful examples of what I refer to. If it were not so, indeed, History would be quite unreadable.
Leonard Cohen can give you "Leonard Cohen" - the self-deprecating wit, the slow, considered speech, the perfectly-honed anecdote - Tom Waits is far more comfortable giving a journalist "Tom Waits" the character, whose conversation is really a series of strange tales, learned or ad-libbed.
We were on As the World Turns together with Trevor Vaughn. We played brothers on the show. Our friendship started there. We would punch each other in the face, in the nuts, while we were acting. Our characters are supposed to hate each other, but we actually got along really, really well.
The government has, in all countries, a vast influence, in determining the character of the national consumption; not only because it absolutely directs the consumption of the state itself, but because a great proportion of the consumption of individuals is gained by its will and example.
In all tests of character, when two viewpoints are pitted against one another, in the final analysis the thing that will strike you the most, is not who was right or wrong, strong or weak, wise or foolish.... but who would go to the greatest lengths in considering the other's perspective.
What's cool is that in the story of the movie [The Hangover] our characters are also really kind of getting to know each other and bonding over the course of the movie. And I think you're seeing a real, a literal sort of friendship growing both in us as actors and on screen as characters.
There is a scene in the movie where Astrid and Hiccup fly on Toothless's back toward the island of Berk. The animation is intensely real, from the waves on the sea to wisps of wind blowing in the characters' hair. The feeling I get watching that scene is why I fly - just for that feeling.
Just because your tattoo has Chinese characters in it doesn't make you spiritual. It's right above the crack of your ass, and it translate to beef with broccoli. The last time you did anything spiritual, you were praying to God you weren't pregnant. You're not spiritual. You're just high.
I know I'm not normal in this, but [ Severus ] Snape is absolutely my favorite character in the Harry Potter books. He is completely mortal - good, bad, strong, weak, motivated by hatred, motivated by love. A gorgeous, compelling, complex character who definitely earns a spot at my table.
Soldiers are members of a profession of arms which has existed virtually unchanged for thousands of years- far longer than most other human institutions have existed. The Army has done so because of its unique character- a uniqueness based primarily upon intangibles that cannot be costed.
I've done a number of films. I've been around this. I think the biggest challenge is just getting the script right, the way that you want the script to be. It's really about capturing the complexity of emotions and creating the kind of characters that people will want to watch every week.
I’m not good-looking. I used to be, but not anymore. Not like Robert Taylor. What I have got is I have character in my face. It’s taken an awful lot of late nights and drinking to put it there. When I go to work in a picture, I say, ‘Don’t take the lines out of my face. Leave them there.’
To preach the gospel is to show people their need for salvation against a backdrop of God's nature and the character of sin, and then present Jesus as the only remedy for what ails them and the world. In my weekly preaching in the worship services I always call people to believe in Christ.
Character development is what I value most as a reader of fiction. If an author can manage to create the sort of characters who feel fully real, who I find myself worrying about while Im walking through the grocery store aisles a week later, that to me is as close to perfection as it gets.
I love that Barry Seal is working for the CIA, and he's an awful liar. It just goes to how honest this character is at the end of the day, even as he rips off the country and the world to the tune of becoming one of the wealthiest men in America. There's an innate honesty, a purity to him.
Silent films are fairytales. All stories are more or less fairytales, and removing speech makes everything more universal. It makes specific characters stand in for everybody, so actions take on fairytale significance. And the writing has to be pared down to represent people as types, too.
In the case of complex personalities the matter stands thus: one of these can understand other men better than they can understand themselves, because within himself he has not only the character he is grasping, but also its opposite. Duality is necessary for observation and comprehension.
For an entire populace, change, growth, and spontaneity were dangerous. Acting upon a personal desire, whispering a hidden longing, revealing your true feelings - all the human actions we think of as essential to a character - had be censored by the self lest they be punished by the state.
Of all the intellectual hurdles which the human mind has confronted and has overcome in the last fifteen hundred years the one which seems to me to have been the most amazing in character and the most stupendous in the scope of its consequences is the one relating to the problem of motion.
I am inclined to say that the personal attendance and intervention of women in election proceedings, even apart from any suspicion of the wider objects of many of the promoters of the present movement, would be a practical evil not only of the gravest, but even of an intolerable character.
When you begin a play, you're going to have to spend a lot of time with those characters, so those characters are going to have to be rich enough that you want to take a very long journey with them. That's how I begin thinking about what I want to write about and who I want to write about.
I like to work with actors that have varied experiences. But I don't choose them because of their experience, I choose them because of qualities I think would make an interesting character and to me there is no one way to direct actors, there is only one way to collaborate with one person.
I recently spoke at a university where a student told me it was such a shame that Nigerian men were physical abusers like the father character in my novel. I told him that I had recently read a novel called American Psycho,and that it was a shame that young Americans were serial murderers.
The violence for me is never meant to be entertaining. It's meant to hurt the characters and I'm trying to show the impact it is having on the people involved with it. If there is cathartic violence at the end, then it costs the protagonist something. It's not just a blaze-of-glory moment.
I never had any urge or desire to do like a big spectacular movie with thousands and thousands of extras. I'd rather watch paint drying. But put me in a room with three people having a hard time, like a character situation, and then you're into a really intense portraiture kind of concept.
An honorable man or woman is one who is truthful; free from deceit; above cheating, lying, stealing, or any form of deception. An honorable man or woman is one who learns early that one cannot do wrong and feel right. A man's character is judged on how he keeps his word and his agreements.
I remember calling and asking, because I had a few lines that were like, "How could the character have done this?" and I hadn't read the part of the script that said what she [ Cate Blanchett] did, so they put me on the phone with Woody... Allen. I don't know if I could really say "Woody."
Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families; and in families not regulated by that pervading influence which sanctifies while it enhances... in short, by the influence of Woman, in the lofty character of Wife, they may be expected with confidence, and must be borne with philosophy.
Nowadays, especially in big commercial films it's much easier for the audience, and they tend to get spoonfed. It's much more interesting to me, people leave the theater and they start asking themselves questions and find their own moral compass about what these characters have been doing.
I like being in real environments. I love being in the place that it's about - these sets and locations are characters in the movies. Can you imagine Breakfast at Tiffany's shot somewhere else? It's classic. Characters are part of storytelling; they're just as important as everything else.
If you have a character stand up and put on her shoes and open the door, in order to do that, you're imagining her shoes and her clothes and her house and her door. The character becomes more real. But once you've done that, you can probably just get it all across with a couple of details.
It's been such a struggle to learn all that I have; I wouldn't want to give any of that knowledge up. That's why I've always loved acting; as a kid, I didn't necessarily like my real life, so I could escape into these other characters and experience a life completely different from my own.
There is no such thing as a perfect person in this world. We all must become the main characters or the stars of our lives. We are all different and start differently. But from whatever is our circumstances, it is very important that we find the opportunities to try out what we want to do.
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."
The ultimate is not to win, but to reach within the depths of your capabilities and to compete against yourself to the greatest extent possible. When you do that, you have dignity. You have the pride. You can walk about with character and pride no matter in what place you happen to finish.
There were no shortcuts, I realized. It took years of racing to build up the mind and body and character until a rider had logged hundreds of races and thousands of miles of road. I wouldn't be able to win a Tour de France until I had enough iron in my legs, and lungs, and brain and Heart.
If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practised it on one another.
The air of fashion, which many young people are so eager to attain, always strikes me like the studied attitudes of some modern prints, copied with tasteless servility after the antigue; the soul is left out, and none of the parts are tied together by what may properly be termed character.
To my way of thinking, whether it's a superhero movie or a romance or a comedy or whatever, the most important thing is you've got to care about the characters. You've got to understand the characters and you've got to be interested. If the characters are interesting, you're half-way home.
I got 'Power' on my own through my agent and my team. I didn't know 50 until I got on the show. Because my character is so close to his, we spent a lot of time as friends. But even in that, I didn't really bring up music to him because I saw how everybody else was bringing up music to him.
That author who draws a character, even though to common view incongruous in its parts, as the flying-squirrel, and, at differentperiods, as much at variance with itself as the caterpillar is with the butterfly into which it changes, may yet, in so doing, be not false but faithful to facts.