Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm always interested in characters who are closed down, but who open up when they choose to, rather than when they're obliged to. I think that's a very appealing thing, for an audience and just in life. I like the idea that something will say nothing, and then get straight to the point. That feels like how your heroes should be.
I don't know if make a conscious effort to vary the characters and subjects that I write about, but I do find myself keeping track of ideas that come along, as probably most writers do, and whatever seems most interesting to me when I flip through my notes before I begin a new story is usually what I will try to write about next.
I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything - other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned, that the world's otherness is antidote to confusion - that standing within this otherness - the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books - can re-dignify the worst-stung heart.
If you ask me, the place that a story happens is as equal character. It's almost like an ecological viewpoint: These people are living in this piece of land, and in this piece of land in this time this is possible. For me, I almost think location first. It's time first - what year is it - then where are we, and then who is in it.
Regard as free not those whose status makes them outwardly free, but those who are free in their character and conduct. For we should not call men truly free when they are wicked and dissolute, since they are slaves to worldly passions. Freedom and happiness of soul consist in genuine purity and detachment from transitory things.
I read Animal House and I said, "I will burn down a house to be in this. I have to be in this movie." I read 1941 and I went, "Well, if Steven Spielberg likes it..." But it just wasn't on the page. It was a very big, unwieldy thing, and there were so many characters. It was fun to shoot, but I didn't know what the core of it was.
It's a trap I've fallen into earlier in my career - trying to be liked. Don't do it. When I watch TV and I see someone trying to make me like them, acting cute or quirky or goofy, I'm not impressed. Don't act like America's watching you. Just latch onto your character. Characters are flawed. Be unlikeable. Be flawed. Be a person.
A film can be big or small - I have to just fall in love with it. To connect with the character, the script, and the director. Sometimes they say to you, 'You should do that for your career; it's a big thing, people will go and see it,' but I wouldn't be able to, because my heart wouldn't be in it. I would drive people quite mad.
I've been very lucky to have been chosen for and to have chosen roles that are good. Some are better than others and some projects are better than others, whether it's female or male characters. There's still more that we can do and there's still more stories to be told. I would love to see more female-driven projects in general.
I'm such a huge fan of television and what's happening in television, right now. You are able to visit characters and visit a story, week to week, push things in a different way than you can in a film, and you are able to go deeper, simply because you have more time. I'm just excited to do that. It's always good to do new things.
The leader beyond the millennium will not be the leader who has learned the lessons of how to do it, with ledgers of 'hows' balanced with 'its' that dissolve in the crashing changes ahead. The leader for today and the future will be focused on how to be - how to develop quality, character mind-set, values, principles, and courage.
I saw Ben Whishaw playing Hamlet at the Old Vic and straight away had a very strong sense that he might be the end of a very, very long road of searching for the right guy. He did an amazing audition, where it all came across this, instinctive feeling that he obviously had for the character in the Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer.
I must say...that more unmanly, brutal treatment of a little pony it was never my painful lot to witness; and by giving way to such passion, you injure your own character as much, nay more, than you injure your horse, and remember, we shall all have to be judged according to our works, whether they be towards man or towards beast.
It is true that we shall not be able to reach perfection, but in our struggle toward it we shall strengthen our characters and give stability to our ideas, so that, whilst ever advancing calmly in the same direction, we shall be rendered capable of applying the faculties with which we have been gifted to the best possible account.
It seems everyone wants to know if I have an eating disorder, and playing an anorexic character on 'Make it or Break It' probably didn't help much. To set the record straight, I certainly do not have an eating disorder. I think as anyone can gather, I love food, and it is not just a front to cover up the fact that I don't eat any.
Reading about utopianism, and eventually creating characters with their own utopian ambitions, was the way I learned to live with being a pregnant person, to stave off the sense of incipient disaster. You're bringing a person into this overcrowded world, knowing they're one day going to die and there's nothing you can do about it.
I love Dexter. I love Top Chef. I can't wait for it to come back. I love Friday Night Lights. I think TV is in a great place right now. It's definitely getting better and better. I think there is some of the most complete writing for women and female characters, they're done in television production and not really film production.
Some Nickelodeon executives were worried about backing an animated action show with a female lead character. Conventional TV wisdom has it that girls will watch shows about boys, but boys won't watch shows about girls. During test screenings, though, boys said they didn't care that Korra was a girl. They just said she was awesome.
I think that a lot of the time I don't go for something in particular. I see what comes to me, I filter it out. I never really strive to play a particular character or do a particular genre of film. As long as it's a good script and a great range of people and my character is really interesting I can't see any reason not to do it.
'Dallas' hit a chord back in the late Seventies and Eighties because it was the age of greed: here you have this unapologetic character who is mean and nasty and ruthless and does it all with an evil grin. I think people related to JR back then because we all have someone we know exactly like him. Everyone in the world knows a JR.
For a sitcom sex scene, you get in bed and that's the end of the scene. It quick and it was fast, but it was foreign territory for me. Not for Bobby. Bobby Cannavale has been down that road before. With my character, I think it will be a one-and-out. I don't think you'll see my character [in Vinyl] naked again, so relax everybody.
I was pretty confident that I'd be playing something, if James Gunn could convince Marvel Studios and Disney to cast me. He's involved with the casting too, but if he could convince them to go along with him and agree with getting me on the roster, then yeah, I would have voiced Groot. Not a problem. Groot is an awesome character.
When I'm writing it's as if I'm the observer. It's as if that computer screen there -it used to be the typewriter - just kind of dissolves and there's this whirling tunnel of mist and there's a kind of proscenium arch, and then there are my characters, and they say what they say, and I laugh sometimes in surprise at what they say.
He wore a sprinkling of powder upon his head, as if to make himself look benevolent; but if that were his purpose, he would perhaps have done better to powder his countenance also, for there was something in its very wrinkles, and in his cold restless eye, which seemed to tell of cunning that would announce itself in spite of him.
We also have a piece about the Mayflower, but it's just a very different, very gritty, very character-driven version of why those people were on that boat and what the experience was like for them, emotionally, physically and spiritually, and also the Native Americans and what the state of Native American society was at that time.
I am used to experiencing so much trauma, that when I see it, I have to speak out. I don't think rappers have a responsibility, but if you don't say something or be silent or avoid it, I believe it shows your true real character to the world. It's like, if no one wants to rap about gentrification then I am going to fill that void!
The laws and conditions of the production of wealth partake of the character of physical truths. There is nothing optional or arbitrary in them ... It is not so with the Distribution of Wealth. That is a matter of human institution solely. The things once there, mankind, individually or collectively, can do with them as they like.
And it interferes with your ability to be a good actress if you're constantly aware of yourself as a person. To me, it isn't valuable to think about how I'm coming off all the time if I'm trying to create a character, because that's a process that I love. It's like falling in love and surrendering to another person or a character.
In every human being one or the other of these two instincts is predominant: the active or positive instinct to offer hospitality, the negative or passive instinct to accept it. And either of these instincts is so significant of character that one might as well say that mankind is divisible into two great classes: hosts and guests.
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.
Each time, I try to find a family of interesting faces. I follow the tradition of films from the 40s - at this time, there were so many interesting faces in France. I often work with the same because there are not thousands and thousands in France. I'm looking for interesting faces and characters actors, and it's not for everybody.
Great as heaven and earth are, men still find some things in them with which to be dissatisfied. Thus it is that, were the superior man to speak of his way in all its greatness, nothing in the world would be found able to embrace it, and were he to speak of it in its minuteness, nothing in the world would be found able to split it.
When you really want a role and you really want a character, you become quite close to the script and the project, and it is sad when it doesn't go your way. But I've found there's always another one, which will be as good if not better. You can't let your failures bring you down when you're an actor, because then you can't get up.
If the character should be nude in the scene and it makes sense and I trust the person making the film then I don't see a problem with it. I certainly don't want to be involved in anything that is gratuitous, but I don't think the human body is something to be ashamed of. Every other person on the planet has the same parts as I do.
I might refer at once, if necessary, to a hundred well authenticated instances. One of very remarkable character, and of which the circumstances may be fresh in the memory of some of my readers, occurred, not very long ago, in the neighboring city of Baltimore, where it occasioned a painful, intense, and widely extended excitement.
Throughout my career, I've always portrayed characters that were humorous, but also weren't afraid to speak their minds, especially when it came to racy or controversial topics. I think this struck a chord with the LGBT community. We both also share a very strong love for animals. When you combine the two, it's a very strong match.
Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.... An attempt to scrutinize men's thoughts and punish their opinions is of all kinds of despotism the most odious: yet this is peculiarly character of a period of revolution.... There is no period more at war with the existence of liberty.
Casting is everything. Getting the person that you imagined is this character and then seeing what they bring to it.That's why you hire them, so why tell somebody first what it is you want? I'm more curious to see what they bring to it and then be inspired by it and say: "OK, what if you tried this?" or "What would happen if ... ?"
God is interested in developing your character. At times He lets you proceed, but He will never let you go too far without discipline to bring you back. In your relationship with God, He may let you make a wrong decision. Then the Spirit of God causes you to recognize that it is not God's will. He guides you back to the right path.
All my movies have an autobiographical dimension, but that is indirectly, through the characters. In fact I am behind everything that happens and that is said, but I am never talking about myself in first person. Something in me - probably a dislike of cheap exhibitionism- stops me from approaching a project too autobiographically.
I always have to start with a character that I can really hook into, and then build from there. I have writer friends who start from a world, an object or some kind of concept that they then hone and widdle into a story. But, for me, it has to be a character that I can really sink my teeth into and live with, for months and months.
You see, it's really quite simple. A simile is just a mode of comparison employing 'as' and 'like' to reveal the hidden character or essence of whatever we want to describe, and through the use of fancy, association, contrast, extension, or imagination, to enlarge our understanding or perception of human experience and observation.
When you're training as an actor, a lot of the big work you're learning is to treat fictional characters like real people. You don't have the problem of discovering a backstory with real people, but there's always a mystery which is common to both fictional and factual characters. They are never quite the person you think they are.
With acting, I've got a character to inhabit. You've got to think about your intentions and your directions. In modeling, even though there's an act to it, a good model is a good model. For me it's uncomfortable territory. You start to feel quite insecure about yourself. There's nothing between you and the camera, and it's just you.
I truly think a long career is to keep the audience guessing and not being able to be boxed, and for me, I'm not hell-bent on playing the lead in things as long its an interesting character with phenomenally talented people, and it's a script that I feel is genuinely innovative, creative, and potentially interesting for an audience.
Understand: you are one of a kind. Your character traits are a kind of chemical mix that will never be repeated in history. There are ideas unique to you, a specific rhythm and perspective that are your strengths, not your weaknesses. You must not be afraid of your uniqueness and you must care less and less what people think of you.
Through the history of my records, from when I started controlling the visual, I always used lower case letters for everything, I can't even explain why that is. The character is actually me, and I think once you see the film for the record, or see the video or really get in to the record, that will all sort of reveal itself to you.
I had these kind of unrealistic expectations that were fueled by romantic comedies, and it has both helped me and hurt me in many ways. It helped me because, in general, they've made me hopeful. I just figure things will eventually work out for me. But nobody is like any Tom Hanks character. Nobody is Hugh Grant. No one is Meg Ryan!
I have about as much control over how I look as the guy who's short and looks more like a character actor - we both have the same drive to be actors and we both have the same drive to assume these different characters, it's just harder for me to get the chance because they look at me and say, 'Oh, he's this type,' and they stamp me.
We know that U.S. voters, and world leaders, allow Obama extraordinary leeway when it comes to deadly drone strikes, precisely because of his politics, character and background. (We are talking about a man, after all, who won the Nobel Peace Prize while ordering the automated killing of suspected Muslim terrorists around the world).