Quotes About Character

When you are writing, you have to love all your characters. If you're writing something from a minor character's point of view, you really need to stop and say the purpose of this character isn't to be somebody's sidekick or to come in and put the horse in the stable. The purpose of this character is you're getting a little window into that character's life and that character's day. You have to write them as if they're not a minor character, because they do have their own things going on.

One of the great myths in America is that sports build character. They can and they should. Indeed, sports may be the perfect venue in which to build character. But sports don't build character unless a coach possesses character and intentionally teaches it. Sports can team with ethics and character and spirituality; virtuous coaching can integrate the body with the heart, the mind, and the soul.

When you start digging into things like character, though, the notion that people have high character or low character is very strong. What's crazy is that my thinking is not a new insight. The very first large-scale study of character, still one of the largest ever, was done in the early 1900s by Hugh Hartshorne, an ordained minister and a scientist.

Does character develop over time? In novels, of course it does: otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story. But in life? I sometimes wonder. Our attitudes and opinions change, we develop new habits and eccentricities; but that's something different, more like decoration. Perhaps character resembles intelligence, except that character peaks a little later: between twenty and thirty, say. And after that, we're just stuck with what we've got. We're on our own. If so, that would explain a lot of lives, wouldn't it? And also - if this isn't too grand a word - our tragedy.

I've always been very strong minded on character-based fights and character-based action. If you take the character out of the action and you just shoot it as an action sequence, the audience starts to lose connection.

[John Musker] got me reading the mythology and we very early on we worked up a basic storyline centered around the character of Maui. He just seemed like a great character to kind of build a movie around. He's this mythic demi-god, bigger than life character. He pulled up islands with his magical fishhook. He slowed down the sun. He's Pan Pacific.

The desire to criticise becomes less and less as the character is developed. It is the mark of a fine character never to be critical and to mention but rarely the faults of others. A strong character does not resist evil, but uses their strength in building the good. They know that when the light is made strong, the darkness will disappear of itself.

The less you offer, the more readers are forced to bring the world to life with their own visual imaginings. I personally hate an illustration of a character on a jacket of a book. I never want to have someone show me what the character really looks like - or what some artist has decided the character really looks like - because it always looks wrong to me. I realize that I prefer to kind of meet the text halfway and offer a lot of visual collaborations from my own imaginative response to the sentences.

There are more similarities than differences when it comes to preparation of a performance. You're using some lyrics, you have a relationship with them, they apply to different parts of your life and different circumstances, different memories, different stories you have in your head. You form personal relationships with the song. I think that's very similar, in a way, to prepping a character. You pour your own personality, in a sense, into the character, you sympathize with a character in a way that's similar to the way you might sympathize with a song.

I don't only act out of my character; my character reacts to my actions. Each time I why, even if I'm not caught, I become a little bit more of this ugly thing: a liar. Character is always in the making, with each morally valenced action, whether right or wrong, affecting our characters, the people who we are.

In novels you're able to occupy character's internal thoughts and it's really hard to do in a film or a TV show. When you're reading a character's thoughts or when it's in first person, you're reading kind of their own story, so you have the opportunity to see what makes that character complex or complicated. And to me that's what the whole point of fiction is.

If I'm a character, it's a biographical movie. My character is as close to me as possible. As close to being myself as possible. So my character, J. Cole, is very close to Jermaine Cole.

There’s an old writing rule that says ‘Don’t have two character names start with the same letter’, but I knew at the beginning that I was going to have more than 26 characters, so I was in trouble there. Ultimately it comes down to what sounds right. And I struggle with that, finding the right name for a character. If I can’t find the right name I don’t know who the character is and I can’t proceed.

The ability to get inside your character's head in a graphic novel is really fun and useful because one, you can really define the character's voice and two, it's a way easier way to convey what the character's thinking by actually laying out what he's thinking.

I'm not a big fan of violent movies, it's not something I like to watch. And it's not my aim or goal to make a violent movie. My characters are very important, so when I'm trying to depict a certain character in my movie, if my character is violent, it will be expressed that way in the film. You cannot really deny what a character is about. To repeat, my movie end up becoming violent, but I don't start with the intent of making violent movies.

You never display your character more clearly than when you speak about the character of others.

Consider: for all the gobbledegook [film studio] executives spout about backstory, all that we, the audience, want to know is what happens next. That's the only thing that's going on. . . . Character is nothing other than action, and character-driven means The plot stinks, and you'd better hope the star is popular enough to open the movie in spite of it.

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.

Every character sees the world through a framework of education and experience that they're proud experts about. To write a character, find out what they know best, and THEN you'll know how they'll describe a "hot day." Or a "pretty girl."

What we call our destiny is truly our character and that character can be altered. The knowledge that we are responsible for our actions and attitudes does not need to be discouraging, because it also means that we are free to change this destiny. One is not in bondage to the past, which has shaped our feelings, to race, inheritance, background. All this can be altered if we have the courage to examine how it formed us. We can alter the chemistry provided we have the courage to dissect the elements.

I just sort of take it from a character perspective, and I don't know if he was necessarily spiritual, but I do think he had hope. He was a character that was comfortable having hope in his life, and hope is faith.

With the television thing you have this lull of time where you're not with the character. And when you get those first pages, you're like, "Who is she again? Huh? Where did we leave off?" Then you show up at the read-through and all of the sudden the voice is there, and you realize that the character is still stewing in you all that time, even in the downtime.

The main thing in acting is honesty, to feel the humanity and get to the essence of the character. You can't put anything into a character that you haven't got within you.

I wanted Yoda to be the traditional kind of character you find in fairy tales and mythology. And that character is usually a frog or a wizened old man on the side of the road. The hero is going down the road and meets this poor and insignificant person. The goal or lesson is for the hero to learn to respect everybody and to pay attention to the poorest person because that's where the key to his success will be.

The core character of Victorians is one of aspiration and ambition, and Victorians have, since first settlement days... demonstrated that core character over and over again.

My approach to the work is the same, whether I had the lead or a supporting role. I consider myself a character actor in the true sense of the word. Unless I'm doing my autobiography, I'm playing a character.

We have this saying, and it's been very useful when a series, 'The Mindy Project' goes for longer than a hundred episodes, which is Mindy character can never get what she wants when she wants it. We enjoyed it because it felt very real to her character to make a big impulsive move and it seems like she has everything, this instant family, a guy she loves and then there's a moment of panic.

Without anyone's help, Darth Maul will only commit himself to his mistakes of the past. Every time we find this character, he is living in the past and in some cases he is living with the dead. This character is desperate and he needs Obi-Wan's help to move on.

You can get everything money will buy without a lick of character, but you can't get any of the things money won't buy: happiness, joy, peace of mind, winning relationships, etc., without character.

Costume is always an asset. Normal costume you have a lot to say about - if you're wearing suits or ties, and what color you want, and how it's going to be cut, and stuff like that, and whether or not you're going to wear a hat, and blah, blah, blah. But, when you're wearing a special costume, and of course, costume is probably the second ingredient in character, script being first, I always find that the costume does a lot to cement your character, to put it firmly in mind.

Character isn't who you are when life goes your way. Character is who you really are when the bottom falls out.

Sam Jackson is a director's dream. Some actors hope to find their character during shooting. He knows his character before shooting. Sam's old-school. I just got out of his way. I never did more than two takes with Sam.-william friedkin

Sometimes you'll see interviews about an actor who was asked to hit the weight room to develop his body for the character, and you hear them complaining about the egg white omelettes they had to eat and the tortures of hitting the gym twice a day - I find that to be a bit saddening, it's all a part of becoming the character and as an actor, that is your job.

Thrilled that Gov. Romney enjoys my old character. I enjoyed the character he used 2 b 2. If he'd embrace that again, he'd b a great candidate.

Culture is not just an ornament; it is the expression of a nation's character, and at the same time it is a powerful instrument to mould character. The end of culture is right living.

The true athlete should have character, not be a character

Many Christians have what we might call a 'cultural holiness.' They adapt to the character and behavior pattern of Christians around them...But God has not called us to be like those around us. He has called us to be like Himself. Holiness is nothing less than conformity to the character of God.

I can't negotiate and collaborate with a character to create a distilled dramatic investigation of the raw material. I need to work with an actor. That stuff about actors who stay in character all the time is nonsense.

I was kind of scared at first to do that [vice-over] because when you're on set, a lot of the things going on around you - the environment and playing off other actors - and that's what makes it easier and helps you to be in your character. So, realizing you're not going to have that and you're going to be secluded in this booth, it's like, "How am I going to be a character when I'm just in these walls?"

Plays can create empathy. If you put a Muslim character on stage, and make him a full character, you're making it possible for the audience to feel empathy, and a little empathy on both sides would help.

Modern schools and universities push students into habits of depersonalized learning, alienation from nature and sexuality, obedience to hierarchy, fear of authority, self-objectification, and chilling competitiveness. These character traits are the essence of the twisted personality-type of modern industrialism. They are precisely the character traits needed to maintain a social system that is utterly out of touch with nature, sexuality and real human needs.

If you're writing about a character, if he's a powerful character, unless you give him vulnerability I don't think he'll be as interesting to the reader.

I think the Hulk has always appealed very strongly to much younger readers than Spider-Man, because Spider-Man is an adolescent character, and the Hulk is a very childlike character.

I'm thinking like the character in order to be as authentic as I can. But after a while, how would I be able to cleanse myself from this unless I do something that's a different medium but also creative. That's what I do. It's my little ritual. After every filming, I just write a poem about it and my character specifically and I can let her go.

True faith takes its character and quality from its object. Its strength therefore depends on the character of Christ. Even those of us who have weak faith have the same strong Christ as others!

Any actor who judges his character is a fool - for every role you play you've got to absorb that character's motives and justifications.

I've always remembered something Sanford Meisner, my acting teacher, told us. When you create a character, it's like making a chair, except instead of making someting out of wood, you make it out of yourself. That's the actor's craft - using yourself to create a character.

Of course, people will call you an old artist or young artist, which is just a character of you. But personally, I don't think my work and my understanding of art is so much related to being Chinese, but the character of that. Maybe it's beyond my own consciousness.