Quotes About Characters

I think there's a lack of really, really good funny scripts out there that work on all the levels that they're supposed to - which is to say that they're not just funny but they have interesting characters that people are going to like and be invested in. I've done a bunch of movies that haven't worked but I like to think I've done some that have worked and that's because not only is the comedy there but the characters and storylines are interesting. The characters are real and relateable and people were invested in them.

One of the keys is, and it may sound funny, talking about characters with super powers, but one of the keys is to make your characters as realistic and believable as possible. Even if they have super powers, you say to yourself, "Well, if somebody had a super power like this, what would his life be like? Wouldn't he still maybe have to go to the dentist or wouldn't he have to worry about making a living? What about his love life?" You've got to make characters that your reader can believe exists or might exist.

I like characters. I like spirited characters whether they exist in fiction or real life. Whether they're the invention of artistic people or directors, musicians. I think music and art and fashion designers inspire me and I like characters.

A certain critic -- for such men, I regret to say, do exist -- made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained 'all the old Wodehouse characters under different names.' He has probably by now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha: but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have out-generalled the man this time by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy.

And as much as I love the gritty characters, I like to play all sorts of characters. I'm an actor. I love to create.

I think it gets really dangerous, though, to do it on the show. I think that the writers and producers are very much aware of that and the dangers of putting characters together and what that can mean for the show. You know, it's possible it could kill the thing that holds the show together, the chemistry, sexual tension between the two characters.

Well, the thing about great fictional characters from literature, and the reason that they're constantly turned into characters in movies, is that they completely speak to what makes people human.

I once had an editor advise me, as I was revising one of my early novels, to add more characters. I played around with the idea. As soon as I'd decided a few fresh faces and give them something to do, I realized that what my editor had really asked for was more plot. Ding. More characters equals more action.

I wanted to create a game (EarthBound) with real characters; characters whom players would recognize in the people around them.

Where are the flamboyant characters?! This is what America desperately needs right now! Flamboyant intellectual characters who can cut different ways. And, that's just what I'm missing.

Any script, even like The Founder, if it's something that I imagine myself playing this character or that character - any of the characters, basically - how do we flesh these characters out to be good enough to have amazing actors that come in that make it really difficult for them to say no? Even though I'm not right for any of those parts, that's just kind of how we go about it.

Every actor, I don't care what they say, their roles are a lot more interesting than we are, and at the end of the day, it's still entertainment or fantasy. I think we can learn a lot from the characters we play and I find that the characters are even more noble than myself.

Nice characters are boring! I like writing upbeat characters - that's my natural tendency.

In the Marvel world, some characters have similar powers. Initially some people might bump up against it, but if they really looked into the X-Men world they would see that characters do share similar powers.

Literature doesn't have a country. Shakespeare is an African writer. His Falstaff, for example, is very African in his appetite for life, his largeness of spirit. The characters of Turgenev are ghetto dwellers. Dickens characters are Nigerians.

A writer can't just be well-educated or good at research; to build a living, breathing world with interesting characters, you have to write from the gut. I'm not saying you have to live your life like a fantasy adventure. The trick is the ability to synthesize your own everyday experiences into your fiction. Infuse your characters with believable emotions and motivations. Infuse your world with rich sensory detail. For that you have to be in touch with your own existence and your own soul, the dark and the light of it.

I've made the decision to adhere to three general truths when it comes to my novels: There will be a love-story element to the story, the novel will be set in eastern North Carolina, and the characters will be likeable. Then, I make each novel unique through differences in voice, perspective, age and personalities of the characters, and of course, plot.

Ultimately, all characters have some negative and positive energies. That's just how I see it. I didn't go out looking for negative characters; I went out looking for people who have a struggle and a fight to tackle. That's what interests me.

We're at a point nowhere it has to change. We have characters that are not alive that are alive in the book. We have characters that never appeared in the book. We have a lot of events that didn't quite happen the same way in the book. But there's so much in the book, stuff we've passed in the timeline that I really thought was awesome, that I really wanted to get to.

My whole theory about why I couldn’t find any creators who realized they were leaving out female characters is because they were raised on the same ratio. I just heard someone the other day call it either ‘smurfing’ a movie, which is when there’s one female character, or ‘minioning’ a movie, which is when there’s no female characters.

I get very involved in my characters. Sometimes I have a very hard time separating my characters from my life.

I haven't got anything against films that are about the minutia of relationships or customs, but I love extremes. I love taking a bunch of characters and it usually is a bunch of characters, and you throw something at them that's usually extreme, like a bag of money, or you send them out to explode a nuclear device on the surface of the sun. And those extremes are wonderful for drama.

If a novel is written in a certain language with certain characters from a particular community and the story is very good or illuminating, then that work is translated into the language of another community - then they begin to see through their language that the problems described there are the same as the problems they are having. They can identify with characters from another language group.

There's nothing comparative to Damien [the current Robin] or any of the other characters. I love those characters. And this isn't, "This is better than that." I think a couple of people misread what we had said in the first issue about that stuff.

I like to think of characters in relation to other cinematic characters.

I always start with characters rather than with a plot, which many critics would say is very obvious from the lack of plot in my films - although I think they do have plots - but the plot is not of primary importance to me, the characters are.

To me, truth is the big thing. Constantly you're writing something and you get to a place where your characters could go this way or that and I just can't lie. The characters have gotta be true to themselves.

Disney has a bible for their characters, so that people who draw Disney characters have to make them look correct.

We are all potentially characters in a novel--with the difference that characters in a novel really get to live their lives to the full.

In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations! Be sure not to discuss your hero's state of mind. Make it clear from his actions. Nor is it necessary to portray many main characters. Let two people be the center of gravity in your story: he and she.

When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away - even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.

I always start drawing any job by planning out to some degree the locales and trying to nail the characters. If they're existing characters, I'll draw them several times on rough paper just to get a feeling for them. The ideal when you're drawing a comic is to have everything in your head, not to have to refer to notes.

We [me and Jennifer Salke] talked about the characters and different kinds of families and where are we today. We certainly pitched the gay couple, but we also talked about what it was like to be a single mother with a young daughter, what is it like to be a woman in your 50's who is completely starting over and dating again and having to go online to date again. We talked about the whole spectrum of the characters, but I don't think it ever came up about whether people are ready for it or not.

I think that the next album is specifically for sure from Cry Baby's perspective, but it's not necessarily about her family-life or her love-life, or anything like that, it's more about this place in this town. The place has different characters in there, so in every song there's gonna be different characters that appear.

You've got all these characters and yet, you're hovering over one character like a fly over a stinky diaper. Realize that you've got a kickass superpower: you can possess and take-over anybody inside the story. With the power of Point-of-View, you can drag us along for the ride. You can shove us into their eyes, their minds, you can force us to piggyback on their experiences past and present. Sometimes untangling a knotted-up tale means looking at it from different eyes: what better eyes than those of the other characters inside the story?

The characters that aren't what they seem to be or women who are stronger than people give them credit for or characters you underestimate, I always think are really interesting because there are so many possibilities with them.

I enjoy playing real human beings after playing a lot of larger than life characters. I love playing true to life characters and that is what I intend to do for the majority of my career.

With any period piece I think the thing to do is forget that it's not contemporary when you're writing and to have the characters feel as much as possible like characters that you would know.

For the camera, I like the feeling of changing into different characters. Even though I'm not acting, I still have to be someone different to show the product. If I'm not being someone different, I won't find it fun. I love the shows because it transforms you into a different person. Not Malaika - it makes me someone else. Naturally, I'm quiet and crazy. But when they give me an outfit, like a very elegant outfit, it transforms me into this beautiful woman - I can feel it inside me. I like that, playing different characters. I'm really interested in acting.

Because I'm a synesthete I see characters in colors and I perceive a W as green.

There are many readers of the book, who don't know anything about the authors and the artists. There is more than one author. It doesn't matter, if you can't make the reader dive into the story and surround him with that environment and those characters. That's an experience that lasts longer than figuring out who did what. I think that's what makes our working relationship better, it helps us to make a book that feels unique and not like different voices.

The most important thing as a comic and a writer is to have a strong point of view. I have one and can recognise it in others which is why I can write for other people and different characters that I perform.

One piece of advice I have is: Want something else more than success. Success is a lovely thing, but your desire to say something, your worth, and your identity shouldn’t rely on it, because it’s not guaranteed and it’s not permanent and it’s not sufficient. So work hard, fall in love with the writing — the characters, the story, the words, the themes — and make sure that you are who you are regardless of your life circumstances. That way, when the good things come, they don’t warp you, and when the bad things hit you, you don’t fall apart.

The characters in a children's book must reach into the heart of the reader on page one. Emotional content is the main reason a child and a parent will go back to a book again and again.

I've just finished a series of Olivia Manning novels. She's best known for two trilogies: Balkan Trilogy and Levant Trilogy. The six novels are continuous and contain the same set of characters. They are based on Manning's experiences in Eastern Europe and Egypt during the Second World War. Each novel is a wonderful picture of the peculiar British expatriate culture and what was happening during the war. She's one of those brilliant women who write very well about domestic relationships. All the books are slim, and it's easy to gallop through them.

I'm a massive daydreamer. I'm constantly lost within my own fantasies and my own thoughts personally, and I think maybe that is sort of represented in what we do for a living, the fact that we make believe everything and we escape into these other characters for a living.

I like films, I like movies, I like playing different characters and working with different actors, and filming in different places. I like movies, because it's kind of a combination of every art, it's like it's picture, it's story, it's music, it's kind of like a clash and a collide of every art. It's really neat.

I want my audiences to be as open-minded as my characters.