Character Quotes - Page 102

The main reason for rewriting is not to achieve a smooth surface, but to discover the inner truth of your characters.

I'm interested in telling the character's story, not my beliefs, political or otherwise.

The writer of stories or of novels settles on men and imitates them; he exhausts the possibilities of his characters.

To recognize yourself in a character onscreen, and to connect with them, you gotta recognize their flaws; they gotta feel like a real person.

I've known Emma Watson since she was 9, we've watched each other grow up, formed this sort of brother/sister bond, and suddenly I'm leaning in to kiss her. Well, it felt completely wrong... but, you know, you try to sink into the character and divorce yourself from it. We ended up laughing hysterically afterwards.

On the way there is no harder pass than this: fortunate is he who does not carry envy as a companion.

I was keenly aware that I didn't want to draw on too many typically doomed aspects of the fated singer. Whether it's Judy Garland or Norma Desmond, there is this tragic quality to older women that one can revel in, and you want it to be more three-dimensional than that. So it was important for the character to be strong and resilient, because there are so many victims in opera.

Rudy has always been a scary character, so there's a place for him on Halloween.

One of my standard - and fairly true - responses to the question as to how story ideas come to me is that story ideas only come to me for short stories. With longer fiction, it is a character (or characters) coming to visit, and I am then obliged to collaborate with him/her/it/them in creating the story.

As a general principle you should not force young men to do their duty, but let them do it voluntarily and thereby develop their characters.

I've often said why does God leave us here on earth, once we accept Christ, once we're in the family, why didn't he just kill us. Why leave us here? Well, because he's working on our character through these trials, these tribulations, we're learning to practice what we're going to do in heaven. So really, the kingdom mindset is actually the eternal mindset. It's not just about eternal life. Eternal life is getting ready for that.

I think it would be a great challenge to work on a military game which featured a female lead character. Since female soldiers are now being allowed on the frontlines, we're actually in danger of reality overtaking games!

When a book, any sort of book, reaches a certain intensity of artistic performance, it becomes literature. That intensity may be a matter of style, situation, character, emotional tone, or idea, or half a dozen other things. It may also be a perfection of control over the movement of a story similar to the control a great pitcher has over the ball.

Remember: Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations. Plot is observed after the fact rather than before. It cannot precede action. It is the chart that remains when an action is through. That is all Plot ever should be. It is human desire let run, running, and reaching a goal. It cannot be mechanical. It can only be dynamic.

The test of our religion is whether it fits us to meet emergencies. A man has no more character than he can command in a time of crisis.

Foolish, whenever you take the meanness and formality of that thing you do, instead of converting it into the obedient spiracle ofyour character and aims.

The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.

The Gods we worship write their names on our faces; be sure of that. And a man will worship something ... That which dominates will determine his life and character. Therefore it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.

That which dominates our imagination and our thoughts will determine our life and character.

The matriarchal society is thus the decadent and broken. The strongly matriarchal character of Negro life is due to the moral failure of Negro men, their failure to be responsible, to support the family, or to provide authority. The same is true of American Indian tribes which are also matriarchal today.

My only obligation is to my characters. And they came from where I have been.

And once we have given our community a good start,' I pointed out, ' the process will be cumulative. By maintaining a sound system of education you produce citizens of good character, and citizens of sound character, with the advantage of a good education, produce in turn children better than themselves and better able to produce still better children in their turn, as can be seen with animals.

[Revealing character] can't be done by pushing the person into position or arranging his head at a certain angle. It must be accomplished by provoking the victim, amusing him with jokes, lulling him with silence, or asking impertinent questions which his best friend would be afraid to voice.

Akhnaten is kind of a dark, kind of mysterious character. We don't know a lot about him - a lot of information on him was lost. But he obviously was a kind of iconoclast of him time. I guess I'm attracted to people like that. Like [Albert] Einstein also, who radically changed our way of thinking about the world we live in.

When you are creating your character there are a lot of questions and sometimes you doubt if you are making the right choices.