Character Quotes - Page 189

You've either got to find a way to make your continuing characters interesting without making them maudlin or overwrought, or you've got to put more emphasis on the suspects.

Like at Halloween: I knew I'd arrived when I saw people dressing up on Halloween as my character.

Human Dignity has gleamed only now and then and here and there, in lonely splendor, throughout the ages, a hope of the better men, never an achievement of the majority.

They are slaves who fear to speak, for the fallen and the weak.

Crime is the price society pays for abandoning character.

I think it's cool to play characters who are very joke-y and yet you can show a total serious, very somber side to them. You don't normally get that in a film - and in a [film] series especially. To be able to do that was really cool.

And may I not be allowed to ... read in the character of the American people, in their devotion to true liberty and to the Constitution which is its palladium [protection], ... a Government which watches over ... the equal interdict [prohibition] against encroachments and compacts between religion and the state.

Drugs age you after mental excitement. Lethargy then. Why? Reaction. A lifetime in a night. Gradually changes your character.

You may not become a celebrity. You may even experience lots of illness or divorce, or unhappiness. But I think there is still a thread of individual character that determines how you live through those things.

All greatness of character is dependent on individuality.

My mother and I will continue on some level that I havent determined yet. I think my mothers a great character, and I have to say that giving my mother to the world has to be the biggest thrill of my writing career.

I'm a character actor. Nobody's ever seemed to think of me as a leading man. I'm 6'6''. I've got a big nose. I'm gangly. I've got crooked teeth. That's certainly not Brad Pitt. I'm still around and alive, so if they need older guys, I guess they're thinking of me.

As a character actor, I've learned that you have to watch yourself because nobody else is watching. Nobody is concerned with you.

The thing that distinguishes permanent poverty is bad character.

I tend to like strong female characters. It just interests me dramatically. A strong male character isn't interesting because it has been done and it's so cliched. A weak male character is interesting: somebody else hasn't done it a hundred times. A strong female character is still interesting to me because it hasn't been done all that much, finding the balance of femininity and strength. [From a 1986 Fangoria interview]

If you think you can temper yourself into manliness by sitting here over your books, it is the very silliest fancy that ever tempted a young man to his ruin. You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.

When I'm writing flawed characters, I just think about my own flaws.

I write about real people in disguise. If anything, my characters are toned down-the truth is much more bizarre.

It is only in romances that people undergo a sudden metamorphosis. In real life, even after the most terrible experiences, the main character remains exactly the same.

The analysis of character is the highest human entertainment.

I imagine that my characters have become much more complicated than when I first began, which would be normal

Reason must approach nature with the view, indeed, of receiving information from it, not, however, in the character of a pupil, who listens to all that his master chooses to tell him, but in that of a judge, who compels the witnesses to reply to those questions which he himself thinks fit to propose. To this single idea must the revolution be ascribed, by which, after groping in the dark for so many centuries, natural science was at length conducted into the path of certain progress.

But our trip was different. It was a classic affirmation of everything right and true and decent in the national character. It was a gross, physical salute to the fantastic possibilities of life in this country-but only for those with true grit. And we were chock full of that.

I didn't realize House would be the central character, more the bitter comic relief appearing occasionally. I relish his wounded nature - the lameness, the scarred Byronic hero.

If you never fall in love with your character, you'll never be able to do that character justice. No matter who it is, no matter what the character does, you have to find the reason for it. Everyone's got a reason for what they do, even if it's a reason that they're not proud of.