Character Quotes - Page 279

A woman can't do anything about her appearance. Either she's pretty or she isn't. But her character is quite another matter.

As a teen, I had no idea what the self was. Changing skin like a chameleon came naturally to me, but the self felt like a plastic chair in an airport where I'd have to sit and wait for the next radical character to define who I'd be that season. Acting grabbed me by the gut.

I think that the best way to explain that is that my mother gave me all the color and character and flare and liveliness, and my father gave me all the sanity and nature and all the things that helped me be a more rounded human being.

I'd rather go back to waitressing than play a character that I hate.

When the mind once allows a doubt to gain entrance, the value of deeds performed grow less, their character changes, we forget the past and dread the future.

The parent reads the book. The kid reads the book and then they can talk about the characters instead of talking about themselves. You know there's a connection even if you don't talk about it when you read the same books.

What I remember when I started to write was how I couldn't wait to get up in the morning to get to my characters.

My characters live inside my head for a long time before I actually start a book. They become so real to me, I talk about them at the dinner table as if they are real. Some people consider this weird. But my family understands.

If you're playing the character, you could say to yourself in 16 different ways, 'What if that didn't bother me?' 'What if I knew exactly what he was talking about?' 'What if I didn't get excited?'

Novels usually evolve out of 'character.' Characters generate stories, and the shape of a novel is entirely imagined but should have an aesthetic coherence.

People want the tragedy. They need things to go wrong, they need the tension. In my characters there’s a core of trust and love that I’m very committed to. These guys would die for each other, and it’s very beautiful. But at the same time, you can’t keep that safety. Things have to go wrong, bad things have to happen.

When you see these characters like Captain America or Thor, laughing at their own situation or about how strange they are, then you are able to accept more readily that it's fine to wear a cape. You can also accept that it's fine to be enormous and green, or to shoot arrows at aliens racing through the sky. It all makes sense if you've been able to laugh at it and with it.

Part of the beauty of a long-format story is that the characters become as much yours as they are mine, and you dream of them in a different way than I do.

When you have love in a story, it gives you the freedom to really take the characters to very interesting places.

'W.' is not necessarily a political film, but it was sort of a contrasting reality for me to get into George W. Bush as a character because of how I felt about his administration before I started making the film.

Id like to make character-based dramas. I end up writing thrillers a lot - these psychological character-based things with weird people doing horrible things to each other - coming to a theatre near you!

I find the voice is what I look for first and foremost with just about every character I play.

I also wanted to have fun with it. I wanted to have the scope, which I felt Merlin has, in his Machiavellian bi-polar way. He's not to be trusted, yet he is fighting for this great power and is really a master, to some degree, in orchestrating Camelot and King Arthur. He's a strange, dark devious character, and I just wanted to have fun, and get away from the cloak and long beard and pointy hat.

I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings and strictly honest, who complained of hard luck. A good character, good habits and iron industry are impregnable to the assaults of all ill-luck that fools ever dreamed.

That is the dream of all novelists-that one of their characters will become 'somebody.'

Many of the characters are fools and they're always playing tricks on me and treating me badly.

When you're doing a movie, you're in and out of there in three months. If you hated the experience, it's all good because you can take the paycheck and leave. But, on a television show, you have to love your character and you have to love the experience because you could be there for awhile, fingers crossed.

As an actor, you don't want to know the beginning and end to your character's arc. It makes it more fun. You're not playing the end. You're playing it realistically. You don't know where this character is going to go and what's going to happen to him, which just makes it more interesting for the viewers to watch. They're going on the journey with you, as the actor and the character.

In all the characters I play, not matter how, it's like as if there is something within me that's released. I also show my best ability and put in my best efforts.

When you're playing a character, you don't really want to have an opinion about where you're going to end up. Otherwise, you can't really stay in the moment and in your character.