Character Quotes - Page 386

Every time I feel that I really hit critical mass and I'm in the right place is when I feel like the director and I become a third thing, and that's the character.

The audience can feel the subtleties of the characters.

My fiction is almost always inspired by a character's need or desire to rise above him- or herself. No one is perfect and some of us have much adversity in our lives; it is those people who struggle to rise above their nature or background that I find the most interesting and heroic.

I'd love to do a Columbo-type detective character in a series.

Each performance and each film is what it is. It's right and belongs within that moment. You look at it and try to make it fit your particular part of your character and your particular film.

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

In the native literatures of North America there aren't any novels. Instead, the major genre is myth. And myths are stories that are fundamentally about the world, not about human individuals. A myth needn't include any humans at all. If it does include them, they're usually minor characters - imaginary humans sent out like scouts to report back on what's happening in the mythworld, but not central participants in the action.

The hell of human suffering, evil and oppression is paved with good intentions. The men who have most injured and oppressed humanity, who have most deeply sinned against it, were according to their standards and their conscience good men; what was bad in them, what wrought moral evil and cruelty, treason to truth and progress, was not at all in their intentions, in their purpose, in their personal character, but in their opinions.

Characters are often revealed by the ways they misapprehend others.

First, there's the job - where the goal is simply to earn a living and support your family. Then there's the career - where you trace your progress through various appointments and achievements. Finally, there's the calling - the ideal blend of activity and character that makes work inseparable from life.

Food compulsion isn't a character disorder; it's a chemical disorder.

One interesting feature of criticism is seen in the ease with which it discovers what Addison called the specific quality of an author. In Livy, it will be the manner of telling the story; in Sallust, personal identification with the character; in Tacitus, the analysis of the deed into its motive. If the same test be applied to painters, it will find the prominent faculty of Correggio to be manifested in harmony of effect; of Poussin, in the sentiment of his landscapes; and of Raffaelle, in the general comprehension of his subject.

Occasionally a single anecdote opens a character; biography has its comparative anatomy, and a saying or a sentiment enables the skilful hand to construct the skeleton.

If you are not leaning, no one will let you down.

I'm a little worried about a Batman versus Superman movie just because it's... I just think it's really tough to pull off. I'm very excited about seeing it, but I think it's really tough to balance those two characters in the same movie.

It's nice to be playing a character who's never had a live-action version before.

Just being the first person to bring the character to life is really fun and exciting.

Every time I make a movie I have too many characters and too many locations.

I hadn't studied theatre and I hadn't studied actor training or anything, but I did have a sense of movement and composition, and what the final product would be like, but luckily I had friends who were good actors, who would help me get them, who would get themselves to the place where a good director should get them to build characters.

Our amour fou with 'The Sopranos' is headed for long-term parking, like so many of its most memorable characters. We'll never see a show like this again.

'The Sopranos' gets praised as novelistic, but it follows the most banal of life patterns, showing the sheer tedium of being a mobster. It has dead spots, boring plotlines, weak episodes. Characters develop slowly, or don't. Like viewers, a gangster might get bored, fade out of the action, then come back to find none of his debts forgotten.

The nuances and organic characteristics of a character become second nature if I'm doing my job well.

I think the more depth you build into the characters, and the more you see where they came from, the more fun you can have. Setting up different characters in different relationships is always helpful as you move forward.

Helmut Newton shot the ad campaign [for Bad Influence]. It's [James] Spader at the top of his game, right after Sex, Lies And Videotape. It's sexy. It's weird. It's dark. The characters are great.

I’m quite flirtatious with anyone. Some people, because I’m playing a gay character, get quite nervous. And I have to reassure them. I’m like, ‘I’m not gay. I’m not coming on to you. Yet.’