Character Quotes - Page 458

When I'm drafting, I suppose it's an intuitive process - figuring out when something just has a surreal glaze on it and when it grapples with something that could threaten a character's day-to-day reality.

Much of the way books get classified has to do with marketing decisions. I think it's more useful to think of literary books and sci-fi/fantasy books as existing on a continuum. To oppose them, to suggest that one category excludes the other, always feels bogus to me. The great Leonard Michaels line is "I wanted proximity to darkness, strangeness"? That's what I'd say I want from a book, regardless of where it falls on the fantastical spectrum - that suspense connected to a particular human character, rather than just some mechanized plot.

Beautiful women rarely possess sufficient depth of character to survive without their pretty feathers.

My characters are not plastic.

There was something appealing in thinking of a character with a secret life that her author knew nothing about. Slipping off while the author's back was turned, to find love in her own way. Showing up just in time to deliver the next bit of dialogue with an innocent face.

I just feel so flattered, because the cosplayers really make sure every detail is there. I don't think I've ever cosplayed a character before, but if I were to, I'd probably go as a Klingon from 'Star Trek.

I have to say from an actor's perspective, to work with a director who has been an actor through most of their career is a pleasure. They generally have a very deep understanding of the process of what you're doing, of how you are building and exploring the character.

I try to offer as much as I can to the director so he has as much to work with as possible to create the character that, really, he wants to create in a sense.

I don't know if I've ever played a character who's close to me. There have been some elements of myself in different roles. Sometimes, I show one side of myself and then completely conceal the other.

Classic burlesque in the style of Gypsy which many modern burlesque troupes practice is, at its core, so playful and teasing and innocent. It's not hardcore stripping so much as letting your body tell a story; the women are playing characters and unfolding a complete narrative onstage, with beginning, middle, and end.

When I write, I actually hear the characters speak. Almost like an actor - even though I'm not an actor at all - getting into their truth and to justify what they do.

What helped me a lot was that I chose an American lead protagonist, because that liberated a lot from my own knowledge. If I had approached it from the perspective of an Indian main character, I think I would have assumed a lot of knowledge and I would have resented the presence of the author.

Anything with a good story and characters I think would be great.

I enjoy it all: performIng, doing TV, movies, comedy, drama, stand-up, animation voicework, singing, but you get that instant gratification from stand-up because it's your own commentary and you get to see the reaction from the audience that's right there in front of you. I also love coming up with characters and watching people embrace them and enjoy them.

I guess I cringe, because sometimes I don't even watch my live performances back. When I edit, it's this feeling of seeing my mistakes. It's always a mixture of loving characters, but being the artist that created it and not trying to go too deep in criticizing myself.

[Do you know] how it feels to be a clownish character? It's always complicated to imagine conveying yourself outside of your body. Inside myself I feel like this rich, complicated thing, and then I see representations of myself, especially in the media - and I think this is why it's troubling for me, because I feel so caricatured and flattened.

If you say one gets influenced watching a character, I think its foolish. Cinema reflects society; society rarely reflects cinema.

In The Greens Are Gone, I play a character that's bipolar, so that was a big step and quite a challenge.

I'm not really a Method actor. I'm always afraid of working with someone who's afraid to [break character] and won't talk to anyone because they're in character.

With any show, when fans come up to you, they assume you're just like your character.

I have even taught classes on writing about sex, and I've looked closely at different writers' sex scenes. On the level of craft I've given it a lot of thought. The pitfalls are simple: It can sound clinical or medical, which isn't right, or pornographic, because the characters disappear.

The key is to remember a sex scene is a scene of dramatic action and psychological development. You need to pay attention to emotion and to a character's self-awareness or lack of self-awareness.

I am always interested in characters who are in these kinds of transitional moments in their lives, when it's not clear where they're going to end up. It's interesting territory for fiction.

Few people can distinguish the genuinely good from the reverse.

For me, screenwriting is all about setting characters in motion and as a writer just chasing them. They should tell you what they’ll do in any scene you put them in.