Character Quotes - Page 465

It is indeed very possible, that the Persons we laugh at may in the main of their Characters be much wiser Men than our selves; but if they would have us laugh at them, they must fall short of us in those Respects which stir up this Passion.

Virgil has very finely touched upon the female passion for dress and shows, in the character of Camilla; who though she seems to have shaken off all the other weaknesses of her sex, is still described as a woman in this particular.

I consider books to be good for our health, and also our spirits, and they help us to become poets or scientists, to understand the stars or else to discover them deep within the aspirations of certain characters, those who sometimes, on certain evenings, escape from the pages and walk among us humans, perhaps the most human of us all.

I don't think it is worth explaining how a character's nose or chin looks. It is my feeling that readers will prefer to construct, little by little, their own character—the author will do well to entrust the reader with this part of the work.

My style also has a lot to do with theater because often I'm imagining I'm a character who is wandering by a wall and leaves a mark. Then I'm someone else, who 10 days later leaves another mark. Someone was angry and did this, and then someone came and painted over it, and then the sun bleached it out and the weather exposed it again.

A film is a living thing. The screenplay is a guideline. You really need to have a good, sound script to know that you have a dramatic structure that's going to work thematically, and to know how one scene will got through another, and to get a sense of character.

The only time you realize you have a reputation is when you're not living up to it.

Although I'm very lazy when it comes to writing, I'm not that lazy when it comes to thinking. I like to develop the plan of a short story, then cut it as short as possible, try to evolve all the necessary details. I know far more about the characters than what actually comes out of the writing.

Playing what Hollywood determines is a hero, it immediately sets actors up to feel like they just can't explore the dark parts of themselves - the character has to be likeable, has to be fuckable, has to be redemptive on all fronts. When you're playing a character that's just inherently destructive or messed up, you're given this beautiful permission to try things. There's a license to fail.

It's not enough to picture their outward appearance. Give them a background and sphere of influence.

This novel has it all--mystery, psychological insight, emotional truth, and--most important--characters whose lives matter. You'll fall in love with these families. Solti writes with such passion it is inescapable, lyrical, and profoundly moving. The Forgetting Tree goes on my top ten list.

You have to defend your character. That's your job, if they're hiring you. That doesn't mean you can't collaborate, but you do have to make some big, bold choices. We do that in real life, too.

My job, and what I've taken such joy in, is the craft of acting and of creating dynamic and authentic characters, and then finding a way to build them within the confines and with the support of the worlds that I've found myself.

It's sort of an organic process when you're adapting any book, not even just your own. You want to preserve the heart of the story and you want to preserve who the characters are, but film requires a lot of compression.

When I'm writing novels, even screenplays, it's never an actor I have in mind; it's always the version in my head of who the character is. Once somebody gets cast, I have to adjust a little bit to who they are.

Novel writing, to me, is all about language: choosing your words, finding the characters within the words and just really agonizing over every word. It's really crafting this whole piece from nothing.

Screenwriting you don't necessarily have to do the job of the costume designer and the prop master and the set designer. It's more just about finding the visuals and finding these characters through dialogue.

You can do everything differently in a novel. Hero narrates the novel; we're in his head. You're hearing all his thought processes and you're hearing him call himself out on his bad behavior. You don't have the benefit of that narrator in a movie. What you see a character do, very often, becomes that much more important because you don't have him editorializing it for you.

There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof, I hope, there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am not understood, it shall be concluded, that something very useful and profound is couched underneath; and again, that whatever word or sentence is printed in a different character, shall be judged to contain something extraordinary either or wit of sublime.

My greatest fear is feeling like a professional novelist. Somebody who creates characters, who sits down and has pieces of paper taped to the wall - what's going to happen in this scene, or this act. What I like is for it to be a much more scary, sloppy reflection of who I am.

For me, the attraction of TV is that you continue to get to tell those stories and refine those characters. The other thing is that TV, in the last years, got really, really, really good.

Each week the machine is spitting out a number for a new person or a new world within New York that you get to know. And the idea from the beginning was that some of the characters would stick around and become part of the lives of the show, and the world of the show itself will continue to grow.

It’s easier to be a character in a story than the star of your own tragedy.

To a large extent: it's about economy of space. You have so little real estate when you're writing a half hour show. It's really twenty minutes. So you have to with a pilot introduce all your characters, set up the premise in a way that shows the potential for a series and make it funny and do it all in about thirty-five or forty pages. It's very hard.

I suppose in a way most of my characters are non-consumers, not terribly interested in all the little baubles and artifacts of contemporary life.