Character Quotes - Page 485

If character is the foreground of fiction, setting is the background, and as in a painting's composition, the foreground may be in harmony or in conflict with the background.

I played the character knowing that she was knocked down, 100 percent, dead-in-front-of-a-bus in love with her boss. Every scene, I did not care if it was about taxes or about, you know, getting rid of the penny, it was all about me being in love with him.

I despise in others my own characteristics.

I cannot tell what I am as much afraid of, as a woman who invariably washes on Monday. It is a kind of key to character; and if her mouth is not puckered and her brow wrinkled, they will be, unless she repents.

If there's anything Trollope novels always take seriously, it is money - how it flows from one character to another, how it is managed, who has it, who deserves it, and what it means to a character, male or female.

My characters never die screaming in rage. They attempt to pull themselves back together and go on. And that's basically a conservative view of life.

Every once in a while I go off to do a movie or a television series and I take my art with me. I can stay in character when I paint.

I'm proud of my wrinkles. They give my face character. As an actress, you mess with that at your peril.

I remember how surprised I was when my first novel was about to be published and I was informed that I could be sued for anything any one of my characters said. 'But I often don't agree with what they say,' I protested. The lawyer was not interested in the clear distinction I make between my own voice and the voices of my characters. Neither, I have found, are many of my readers.

Costume is a huge part of getting into character. Your body soaks in what you're wearing, and you turn into someone else.

Mike Leigh encourages you to choose a person that you know to base your character on. You write a whole list of people that you know and you go through that list in great depth with him. And then he chooses one of those people from your list.

I tend to come up with people more than situations - most of my books start with a character.

Think of anger as a muscle. The way you express anger isn't the way that I do, or you. If you have a good director, you will find that he's getting you to use an entirely different muscle that you never even knew you had - it's real hard and sore, then after a while it becomes normal. And you discover all these new muscles when you enter a new character - that's what a director does for you.

I like playing that character who brings love to people, who puts people in a place where they're apt to encounter love.

My childhood was influenced by the roles my father played in his movies. Whether Abraham Lincoln or Tom Joad in the Grapes of Wrath, his characters communicated certain values which I try to carry with me to this day.

Melissa [ Rosenberg] really has mastered coming from character. Everything radiates from the characters in this work. You don't feel like anything's imposed.

While the cast of characters stays the same, I always try to add in new information so readers get to know the people they care about better with each story.

It's a luxury to be able to tell a long form story. I love novels, and I love to have a long relationship with characters.

Woe betide him, and her too, when it comes to things of consequence, when they are placed in circumstances requiring fortitude and strength of mind, if she have not resolution enough to resist idle interference ... It is the worst evil of too yielding and indecisive a character, that no influence over it can be depended on. You are never sure of a good impression being durable; everybody may sway it. Let those who would be happy be firm.

May I ask you what these questions tend?' 'Merely to the illustration of your character,' said she, endeavouring to shake off her gravity. 'I am trying to make it out.' 'And what is your success?' She shook her head. 'I do not get on at all. I hear such different accounts of you as puzzle me exceedingly.

He is also handsome," replied Elizabeth, "which a young man ought likewise to be, if he possibly can. His character is thereby complete.

My characters shall have, after a little trouble, all that they desire.

A persuadable temper might sometimes be as much in favour of happiness as a very resolute character.

When the entire moral energy of an individual goes into the cultivation of personal integrity, we all know how unlovely the result may become; the character is upright, of course, but too coated over with the result of its own endeavor to be attractive.

Even the roughest character, underneath all that hurt, is someone who wants to love and be loved.