Character Quotes - Page 489

Boswell, when he speaks of his Life of Johnson, calls it my magnum opus, but it may more properly be called his opera, for it is truly a composition founded on a true story, in which there is a hero with a number of subordinate characters, and an alternate succession of recitative and airs of various tone and effect, all however in delightful animation.

I make it a kind of pious rule to go to every funeral to which I am invited, both as I wish to pay a proper respect to the dead, unless their characters have been bad, and as I would wish to have the funeral of my own near relations or of myself well attended.

[A]s a lady adjusts her dress before a mirror, a man adjusts his character by looking at his journal.

Since 1977, there have been many science fiction movies, but none has managed to equal [A New Hope's] blend of adventure, likable characters, and epic storytelling.

I don't know if there is a gene for comedy, but my dad was a very funny man. He just didn't know it. He was a naturally funny character, and when my brother and I would laugh at things he said and did, he would say, 'What do you think is so funny?'

In a weird way, I live vicariously through the characters I play as an actor.

As an audience member, I live vicariously through the characters I watch or read about. There's something very relatable about comic-book characters. They're never perfect. They're flawed people put in extraordinary circumstances.

Our thoughts and our conduct are our own.

English character and English freedom depend comparatively little on the form which the Constitution assumes at Westminster. A centralised democracy may be as tyrannical as an absolute monarch; and if the vigour of the nation is to continue unimpaired, each individual, each family, each district, must preserve as far as possible its independence, its self-completeness, its powers and its privilege to manage its own affairs and think its own thoughts.

[Science] is the literature of God written on the stars-the trees-the rocks-and more important because [of] its marked utilitarian character.

I always feel a bit vulnerable when I begin a new project, especially when I am playing a character with either a troubled past or unique personality.

There is always going to something very grounded about the characters I play, because of my Chicago roots, because the city is so grounded. Even my wife pointed it out when we were in the city, she said that even the architecture is grounded in Chicago, it's so solid. Because it has to deal with winters. There is something about Chicago that keeps people centered and grounded.

Everybody has their different tastes with television - there are some characters people like, some characters people hate.

I don't think I had any idea at the time how to work with someone as masterful as he is. And I don't think at the time I really understood what was happening. I think I was in a space where I was like: there are all these things. I was shooting all these takes with David, and I was just confused, as a person, and as an actor feeling a little too big for my britches and that this thing was happening and then also not having enough skill yet, and technique to know exactly where I was, and know about the character.

There's always an intellectual side to the films Ang Lee's doing and to the characters, and there's such a deep knowledge when you've worked with the actors that he's worked with, on stage in particular, but also in film.

I can't not have something attached to like what actually happens in real life. Like I can't do a romantic comedy without there being something where like, in the case of Annie Hathaway's character, her character ends up having Parkinson's, you know? To me, I feel like that's love, you know? Like to me. So every movie has to have that kind of sense of that.

I think, in the initial process of discovering a character and the analytical process - and this is what I did take from Buddhism - initially I think there has to be an analytical, intellectual approach. And that has to be abandoned by the time you're playing the game.

People say to me, well "What's the character you really want to play?" And I go, I don't know.

What's cool about Spider-Man is that it's everybody - anyone, you put on the suit, anyone believes that you're Spider-Man. That's what's charming about the character. He's anyone. He's a huge nerd that ends up being this huge superhero.

Never far from a dining table, the characters in Heather A. Slomski's limpid and elegant debut collection are not given to melodramatics. Civility reigns, voices are not raised, much goes unsaid. But just beneath the sophisticated composure are longing, loss, heartbreak. And how intensely familiar is the table itself, which made this reader suddenly understand how much of our real life takes place there. Heather A. Slomski is truly a fresh voice on the scene, and The Lovers Set Down Their Spoons is that rare thing, a new book as innovative in its design as it is compulsively readable.

If I find the right character, I don't care if it's a film, a television show or a play, I'm gonna do it. Everybody crosses over and it's just one big pool of stuff now.

Im always envious of the actors who get to come to work every day and really grow deep roots there, but it is really fun playing lots of different characters.

The thing I like about the sci-fi genre is that you get to examine universal themes and polarizing moral choices. The characters have a lot on their shoulders and are often trying to survive in some very difficult and hostile environments.

The act of philosophizing involves the character of the philosopher.

God is always present, always available. At whatever moment in which one turns to him the prayer is received, is heard, is authenticated, for it is God who gives our prayer its value and its character, not our interior dispositions, not our fervor, not our lucidity. The prayer which is pronounced for God and accepted by him becomes, by that very fact, a true prayer.