Character Quotes - Page 65

The will of the capitalist is certainly to take as much as possible. What we have to do is not to talk about his will, but to enquire about his power, the limits of that power, and the character of those limits.

I wanted to branch out into American television, specifically because you get to develop a character for a longer period of time and you get to develop a relationship with the audience.

You, the actor, must be aware of when you're being funny, but the character you're playing should always be oblivious to the fact.

In the long-run, the best proof of a good character is good actions.

Nudes are the greatest to paint. Everything you can find in a landscape or a still life or anything else is there: darkness and light, character dimension, texture. I painted heads too, of course.

My characters have undergone the same process of simplification as the colors. Now that they have been simplified, they appear more human and alive than if they had been represented in all their details.

What are the aspects of yourself that line up with the character? You magnify those, and the ones that don't match up you kind of kick to the curb.

Contact with men who wield power and authority still leaves an intangible sense of repulsion. It's very like being in close proximity to fecal matter, the fecal embodiment of something unmentionable, and you wonder what it is made of and when it acquired its historically sacred character.

The sense of smell, like a faithful counsellor, foretells its character.

If you carry the weather with you, then character is determined by the prevailing wind

Entitlement and privelege corrupt.

Reputation is only a candle, of wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out, but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit.

We want character but without unyielding conviction; we want strong morality but without the emotional burden of guilt or shame; we want virtue but without particular moral justifications that invariably offend; we want good without having to name evil; we want decency without the authority to insist upon it; we want more community without any limitations to personal freedom. In short, we want what we cannot possibly have on the terms that we want it.

I have discovered that we may be in some degree whatever character we choose. Besides, practice forms a man to anything.

Part of an actor's job is to actually adopt the world-view of the character she is playing and to tell the story from that vantage point. If an actor represses large aspects of their personality, they will have a severely limited range and castability. Great actors cultivate effortless access to their subpersonalities. Many acting teachers call this 'freeing your instrument.'

Heart is what drives us and determines our fate. That is what I need for my characters in my books: a passionate heart. I need mavericks, dissidents, adventurers, outsiders and rebels, who ask questions, bend the rules and take risks.

It is a beautiful trait in the lover's character, that they think no evil of the object loved.

Grover Cleveland declined to participate in character attacks on Blaine . When presented with papers which purported to be extremely damaging to Blaine, he grabbed them, tore them up, flung the shreds into the fire, and decreed, "The other side can have a monopoly of all the dirt in this campaign.

God is the very first piece of the Christian Story because the Story is all about Him. He is the central character, not us. The Story is not so much about God's plan for our lives as it is about our lives for God's plan.

I think you have to be schizoid three different ways to be an actor ... You have to be a human being. Then you have to be the character you're playing. And on top of that you've got to be the guy sitting out there in Row 10, watching yourself and judging yourself. That's why most of us are crazy to start with, or go nuts once we get into it.

Niceness is a decision, a strategy of social interaction; it is not a character trait.

Two kinds of reading can be distinguished. I call them reading like a reader and reading like a writer ... when you read like a reader, you identify with the characters in the story. The story is what you learn about. When you read like a writer, you identify with the author and learn about writing.

I am the outskirts of some non-existent town, the long-winded prologue to an unwritten book. I'm nobody, nobody. I don't know how to feel or think or love. I'm a character in a novel as yet unwritten, hovering in the air and undone before I've even existed, amongst the dreams of someone who never quite managed to breath life into me.

Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else ... Fiction depends for its life on place. Place is the crossroads of circumstance, the proving ground of, What happened? Who's here? Who's coming?

I generally like grey roles. My interpretation of drama is different from the popular perception. Acting, for me, is not about overplaying, it is about concealing. I like flawed characters that people relate to. I would never do a romcom.