Characters Quotes
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Whether or not you agree with Ayn Rand - and I have certain issues with some of her beliefs - the woman can tell a story. I mean, the novel as an art form is just in full florid bloom in 'Atlas Shrugged.' It's an unbelievable story. The characters are so compelling, and what she's saying is mind-expanding.
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I've always liked shows that have a strong cast of secondary characters. One of the greatest examples ever I would say is 'The Simpsons.' If you think about it, you could name 100 characters recognizable from that show. I think 'Scrubs' has done a good job of having a strong team coming off the bench.
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Anything you write, even if you have to start over, is valuable. I let the story write itself through the characters.
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I know you sometimes think that people are like books. But our lives don’t have neat logical plots, and we don’t always say beautiful, intelligent things like the characters in a novel. That’s not the way life is.
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Something that I really enjoy doing is creating and being a part of very different characters and very different projects.
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I grew up in a community where it was not the exception to be a good girl. It was sort of expected. And all of my friends were good girls too, and my boyfriends were good boys. Everybody was pretty nice. And that affects how I write my characters. There aren't very many bad guys in my novels.
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I think one of the few times I've been involved with real-life characters was the story of Marie Bonaparte. I think it's really difficult to become someone that really existed.
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The life story of the five main characters and the secondary characters around them allows Jonathan Franzen to present the full impetus and extent of the world picture of the West at the end of the 20th century.
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Writers often like to talk about how intuitive the writing process is, but in truth, building a book is a remarkably unintuitive task. Or, to put it more accurately, you need a lot more than intuition. You need plot and characters. You need a setting. You need a theme that is relevant and supported by your text.
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I give everything to my work, and I like complex roles, characters that aren't obvious. I've been very lucky so far, and I'm dreaming of working with directors like Jane Campion, Susanne Bier and the Dardennes. But the gods will decide.
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I love the way that each book - any book - is its own journey. You open it, and off you go. You are changed in some way, large or small, by having traveled with those characters.
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I've played characters who are dark and have done things I never have experienced, which is why I try to find the reasons why they do what they do. We're all people, and go through similar emotions.
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I love playing confused, broken characters.
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There are very few works of fiction that take you inside the heads of all characters. I tell my writing students that one of the most important questions to ask yourself when you begin writing a story is this: Whose story is it? You need to make a commitment to one or perhaps a few characters.
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I think I'm really obsessed with characters that lose their face, in a way. I think it's very moving.
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I do that with all of my characters. They have one of the flaws I have, and I zero in on that flaw.
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I honestly feel it is important for a director to get obsessed with the characters.
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There is a certain period of the soul-culture when it begins to interfere with some of characters of typical beauty belonging to the bodily frame, the stirring of the intellect wearing down the flesh, and the moral enthusiasm burning its way out to heaven, through the emaciation of the earthen vessel; and there is, in this indication of subduing the mortal by the immortal part, an ideal glory of perhaps a purer and higher range than that of the more perfect material form. We conceive, I think, more nobly of the weak presence of Paul than of, the fair and ruddy countenance of David.
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I found school quite tough, but Saturday night was movie night, and I started to empathise with the characters on screen. I started to get more involved with what these people were experiencing. Film inspired me to do better.
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I don't need all that much - I just need to know who my characters are and what kind of jam they're going to get into, and I'll write myself out of their jam.
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I think I've spent so much time playing characters that are so far away from me and learning how to technically build and how to technically put something on top of you.
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None but the most blindly credulous will imaging the characters and events in this story to be anything but fictitious. It is true that the ancient and noble city of Oxford is, of all the towns of England, the likeliest progenitor of unlikely events and persons. But there are limits.
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I can relate to historical characters or imaginary ones. It doesn't matter if a story takes place in the future or in the present, as long as the story is compelling.
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One of the things that I've been trying to do with my characters, one of the things that does lead to me turning things down, is I don't really want to repeat myself.
