Top 100 Characters Not Quotes
#1. I'm interested in gay characters - not trying to sensationalize gay characters, just [representing] who are in my personal life. I'm interested in exploring my world and my friends, and a lot of them happen to be gay.
Jamie Babbit
#2. I've been working straight since 2003, so I might just want to take an improv or theater class. That excites me. I can't wait to do different characters - not necessarily the leading chick who gets the guy, but the weird, freaky cousin.
Fergie
#3. I love the characters not knowing everything and the reader knowing more than them. There's more mischief in that and more room for seriousness, too.
Anne Enright
#4. So, yes, the five years that we've been working on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has evidenced a real deepening of all the characters, not only mine.
Rene Auberjonois
#5. It's not hard to read about death abstractly. I do find it tough when a character I love dies, of course. You can truly miss characters. Not like you miss people, but you can still miss them.
Will Schwalbe
#6. In dreams we are true poets; we create the persons of the drama; we give them appropriate figures faces, costumes; they are perfect in their organs, attitudes, manners; moreover they speak after their own characters, not ours; and we listen with surprise to what they say.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#7. The fall of man is written in too legible characters not to be understood: Those that deny it, by their denying, prove it.
George Whitefield
#9. I think almost always that what gets me going with a story is the atmosphere, the visual imagery, and then I people it with characters, not the other way around.
Ann Beattie
#10. I'm drawn to female characters; not all of them are strong characters.
Todd Haynes
#11. Acting is an art form and you want to take roles that are challenged and it's more of a challenge I think to play dark characters. Not that I want to always play those, but it is a challenge and challenges are rewarding and fun.
James Franco
#12. It is difficult when reading the description of certain fictional characters not at the same time to imagine the real-life acquaintances who they most closely, if often unexpectedly, resemble.
Alain De Botton
#13. You can truly miss characters. Not like you miss people, but you can still miss them. I don't think I'll ever get over Melanie's death in Gone With the Wind. But I'm still so glad I got to know her.
Will Schwalbe
#14. I would write of the universal, not the provincial, in human nature ... I would write of characters, not of characteristics.
Ellen Glasgow
#15. To have a song work for the movie, it can't just be written apart and shoved in. It's got to come out of the action. It's got to talk about the characters, not the story: it has to augment that action.
John Hughes
#16. I really respond to human scripts, scripts that are raw and real and risky. I love playing scary characters - not horror film scary, but vulnerable scary.
Shailene Woodley
#17. What people like are things to laugh at. Funny shows. It's all in the execution, the writing and the characters, not the setting. And the writing and the execution and the characters are GREAT on (Everybody Loves Raymond).
Joe Rogan
#18. I know that shorter messages are better in terms of reply rate. The optimal length is something like 50 characters. Characters, not words.
Christian Rudder
#19. While I've written in the POV (point of view) of adolescent characters before ... I never have had to create novels in which those characters not only drive the plot, but also are instrumental in resolving whatever issue the plot deals with.
Elizabeth George
#20. There are two lives to each of us, the life of our actions, and the life of our minds and hearts. History reveals men's deeds and their outward characters, but not themselves. There is a secret self that has its own life, unpenetrated and unguessed.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
#21. I'm very sassy. I want to show people in my album I'm not like my characters on TV.
Ashley Tisdale
#22. Arthur was not one of those interesting characters whose subtle motives can be dissected. He was only a simple and affectionate man, because Merlyn had believed that love and simplicity were worth having.
T.H. White
#23. I said from the start I had to be trustful of the Millennium universe. It was not going to be a Stieg Larsson book, but my interpretation of his iconic characters and universe.
David Lagercrantz
#24. The problem lies not with the characters within the novel, but with the reader itself.
Vladimir Nabokov
#25. What comes easiest for me is dialogue. Sometimes when my characters are speaking to me, I have to slow them down so that I'm not simply taking dictation.
Richard Russo
#26. He admires as a lover, not as a connoisseur. To satisfy me, those characters must be united.
Jane Austen
#27. They are young, full of ambition and dreams; they are still unable to imagine that there might be a story in the world in which they are not the main characters.
Juan Gomez Barcena
#28. If you ask any ordinary reader which of Dickens's proletarian characters he can remember, the three he is almost certain to mention are Bill Sykes, Sam Weller and Mrs. Gamp. A burglar, a valet and a drunken midwife-not exactly a representative cross-section of the English working class.
George Orwell
#29. There are black men who are madly in love with white women. God bless them, if that's what works for them. I just hope that we can strike a balance that portrays black folks and the black family in a light that's not extreme. Those are the types of characters that I find myself attracted to.
Nia Long
#30. I do have a huge fascination for science, and I love to hear what my dad has to say. He used to take me into minor surgeries when I was a kid and let me watch, so I definitely have a passion for it, but it's not as big a passion as I have for acting and creating characters.
Daniela Ruah
#31. There are characters in movies who I call 'film characters.' They don't exist in real life. They exist to play out a scenario. They can be in fantastic films, but they are not real characters; what happens to them is not lifelike.
Philip Seymour Hoffman
#32. My characters are not underachievers; they aspire to great things, but they are limited by the world around them.
Said Sayrafiezadeh
#33. I actually think the reason I am interested in certain parts is because I was such a dweeb in high school. When you are such a loser, it's a helpful way in to a lot of characters because even very powerful people are not all that powerful, really.
Sigourney Weaver
#34. I think if you play characters, it's very important not to ever tag them with any sort of disorder, or diagnose them, or whatever. You have to normalize the behavior to get inside the character.
Cillian Murphy
#35. Clever's not enough to hold me - I want characters who are more than devices to be moved about for Effect.
Laura Anne Gilman
#36. To me, there are things you're good at and things you're not so good at. For some reason, I'm good at darker characters. It has to do with how you look.
Christopher Walken
#37. But some characters in books are really real
Jane Austen's are; and I know those five Bennets at the opening of Pride and Prejudice, simply waiting to raven the young men at Netherfield Park, are not giving one thought to the real facts of marriage.
Dodie Smith
#38. It is not the artistic aptitudes that are secondary sexual characters as some shams and shamans have said; it is the other way around: sex is but the ancilla of art.
Vladimir Nabokov
#39. Characters in animation do not cheat. They do not let you go for another. Animation is on certain points, very close to the pornography industry. All your physical needs are met. You can watch different animations and find anything you desire.
Hideaki Anno
#40. You get all of your neuroses worked out on stage. I haven't actually played very many nice characters, certainly not on stage. It's not a quality that attracts me.
Patrick Stewart
#41. I hope that I can get people to read it without having to change it. Especially now that the strip has more different kinds of characters. It's really not all lesbians any more.
Alison Bechdel
#42. When I look at life I try to be as agnostic and unmetaphysical as possible. So I have to admit that, most probably, we do not have a fate. But I think that's something that draws us to novels - that the characters always have a fate. Even if it's a terrible fate, at least they have one.
Daniel Kehlmann
#43. Characters do not change. Opinions alter, but characters are only developed.
Benjamin Disraeli
#44. It's important to find characters that share sympathy with a young audience, not just in the story but their role in the world.
Tim Crouch
#45. The main reason for rewriting is not to achieve a smooth surface, but to discover the inner truth of your characters.
Saul Bellow
#46. There are not that many ventriloquists out there who build their own characters. I love that because they are uniquely mine.
Jeff Dunham
#47. In real life, people are integrated into society. That's what happens in my books as well. Minor characters don't just walk in and spout lines, they interact and have an effect on the events. It's not an isolated universe.
Stieg Larsson
#48. Characters can be mysterious and you're not really sure which way they might turn at a given point.
Michael Zaslow
#49. Truth is not exciting enough to those who depend on the characters and lives of their neighbors for all their amusement.
George Bancroft
#50. I think there's a tendency for actors like myself, and I don't mean to generalize myself, but I've played 'men's men,' if you will, characters that are simmering rage and calculated. There's a trend not to play anything that is opposed to that.
Idris Elba
#51. There is no masculine psychology in my cinema. There is only the resentments and desires of women. A man should not attempt to recognize himself in my male characters. On the other hand, he can find [in the films] a better understanding of women. And knowledge of the other is the highest goal.
Catherine Breillat
#52. Good characters in fiction are the very devil. Not only because most authors have too little material to make them of, but because we as readers have a strong subconscious wish to find them incredible.
C.S. Lewis
#53. But my relief that David Auburn's Proof is less about its ballyhooed higher mathematics than the fragility of life and love was matched by my delight in his fine and tender play. ( ... ) Proof surprises us with its aliveness and intelligent modesty, and we have not met these characters before.
John Heilpern
#54. I'm not interested in cutting the feet off my characters or stretching them to make them fit my certain political view.
Margaret Atwood
#55. Then you are a poet?' she asked, fingering the flyer in her pocket.
'No not at all,' he waved his hand. 'I am merely a character in a poem.
Karen Tei Yamashita
#56. My cats - I have Luna who's just had kittens recently and we called one of them Dumbledore. They're nice but they're not like their characters.
Evanna Lynch
#57. 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.
Emraan Hashmi
#58. Somehow, I realized I could write books about black characters who reflected my own experiences or otherworldly experiences - not just stories of history, poverty and oppression.
Tananarive Due
#59. My objective is that I don't try to do the same thing. I try not to emulate something I've done before. And, I'm a real people watcher, so I like trying to play characters that are as diverse from each other as possible, simply because it's more fun for me, actually.
Emily Blunt
#60. I think that people who stand up for what they believe in, no matter how unpopular, should be celebrated, not cast aside.
Craig Lancaster
#61. [Success] always starts with the material; it always starts with the truth and honesty of the characters that you read in the screenplay and that's rarely something that can be remedied if it's simply not there by the time you shoot the film. Thank God we had that.
Leonardo DiCaprio
#62. I don't usually direct actors in the classic sense of that word. Instead, I try to remind the characters before the shoot what's going on in a very simple way. I then watch them, their inventions as actors, approving or not approving what they're doing.
Gus Van Sant
#63. I'm not interested in playing characters who see the world through my prism; I think the journey of understanding any character is to see how they tick and how they differ from you.
Cate Blanchett
#64. Surprisingly, it was not an American but a British company that opened an amusement park in 2007 called Dickens World, located in the English county of Kent, complete with an Ebenezer Scrooge Haunted House, a Great Expectations Boat Ride and the as-advertised 'costumed Dickensian characters.'
Matthew Pearl
#65. I take writting as something in which you should in limited or not in limited time to create characters which the readers will like... feel compassion.
Deyth Banger
#66. I think it's always difficult no matter how similar your characters are to yourself to get into that mindset, because however much they are similar to you, they're not you.
Asa Butterfield
#67. Lahiri's characters, just like people all around us, are constantly telling each other important things, but not necessarily in words.
Will Schwalbe
#68. People are patronizing the theatres with renewed enthusiasm - there is an entire picnic-like attitude when families go out to see movies, which is a very good sign. They want to see larger-than-life characters on the big screen and not just watch movies on television or on DVDs.
Salman Khan
#69. What I think is wonderful is that women are not just avengers or victims in films. They are people. They are characters. It's so refreshing. They're playing different kinds of characters, and they aren't being typecast.
Madhuri Dixit
#70. Characters are not created by writers. They pre-exist and have to be found.
Elizabeth Bowen
#71. I love thinking of cartoon characters feeling really real feelings. And I love to do that, not just as a fan, but as a creator, so if people want to look for those levels, they're actually there.
Rebecca Sugar
#72. Realize that by hurting your own characters, you are not a sadist. You are not deliberately hurting your loved ones merely to watch them suffer. You're giving a gift. You're helping them grow and develop. Your characters take on deeper meaning to become more alive on your pages. They'll become real.
James Chartrand
#73. Two characters and sexy banter do not a book make, damn it.
Sherry Thomas
#74. I had to learn the image is not the word, which is a jolt for a literary soul. But it has served me well in terms of understanding plot, in terms of watching actors develop characters.
Rita Mae Brown
#75. You definitely do not do films for that particular reason. You do them for yourself, for your satisfaction of creating this thing with characters and watching these characters take on real life - that's all you care about.
Clint Eastwood
#76. I am not in control of how my characters live their lives, only in writing it down.
Kim Iverson
#77. Because I didn't have brothers, I was always interested in the kids down the street that had four brothers in their family, so I became one of them - but it was not my family. I've always been attracted to temporary families. They tend to be lost characters.
Gus Van Sant
#78. My characters are quite as real to me as so-called real people; which is one reason why I'm not subject to what is known as loneliness. I have plenty of company.
William S. Burroughs
#79. Never believe extraordinary characters which you hear of people. Depend upon it, they are exaggerated. You do not see one man shoot a great deal higher than another.
Samuel Johnson
#80. I'd like to be taken in charge of as an actor, not to be abandoned with asinine dialogue and meaningless actions or stereotyped characters. I'd like to feel like I'm in a character driven story.
Xavier Dolan
#81. It used to be that you had to make female TV characters perfect so no one would be offended by your 'portrayal' of women. Even when I started out on 'The Office' eight years ago, we could write our male characters funny and flawed, but not the women. And now, thankfully, it's completely different.
Mindy Kaling
#82. The funny thing is you oddly don't really say goodbye to all the characters you've played. There's like a chest of drawers in your head that you can always access. They're always around. I'm not sure if that's healthy. But they're all there.
Johnny Depp
#83. In a novel there's not much autobiography. There are characters in transit. Naturally, I can project something of my experiences onto the characters, but they have their own autonomy, a personality that is often a mystery to me.
Dacia Maraini
#84. Ultimately, my books are not about the politics, although the toil and the struggle and the wars in Afghanistan have a significant impact on the lives of my characters.
Khaled Hosseini
#85. What attracted me to acting, from the start, was playing different characters. I'm not a massive fan of just playing myself on screen.
Freddie Stroma
#86. Take characters that Nicholson or De Niro play: they're not always tough.
Tom Berenger
#87. I become my characters, and then try to allow events in the story to take their own course. I try not to play God, but to let them work out their own destiny.
Michael Morpurgo
#88. I think it's a wonderful thing to have African-American characters. Look at life. It's not a white world or a black world; there are all kind of people in it. It's showing growth, and in today's world there are so many outlets.
Darius McCrary
#89. It's not as if the stories merge to a point where you think they are your life, but you do let them in the front door and the back door, and it's okay that sometimes certain characters stay for dinner.
Tori Amos
#90. Acting didn't solve much! If it did, I would have ended up much less crazy than I am today, but I'm not. At least for me, acting is a relief - a relief to be able to admit certain things about myself and disguise in my work, in my characters.
Dustin Hoffman
#91. I'm not going to let people who work in the United States Department of Justice have their characters be assailed without any basis.
Eric Holder
#92. In the absence of real power blood seemed the only alternative.
though he could walk away, and had to walk away, he could not walk away with impunity. he could never be a mordantly amused or merely interested observer of the beast.
Thomas Williams
#93. With both Caddyshack and Vacation, it's not like the subjects were serious enough that they engaged my interest for another round. I love the characters, and the actors were great, but I didn't see the need to make another Vacation movie.
Harold Ramis
#94. Sometimes I know what my characters are moving away from or toward; more often I just wait and see. For instance, though I knew Sinkler in 'The Trusty' was going for water, I did not know that he would meet a fetching young farm wife until I got him into her front yard.
Ron Rash
#95. Intimacy between humans need not be relegated to independent film. Real characters can exist no matter what the scale of a movie is.
Colin Trevorrow
#96. Many of us would not make terribly interesting characters in a novel.
Claire Wingfield
#97. The Canteen Boy, the reason you feel bad for him and you can laugh is because he, and I guess a lot of my characters, they don't notice they're getting made fun of. So they'll say something back that's not that great a quip, but in their mind they won the argument.
Adam Sandler
#98. I have to remind myself constantly to not be antisocial, because I stay to myself a lot. I'm a lot more introspective than my characters.
Katee Sackhoff
#99. I'm sure there are some commercial applications for Twitter, but they don't really interest me. I mean, 140 characters? I am really not interested in Ashton Kutcher's daily walks. Not for me.
Barry Diller
#100. Characters who are on screen from start to finish are not necessarily the ones who have the greatest impact.
Jeanne Moreau
