In The Character Quotes

#1. Part of the challenge of being a girl living in the 21st Century, looking back, the danger is to not judge your character by your own standards.

Zoe Kazan

#2. Nor is faith meritorious; it is simply confidence in the goodness of God, and the lack of it is a reflection upon God's holy character.

A.W. Tozer

#3. Now for the hitch in Jane's character,' he said at last, speaking more calmly than from his look I had expected him to speak. 'The reel of silk has run smoothly enough so far; but I always knew there would come a knot and a puzzle: here it is. Now for vexation, and exasperation, and endless trouble!

Charlotte Bronte

#4. In 1963, while my brothers were engaged in their lives, I call this period of my life 'my character-building years.' I adhered to the saying, 'When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

Marc Ashton

#5. Well, everybody knew their character. I was the only one who didn't have a partner. I basically showed up when people got in trouble. Where I came from, I don't know. Nobody knows. But I would show up to help.

Bubba Smith

#6. My philosophy is always, "Let's get the spirit of the character." If people believe in it and the spirit of it, then it will work.

Julian Jarrold

#7. So much emotion can be brought in an animated film that's very hard to get in a live-action film. I haven't quite put my finger on why, but it might be because the characters can make facial expression that, if you made them in a movie, they'd call them corny.

Steve Martin

#8. Phonogram is the memory of a long period in my life through a surprisingly small filter. Those characters are basically the golem who accompanied me on that decade and a half.

Kieron Gillen

#9. Fictional characters exist in only two places, neither of which is on the printed page. They exist, first, in the mind of the writer and, second, in the mind of the reader.

Maren Elwood

#10. 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

#11. Put simply the novel stands between us and the hardening concept of statistical man. There is no other medium in which we can live for so long and so intimately with a character. That is the service a novel renders.

William Golding

#12. What happens if you're the guy who's been on the show ten years and is highly paid but they have nothing for you to do is that they bring in other people, and you become a supporting character to those people.

Ted Shackelford

#13. In Endless Quest books, you start the plot, and the character has to make choices. Then you have to write one choice over here, one choice over there. The author might get one or two choices out.

Margaret Weis

#14. I think that the beauty of 'Spud' is that everyone can connect to the character of Spud in so many ways. It's about real experiences that happen to kids all the time.

Troye Sivan

#15. A lot of the time I get obsessed by little nerdy things in my corner that no one else is interested in. I have that nerd factor in my character.

Bjork

#16. It is the task of several months and it is a fact that a girl, either while rehearsing or actually playing, may be training for some character or feature in some future production not yet definitely fixed even in my own mind.

Florenz Ziegfeld

#17. 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

#18. Embracing a life content with fewer possessions has modeled for them the important truths that personal belongings are not the key to happiness, that security is found in their character, and that the pursuit of happiness runs a different road than the pursuit of possessions.

Joshua Becker

#19. Man can have strength of character only as he is capable of controlling his faculties; of choosing a rational end; and, in its pursuit, of holding fast to his integrity against al! the might of external nature.

Mark Hopkins

#20. I have to believe in the character to perform it.

Stana Katic

#21. There are very deep and restrictive principles that determine the nature of human language and are rooted in the specific character of the human mind

Noam Chomsky

#22. To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.

Thomas Merton

#23. Delicious days ahead for solitude and writing and, oh yes, the holiday meal with family. Live with my characters until term starts in 2012!

Stella Atrium

#24. Should men and women be equal in all things? Absolutely. But I'm old-fashioned in that I like the differences between the sexes. My male characters are neither Neanderthals nor Prince Charmings. They're flawed.

Sandra Brown

#25. It requires strength of character in order to think and to act in opposite fashion from the crowd and also patience to wait for opportunities that may be spaced years apart.

Benjamin Graham

#26. I read a lot of articles about young women in the resistance. All of a sudden, I felt that if I go too much into this horror, then I won't be able to start as a fresh character.

Carice Van Houten

#27. I never try to give a message in my books. It's about living with characters long enough to hear their voices and let them tell me the story. Sometimes I would love to have a happy ending, and it doesn't happen because the character or the story leads me in another direction.

Isabel Allende

#28. The Blood She Betrayed is unique, and Shahkara, the character, is one of the most engaging strong female role models I've seen in a long time. This girl can handle herself! The plot is full of ingenious twists, turns and surprises, and I look forward to reading the next book in the series.

L.J.Smith

#29. Readers will share in the environs of the author and her characters, be taken into the hardship of a pitiless place and emerge on the other side - wiser, warier and weathered like the landscape.

Antonya Nelson

#30. A book can tell you all the emotions and subtext that are so rarely aptly portrayed in film. You understand the nuances of each character. You breathe every breath with them and cry every tear.

AnnaLisa Grant

#31. A farce is that in poetry which grotesque (caricature) is in painting. The persons and actions of a farce are all unnatural, and the manners false, that is, inconsistent with the characters of mankind; and grotesque painting is the just resemblance of this.

John Dryden

#32. Without doubt, in animation each frame is important, every movement defines the character.

Lucrecia Martel

#33. One exercise I always do when I'm getting to know a character is ask her to tell me her secrets. Sit down with a pen and paper, and start with, 'I never told anybody ... ' and go from there, writing in the voice of your character.

Jennifer McMahon

#34. It's interesting, isn't it, to watch this character attempting to reconstruct herself, quite literally, in the midst of this chaos?

Liz Kay

#35. The question I am most often asked is how do I find my ideas? The answer is I don't. Ideas find me. A character in history will suddenly step right out of the past and demand a book. Generally, people don't bother to speak to me unless there's a good chance that I'll take them on.

Jean Fritz

#36. For it is not true, as some treatise-mongers lay down in their systems, of the probity of the speaker, that it contributes nothing to persuasion; but moral character nearly, I may say, carries with it the most sovereign efficacy in making credible.

Aristotle.

#37. I care about Roger Sterling, one of the most subtle and amazing characters in dramatic history [Mad men]. This guys who knows precisely who he is, yet leaves us time after time hoping desperately for him to finally grab control of his life and some responsibility for those around him.

Chris Matthews

#38. Oftentimes, in fact I think this is to my fault, I look at usually scripts as a whole. I should probably pay more attention to the character that I'm going to play and what they do.

Cameron Diaz

#39. We can't handle violence in women characters but we CAN handle what's done to women in our present tense every second of the day worldwide? Or next door? Or in political or medical discourse? Please. That idea just makes me want to crap on a table at a very fancy restaurant.

Lidia Yuknavitch

#40. It's hard to get lost in a scene, to get into a character when everyone's standing around you on the set.

Kirsten Dunst

#41. Certain people do need to stay in character the whole time, and that's just what they require as a person.

Michael Angarano

#42. If you don't care about the main character in a novel, then you probably won't care about the story either.

Giuseppe Bianco

#43. I'm crazy about Grant: his character, his nature, his science in fighting and everything else. But I don't like the idea that he never accepted the blame for anything, always found someone else to blame for any mistake that was ever made, including blaming Prentiss for Shiloh.

Shelby Foote

#44. The tricky or boastful gods of ancient myths and primitive folk tales are characters of the same kind that turn up in Faulkner or Tennessee Williams.

Northrop Frye

#45. Scenes change all the time. Scenes will change while you're shooting them, and you just have to roll with it 'cause that's what makes it funny. It's not being stuck in your character and how you're gonna do something, but to react to other people and to really have a real-life conversation.

Yara Shahidi

#46. The biggest misconception is that I only write about shitty people. Or that I'm trying to be shocking. I just think people are super weird, so I like to write characters that get addicted to things, lose their minds, hurt others, put themselves in bad situations. I'm just more interested in that.

Leslye Headland

#47. There was a best-selling book in the late '60s and '70s called 'The Adventurers' by Harold Robbins. The lead character's name was Dax. Anyone that's roughly my age that's named Dax is named from that book.

Dax Shepard

#48. When I did the film Generations, in which the character died, I felt like a guest for the first time. That made me very sad.

William Shatner

#49. If the character is really well-rounded, and it's a really strong character, and if the writing is just fantastic, that's the thing that will hook me in, certainly.

Amanda Abbington

#50. In real life, you don't know what's going to happen to you, so why would your character know? It's liberating to play the emotion your character is feeling at the time and not know what's coming up. I like it.

Erin Richards

#51. Boy, the solid things you can hold in your hands are never all you've got. They're the least of what belong to you. The qualities inside you, those are what you've really got to defend yourself with.

Traci L. Slatton

#52. You have to believe in its principles. Anything is possible, as long as it's for the good of the world. Make the exception. Live exceptionally. And if you can't do that, maybe we should consider whether you're right for the project. Think about it, then let's talk tomorrow.

Amy Tan

#53. Economic power is not the same as strength of national character. Our country may be rich in goods, but we are poor in spirit.

Richard M. Nixon

#54. Politics is the only field in which the character of a person does not stand in the way of his career.

Peter Prange

#55. I think there's a dishonorable tradition in Hollywood to give the idea, particularly to children, that evil characters are dark.

Tilda Swinton

#56. You are the main character in the story of your life, but other people are the main characters of their own lives. And sometimes you can find healing just by playing a supporting role in someone else's experience.

Timothy Kurek

#57. [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

#58. The person you are (in total, at that moment in time) is what creates the story you're writing. It's infused in every piece of punctuation, in the plot, in the most minor character who crosses the page. It's all your voice.

Victor LaValle

#59. The doctors say it dates back to a film where I had these huge prosthetic breasts because my character was breast-feeding. The weight of them, and of the baby, did my back in.

Anna Friel

#60. People recognize me on the street for all kinds of different things that I've done. 'That Thing You Do' remains to be my favorite film in which I played my favorite character. That role is the one that I'm most recognized for.

Johnathon Schaech

#61. The notion of this universe, its heavens, hells, and everything within it, as a great dream dreamed by a single being in which all the dream characters are dreaming too, has in India enchanted and shaped the entire civilization.

Joseph Campbell

#62. The same way that you are the main character of your story, you are only a secondary character in everybody else's story.

Don Miguel Ruiz

#63. The fictional character with whom I most profoundly identified was Yossarian in Catch-22. Always did, still do.

Neil Cross

#64. When something really extreme happens, you have to find a way to embrace that and include it in how you think about the character. Sometimes it's not easy.

David Ogden Stiers

#65. I actually see myself in all my characters. In order to imagine what it feels like to be another person I have to use my own experiences and responses to the world.

Elizabeth Strout

#66. Repose and cheerfulness is the badge of the gentleman; repose in energy.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#67. I don't really worry so much about image. I try to just live my own life, my personal life, to my own sense of morality. In terms of the kinds of characters that I play, well, they could be anything.

Kevin Bacon

#68. When we're in the storm we learn more about the character of the God we serve than when we're on the mountaintop.

Natalie Grant

#69. If you fall in love with a character, then you are actually falling in love with the author that wrote the character. Therefore, you could conclude that if you are said author, you are in love with yourself.

Heather Dowell

#70. I tried to copy some of his mannerisms at first but it didn't work. And then I just let the spirit of the character grow in me and it just took its rightful place. I started to speak the lines and it felt right.

Derek Luke

#71. We all have these tendencies in us that could go this way or that. I think that's the real key in writing. To look at a character without judgment.

Paul Haggis

#72. Character - We describe the character of a person in reference to moral judgments about the worthiness of a person. Thus, to have a strong, great or honorable character is to be a person of merit, worthy of admiration and honor.

Michael Josephson

#73. To me, it's really not about how I look - it's about who I can be. It is my job to bring the character to life and my duty to fit into the jigsaw in that story.

Imelda Staunton

#74. Sometimes when you do a part, the wall between you and the characters can be very porous. You can sort of move in and out of your character's persona and being. And that just couldn't happen on this one because of working with him.

Kyra Sedgwick

#75. That's what acting is all about - it's all about bringing truth from your own life, and putting it into your characters. If you have the advantage of using your own life in your work, that's always the way to go.

Michael Eklund

#76. Our people are slow to learn the wisdom of sending character instead of talent to Congress. Again and again they have sent a man of great acuteness, a fine scholar, a fine forensic orator, and some master of the brawls has crunched him up in his hands like a bit of paper.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#77. New York is the greatest character actor ever. Any film that is shot in New York is elevated by the city.

Jeffrey Wright

#78. 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

#79. It was important to have a similar energy in my performance. To make the character too different would have just been about my ego because it didn't need to be drastically different.

Brandon Routh

#80. The only way of really finding out a man's true character is to play golf with him. In no other walk of life does the cloven hoof so quickly display itself.

P.G. Wodehouse

#81. In the nineteen-thirties ... the most casual reader of murder mysteries could infallibly detect the villain, as soon as there entered a character who had recently washed his neck and did not commit mayhem on the English language.

Ellen Glasgow

#82. Many men are mere warehouses full of merchandise
the head, the heart, are stuffed with goods ... There are apartments in their souls which were once tenanted by taste, and love, and joy, and worship, but they are all deserted now, and the rooms are filled with earthy and material things.

Henry Ward Beecher

#83. In nearly everything I write, I am like a ventriloquist, throwing my voice into my characters, animating them by the slightest twitch as I register my anxieties and alarms. This is true even in my comedies.

Norman Lock

#84. In the old-fashioned sitcoms, to be gay was, in itself, funny, and you laughed at the characters rather than with them.

Ian McKellen

#85. The public square is more public than ever, but minds are rarely changed in 140 character bursts and by selfies.

Seth Godin

#86. With so many willing, complex women in the world, he had little respect for men who fixated on girlishness. Innocence was, by definition, an absence of experience - character - knowledge. To desire that absence seemed rather deviant.

Meredith Duran

#87. The writer must be a participant in the scene ... like a film director who writes his own scripts, does his own camera work, and somehow manages to film himself in action, as the protagonist or at least the main character.

Hunter S. Thompson

#88. What can possibly be the common factor in a Kim Jee-woon film? I think what really ties a lot of my projects together is that there is always a character that believes his life is not exactly the way he wishes it to be.

Kim Ji-woon

#89. Being on the run wasn't fun, but it was something I had to do. I was actually working in legitimate jobs. I wasn't living on people's credit cards. I was living like a character out of a movie. It was performance art.

Kevin Mitnick

#90. We're big fans of the show on BBC, and some of the greatest actors in film and television have done this character, from Basil Rathbone to Nicol Williamson to Michael Caine. (Executive producer) Rob Doherty came in with the pitch last season, it was immediately a show that we gravitated towards.

Nina Tassler

#91. Giving style to one's character - a great and rare art! It is exercised by those who see all the strengths and weaknesses of their own natures and then comprehend them in an artistic plan until everything appears as art and reason and even weakness delights the eye.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#92. I am someone who has a cold heart. If I am beside a great grief I throw barriers up so the loss cannot go too deep or too far. There is a wall instantly in place, and it will not fall.

Michael Ondaatje

#93. [ J. Edgar]Hoover, I'm sure, felt that he was right in everything he did and even the things that we don't like about his character.

Clint Eastwood

#94. One doesn't simply write about Lyndon Johnson. You get the Johnson treatment from beyond the grave - arm around you, nose to nose. I should admit that he also reminds me of my father, quite an overbearing and narcissistic character. And in some ways, he reminds me of myself. Another workaholic.

Robert Dallek

#95. As there is much beast and some devil in man, so is there some angel and some God in him. The beast and the devil may be conquered, but in this life never destroyed.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

#96. I'm so pleased you're such a quick judge of character. You've got him tagged."
"Yep, toe-tagged, in the freezer, then buried six feet under.

Joss Stirling

#97. trapped in his past, refusing to move forward. Unless this is a specific part of the character's arc, a character caught under this mountain of backstory can be painful to

Jordan McCollum

#98. When I'm playing a character like Jonathan in Ripley's Game I want to be in the moment when he's feeling pain; this very ordinary person who finds himself in extraordinary circumstances.

Dougray Scott

#99. Writing is really freeing because it's the only part of the process where it's just you and the characters and you are by yourself in a room and you can just hash it out. There are no limitations.

Dee Rees

#100. I'm probably an actor that tends to, instead of putting things on, think about it more in terms of taking away what's not in the character, until I'm left with what is. If that makes sense. That's probably a particularly American way of working, but maybe not. The end of any movie is a readjustment.

Molly Parker