On Character Quotes

#1. Good breeding in cattle depends on physical health, but in men on a well-formed character.

Democritus

#2. The process of rehearsal means you learn so much and really get the chance to develop your work on a character.

Adam Garcia

#3. But [Patrick's] character is partly based on a boy named Mark who lived across the street from me when I was growing up ... I liked hanging out with him and was sad when he moved away after only a year in the neighborhood. I guess writing about Patrick is a way for me to spend more time with Mark.

Linda Sue Park

#4. 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

#5. 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

#6. I find with television, you have to play personality, whereas onstage, everyone talks about 'the character,' and what you do. It's a very different thing, because stage is much bigger, but on television, for things to come across to the public, I think you have to play a bit of your personality.

John Barrowman

#7. I think that I have this core group of fans that fell in love with the character I played on Buffy and now they're following me to everything I do. They're very dedicated and loyal. I'm very lucky.

Amber Benson

#8. 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

#9. Everyone journeys through character as well as through time. The person one becomes depends on the person one has been.

Dick Francis

#10. My clothes have a story. They have an identity. They have a character and a purpose. That's why they become classics. Because they keep on telling a story. They are still telling it.

Vivienne Westwood

#11. Most writers deserve the reputation posterity has bestowed upon them: You can't for long conceal the toxic spots on your character - Philip Larkin is Exhibit A - nor can you conceal your dignity, your humanism, your regard for veracity and freedom.

William Giraldi

#12. Anne Boleyn is certainly the most exciting character I have played on stage.

Lydia Leonard

#13. If you meet someone on the street that likes something that you did or likes the way you brought this character to life, that's really rewarding. That's really cool.

Elden Henson

#14. 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

#15. Life always take on the character of its motive.

J.G. Holland

#16. The major distinction between the indefinite article, a, and the definite article, the.6 When a character makes his first appearance on stage, he is introduced with a. When we are subsequently told about him, we already know who he is, and he is mentioned with the:

Steven Pinker

#17. It is not with a rush and a spring that we are to reach Christ's character, and attain to perfect saintship; but step by step, foot by foot, hand over hand, we are slowly and often painfully to mount the ladder that rests on earth, and rises to heaven.

Thomas Guthrie

#18. In some ways, what I learned is that you can take a character and breathe with them, and it's up to the audience to interpret rather than you putting moral stamp on the character.

Aden Young

#19. I would so hate to be a first-person character! Always on your guard, always having people read your thoughts!

Jasper Fforde

#20. My favorite artists from comics were early ones like Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko who had a real heavy ink style. Captain America, co created by Jack Kirby, was a favorite of mine and I sometimes use an altered version of his costume on some of my characters.

Marcel Dzama

#21. I often concentrate on the eyes and lips, they are great indicators of mood and feeling, and I find that I can project character into my portraits by bringing the viewer's attention to these areas.

Robert Ryan

#22. Be not content with the common place in character anymore than with the commonplace in ambition or intellectual attainment. Do not expect that you will make any lasting or very strong impression on the world through intellectual power without the use of an equal amount of conscience and heart.

William Jewett Tucker

#23. I prefer to doubt everything. Such a disposition does not preclude a resolute character. On the contrary, as far as I am concerned, I always advance more boldly when I don't know what is waiting me for me. After all, nothing worse than death can happen-and death you can't escape!

Mikhail Lermontov

#24. There are lots of big books that have gay characters - or, more commonly, a gay character - in secondary roles, but seldom are their lives, and especially their sexual lives, on center stage.

Garth Greenwell

#25. There are probably only a certain number of people who can understand or tolerate how long a job will take and what demands it puts on you. And why should they? It breeds a strange kind of selfishness immersing yourself in a character for so long.

Dominic Cooper

#26. The union with Christ which produces no effect on heart and life is a mere formal union, which is worthless before God. The faith which has not a sanctifying influence on the character is no better than the faith of devils.

J.C. Ryle

#27. He's meant to be that classic Homer, Ulysses, Hercules - a character who goes out or has some gift of some kind. He goes on a journey of discovery and part of that is falling into darkness - the temptations of life.

Robert Redford

#28. 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

#29. lost a great innocence when I understood that I and my mind were not going to be on good terms for the rest of my life. I can't tell you how tired I am of character-building experiences. But I treasure this part of me; whoever loves me loves me with this in it.

Kay Redfield Jamison

#30. On the question - which is more important for a story-plot or character. "It's a bit like asking whether your need your left or right leg. Maybe you have a preference, maybe one is stronger (for you) but really, you need both." (on Facebook)

Jeanette O'Hagan

#31. There is a shortage of hard R. It was the story and the character. He's never played a character like this and so that was the thing that really won him over. The story itself, on the surface - Patrick and I love actors almost in a geeky kind of way.

Todd Farmer

#32. Everyone has to act out of character sometimes. It's like taking your clothes off: you feel free without your character but very naked, unprotected. Unfinished. So you get dressed again- you put on yourself-and then you know who you are.

Jan Siegel

#33. I think there is a wonderful trend of strong female characters on television right now.

Amanda Schull

#34. Basically, every character I've ever played, I've based entirely on internal conflict. And I love doing that, because I think it's very human.

James McAvoy

#35. When I take on a role, all I tend to do is get to know the script and ask millions of questions, and keep fine tuning what I think the character is trying to say.

Sophie Okonedo

#36. It's my only religion to work hard, and then I'm not under any pressure because I know I've done the work on the character.

Pierre Niney

#37. It's all about story and character with me, and I don't care if the job is on daytime or prime time or the web. Hey, give me a good character and someone to listen, and I'll do my acting on a street corner.

Justin Hartley

#38. I think of myself as a character actor, compared to a straight actor. I know a character actor in England is pretty much the same as in the States; you're actually hired to put on terrible teeth and stuff like that.

Burn Gorman

#39. You do know what's coming up when you're translating. I suppose the concentration, then, is on finding a formulation which is speakable and in character - and economical as well, actually.

Tom Stoppard

#40. Schedules on TV are so tight, and it feels like they get tighter and tighter with every passing year. The idea of asking where your character's come from or where they grew up - you would just get a little bit laughed at.

Jessica Raine

#41. I think it's very important for me to work on myself while I'm working on a character, and also it's important how I'm giving to and educating an audience. So I tend to go with people who are complex and substantive.

Judith Light

#42. Be the kind of person others admire, can count on, trust, and enjoy spending time with. After you have developed that reputation, people will start to ask you what you do and you will be amazed at how many people will want to work with you. You will attract others based on your character.

Larry Winget

#43. That's kind of my ideal sequel - a movie that continues the story, takes one character and moves on, and moves forward with that character that survived with the first one.

Fede Alvarez

#44. You have to be like a sponge and use what you can and how it relates because TV is fluid. Things change on a week-to-week basis. Those are the things that I do with every character. If I'm involved in a boxing movie, I go see fights and learn about boxing. It's part of what we do.

Jimmy Smits

#45. On the small scale, 'Ico,' I think, actually delivered a small new thing: holding a character's hand and really feeling like your job is to rescue this person, and establishing a personal connection.

Warren Spector

#46. A lot of characters now on TV have moved into being anti-heroes, but I wanted to be the hero.

Kieran Bew

#47. I'd love to do a romantic comedy. And perhaps, if the character was right and I had a good gut instinct, a Bollywood movie. And I'd love to direct. One day. I'm learning a lot on the set of 'The Good Wife.'

Archie Panjabi

#48. There is the moral spectrum in 'Fargo,' and you see it in other Coen brothers movies, where you have a very good character on one end and a very bad character on the other.

Noah Hawley

#49. [W]hat a person considers the minimal necessities depends as much on his character as it depends on his actual possessions.

Erich Fromm

#50. I don't like making a film and having the actors in character too much in magazines and on the net and everything else. Because you want to keep something back.

Graham King

#51. This sucks on so many levels." Dialogue from "Jason X" Rare for a movie to so frankly describe itself. "Jason X" sucks on the levels of storytelling, character development, suspense, special effects, originality, punctuation, neatness and aptness of thought.

Roger Ebert

#52. Work on your character and a good life will come to you.

Donald Miller

#53. Because Naughty Dog relies on their facial team to hand animate the faces of each game character and they do such a remarkable job, I think you can be more realistic with your acting. It gives the story and what's happening to you the feeling that it's a game.

Nolan North

#54. I'm not much of a preparer. I think sometimes as an actor you need to go out and learn some skills, but in terms of preparation for understanding the character, it's all on the page, and if it's not on the page, you're in trouble.

William H. Macy

#55. Spider-Man's probably my favorite. You see, Batman is a billionaire and there's nothing really cool about a billionaire saving the world. But Spider-Man is Peter Parker, a conflicted character who puts on a suit and saves the world. I love that.

Zac Efron

#56. 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

#57. I do love the clothes on 'Mad Men' because my character has been so elegant and I would never have had access to these clothes. I think Janie Bryant is a costume designing genius. They'll call and tell me, 'It will only take an hour,' and I'm like, 'I will try on the whole truck!'

Cara Buono

#58. While you, the leader, can teach many things, character is not taught easily to adults who arrive at your desk lacking it. Be cautious about taking on reclamation projects regardless of the talent they may possess. Have the courage to make character count among the qualities you seek in others.

John Wooden

#59. I would compare it to an actor. I drive myself into the character that later on is in the ring.

Wladimir Klitschko

#60. Nobody can put a character on paper without - at any rate in part and at times - sitting as a model for it himself.

Henrik Ibsen

#61. You know how sometimes department stores have these things where, if you win, you get 10 minutes to go in and take anything you want from the store? That's basically what I'm doing. I'm running in and just trying to grab as many characters as possible before they pull the plug on me.

Ryan Gosling

#62. I try mainly to just focus on character and what my character's point of view is, with each person, and try to figure out story.

Katie Cassidy

#63. The biggest similarity between me and my character is that we've both played clubs for 20 years. In real life, the clubs aren't quite as controlled - and my hair isn't quite as in place as it is on 'Ally McBeal.'

Vonda Shepard

#64. Any piece of furniture, I don't care how beautiful it is, has got to be lived with, and kicked about, and rubbed down, and mistreated ... , and repolished, and knocked around and dusted and sat on or slept in or eaten off of before it develops its real character, Selina said.

Edna Ferber

#65. 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

#66. Artists with the lack of proper education and experience of working from life will copy whatever is visible on the photograph, without knowing what's underneath. As a result, instead of creating the in-depth and full of character portrait, they draw a mask with no soul.

Igor Babailov

#67. Shh," I interrupted him. "Hold on a second. I think I'm having an epiphany here.

Stephenie Meyer

#68. When you're starting out as an actor, you keep raising the stakes. First, you just want to be a character who comes on stage and gets a laugh or two and exits. Just five minutes on a stage, not even Broadway. But every time you say your little prayer at night, you place more demands.

Charles Kimbrough

#69. Top five things I miss about Laura ... Two: she's got character ... she's loyal and honest, and she doesn't even take it out on people when she's having a bad day. That's character.

Nick Hornby

#70. The Sermon on the Mount is law, not grace, for it demands as the condition of blessingMt 5:3-9 that perfect character which grace, through divine power, creates Ga 5:22,23

Anonymous

#71. When I listen to my scene partners and listen to their breathing allows me to be connected to them in scenes. I am not trying to multi task, not trying to talk on the phone, but in my character.

Giancarlo Esposito

#72. 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

#73. 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

#74. You are not defined by the clothes on your body, the shoes on your feet, or the money in your pocket. You are defined by the choices you make, the character that you choose to have, and the respect you show yourself and to those around you.

Quinn Loftis

#75. the spectacle is an affirmation of appearances and an identification of all human social life with appearances. But a critique that grasps the spectacle's essential character reveals it to be a visible negation of life - a negation that has taken on a visible form.

Guy Debord

#76. All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity.

James Fenimore Cooper

#77. 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

#78. Well, I don't think characters change. I think they become more revealed. I don't think you really can change a character on a show.

Lisa Edelstein

#79. I've been doing this 17 years but I can tell you I have more websites now than I have ever had devoted to me or my past career or my character. When I got this show, I think I had two fans out there that had created websites on my behalf.

Robert Patrick

#80. I pride myself on doing character-driven movies and, when my movies have worked, it's been because of the right casting and the right character, and it just clicks.

Doug Liman

#81. Taking on an iconic character is difficult, sure, people associate different actors with a character that you're playing, but there's something in rehearsing and developing a new character.

Kathryn Hahn

#82. When somebody is talking to you about something terrible on set with lines, and you believe what he says, sometimes it gives a strange vibe, because you wonder when that person is talking if he's talking about something that really happened to him and he's using the character.

Vincent Cassel

#83. You can't just pretend that the things you watch, and the things you hear, and the places you go will not have an impact on your character. They will.

Nouman Ali Khan

#84. Not only has wilderness been a force in molding our character as a people, but its influence continues, and will, if we are wise enough to preserve it on this continent, be a stabilizing power as well as a spiritual reserve for the future.

Sigurd F. Olson

#85. On Writing About Nora Hawks
I write about a female character to try, in vain, to understand two things: the purpose of life, and women.

Dennis R. Miller

#86. You hope to see an arc of growth in your ability to become a character on television.

Marc Maron

#87. And if you insist on continuing to make assumptions about my character, I'll advise you only this: assume you will always be wrong.

Tahereh Mafi

#88. The effects of human wickedness are written on the page of history in characters of blood: but the impression soon fades away; so more blood must be shed to renew it.

Augustus William Hare

#89. Lincoln described character is a tree and reputation as its shadow. The tree will always be what it is but the shadow we see depends on where we stand and the angle of the light.

Michael Josephson

#90. Paranoid can also be defined as "carefully smart"! Almost every episode of SVU is based on a true story; I'd watched my fill until they moronically cut Detective Stabler's fine-ass character.

Angela Graham

#91. There was also no character arc. Change only comes when we face the difficulty of reality head-on. Fantasy changes nothing, which is why, once we're done fantasizing, it feels like a bankrupt story.

Donald Miller

#92. The preparation for building a series of thrillers based on a single character is kind of like the preparation for becoming a parent: The best part is the idea - wink, wink.

Harlan Coben

#93. Woody Allen - nobody has been a better joke teller than him - and even in his great films, it's always coming out of the character. If you don't have that, jokes are just empty and I think that people rely too much on jokes.

Brett Gelman

#94. Matthew Wiener on 'Mad Men' writes the entire series before they start shooting, and if you have that, then what you can do with character and story is not at all unlike what you can do in a novel.

Salman Rushdie

#95. Sometimes you can incubate a character and that can take me a month just sitting on it imagining it, doing everything from sketching it to taking long walks, but sometimes you can see the character immediately. A lot of it is instinctive.

Rebecca Hall

#96. In general, watching children's television is a dark and surreal descent into madness where the characters on the screen talk directly to you.

John Green

#97. Choice betrays character," I said.
"That's not true." Loring moved his finger along the
sheet as if writing his name in cursive. "Eliza, you can't judge a man solely on his actions. Sometimes actions are nothing more than reactions.

Tiffanie DeBartolo

#98. There were time when I was into method acting that I did have moments of residual character emotions, because the method bases your emotional responses as a character on emotional experiences from your real life.

Corin Nemec

#99. Obviously, with a CGI character, you're building a character in much the same way as a real creature is built. You build the bones, the skeletons, the muscles. You put layers of fat on. You put a layer of skin on which has to have a translucency, depending on what the character is.

Peter Jackson

#100. Keep on reinventing yourself! Always strive to be a better version of yourself!

Avijeet Das