Out Of Character Quotes

#1. Catholic schools carry out a great mission, to serve God by building knowledge and character ... By teaching the word of God, you prepare your students to follow a path of virtue.

George W. Bush

#2. And at NYU, I went to the Atlantic Theater Company, and they have two main points. One of them is to always be active in something instead of just feeling it. And the other is figuring out your character.

Elizabeth Olsen

#3. If we think of the novel and the epic ... The difference lies in the fact that the important thing about the epic is a hero
a man who is a pattern for all men. While, as Mencken pointed out, the essence of most novels lies in the breaking down of a man, in the degeneration of character.

Jorge Luis Borges

#4. Emotionally and physically, I'm an extremely fragile creation of God; while the strong will and character are formed out of the necessity to protect the vulnerable core.

Sahara Sanders

#5. My dad says that when I was two or three I used to go out dressed as a different character every day. I remember thinking it was perfectly normal to wear different coloured shoes and carry a pink umbrella. But now I've got a goddaughter of that age; I realise it's not normal at all.

Alice Eve

#6. There is a great deal more to be got out of things than is generally got out of them, whether the thing be a chapter of the Bible or a yellow turnip, and the marvel is that those who use the most material should so often be those that show the least result in strength or character.

George MacDonald

#7. My thing was always more character-driven comedies, not sketch comedy - not that there's not room for both or one isn't enjoyable, just my personal taste, I like movies that comedy comes from out of flaws of people, things that are uncomfortable, out of tragedy.

Vince Vaughn

#8. With big, emotional roles it's very easy, especially if you've grown up in the American school of acting, to exploit your own pain. You have to be careful about that, because 9 times out of 10, your pain is not appropriate to the character.

Laura Linney

#9. 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

#10. 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

#11. I think the business of writing a great deal of it is the business of paying attention to your characters, to the world they live in, to the story you have to tell, but just a kind of deep attention and out of that if you pay attention properly the story will tell you what it needs.

Salman Rushdie

#12. Each week the machine is spitting out a number for a new person or a new world within New York that you get to know. And the idea from the beginning was that some of the characters would stick around and become part of the lives of the show, and the world of the show itself will continue to grow.

Jonathan Nolan

#13. You want everyone to be a full character. No one is just evil, or very few people are, hopefully. They're characters, so you want to flush them out. You've got to show all sides of them. There is definitely an antagonistic relationship between guards and prisoners, and I do think it flares up.

Jenji Kohan

#14. 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

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. I think acting has helped me come out of my shell because when I play a character, I can't be self-conscious.

Joan Cusack

#18. The function of a newspaper in a democracy is to stand as a sort of chronic opposition to the reigning quacks. The minute it begins to out-whoop them it forfeits its character and becomes ridiculous.

H.L. Mencken

#19. There's a lot of romanticisation of the intuitive actor and method acting and all kinds of notions about getting inside a character and coming out from there.

Edward Norton

#20. Sometimes I can't get out of the character because the story is very intense.

Diana Krall

#21. 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

#22. Is as if the music is another character or as if it was a part of this great opera. I also through about this project as a structure or as a sculpture made out of colors, rhythm, characters, and brush strokes, but with every single one of these always supporting one another.

Alex Abreu

#23. In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, impeached one and hounded another out of office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate their character.

P. J. O'Rourke

#24. I'm not the kind of player to see out my time and sit with my bum on the bench too much. I want to be involved. That's my character.

Frank Lampard

#25. I did 'Shameless' on Showtime, and I felt like I really tried to go super-method with that, and it would just make my days really hard to get in and out of character.

Laura Slade Wiggins

#26. Rehearsals are set up so that you find out all the nuances about your character. You never want to beat yourself up. It's about finding the right direction, and most of the time, the right direction is not what you think is the right direction. That's why the director's there: to guide you there.

Djimon Hounsou

#27. The growth of the imagination demands windows-windows through which we can look out at the world and windows through which we can look into ourselves. The old stories were windows in just this way.

Katherine Paterson

#28. What really sells a fight, and any kind of action, is the performance of it. If someone is uncomfortable or uncertain about doing action because they're too concerned about their safety or about being right, it pulls them out of being that character, in that situation.

Zoe Bell

#29. Yeah, and the language the "we" has, and the character the "we" has. Because that was the part of the book that I didn't plan out, but the part that I was most curious about as I was writing. You know what you're doing, but you're sometimes still sort of curious as you're writing it.

Chang-rae Lee

#30. With 'Moreau,' it's been particularly confusing because I started out being the writer of the screenplay and then trying to be the director, then being moved from being the director and having to become the dog extra, it makes some kind of sense to suddenly become a character in the story.

Richard Stanley

#31. A lot of times, scripts are written so the character is all one way. Even with 'Bringing Out the Dead,' the character was written a little more generic.

Ving Rhames

#32. I think what I reacted to so strongly when I first saw 'Pinocchio' was that I identified with the character so strongly. The movie takes you on a whole journey, a rollercoaster of emotions, and that sometimes means some very scary places. But in the end, it comes out okay.

Chris Buck

#33. When I can't get the character out of my head, and I'm in my bedroom and I start to actually act out the scenes that I've read in a script, I think okay, I really want to do this.

Saoirse Ronan

#34. When I was on 'One Life to Live,' I always wanted to delve into my character, Layla, to find out why she was the black sheep of the family. I so wanted to have some edge. I have no idea why there was a reluctance to do that or why we so rarely see it.

Tika Sumpter

#35. In real life, we do things out of character, constantly. A couple of days ago, my shoes were hurting, so I walked barefoot through New York. Someone who has known me my whole life would think that was so out of character. But I did it because of the circumstances.

Allison Williams

#36. I think 'The Searcher' is a departure from my first because it's less grounded in religion and is far more rooted in the mythic tradition: more of an existential thriller where the main character is actually the central mystery, and his journey is all about trying to figure himself out.

Simon Toyne

#37. Plot grows out of character. If you focus on who the people in your story are, if you sit and write about two people you are getting to know better every day, something is bound to happen.

Anne Lamott

#38. The beauty of the character is that it's like camouflage. It's the best costume ever. I rarely get recognized as Pornstache when I'm out in public. Most people recognize me as the Law & Order guy, when I'm out in public.

Pablo Schreiber

#39. I think we take for granted police officers and detectives that walk into some pretty heinous situations, and they really have to be very brave. So I love playing a character that's very brave - someone that kind of dives in the fire to figure out what's happened.

George Eads

#40. One's character is set at an early age. The choices you make now will affect you for the rest of your life. I hate to see you swim out so far you can't swim back.

Wendelin Van Draanen

#41. 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

#42. No one knows his true character until he has run out of gas, purchased something on the installment plan and raised an adolescent.

Marcelene Cox

#43. The process of creation goes on all the time. When I get through, I feel I know what the character will do in every situation. But the building up of the part is not mechanical or deliberate. It grows out of the text.

Donald Pleasence

#44. 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

#45. Even if you're specific about the character of the song, it's more exciting to place them, juxtapose them in such a way as to make an adventure out of the sequence of the songs.

Robert Wyatt

#46. I've worked out a Ninja Replacement Score for novels. It's basically the number of characters that need to be replaced by ninjas to make the book good.

Janni Lee Simner

#47. Most of my stories are ideas in action. In other words, I get a concept, and I let it run away. I find a character to act out the idea. And then the story takes care of itself.

Ray Bradbury

#48. When I connect to my soul, project it into another # character , and then bring it to the stage or to a film
that has always been for me the great joy of # acting . It's been as if my soul kind of leaps out of my body and is able to be free and dance around.

Kyra Sedgwick

#49. What comes out of you when you are squeezed is what is inside of you.

Wayne W. Dyer

#50. I think a few of my most visible roles are crazy or peppy girls, but I've played a lot of characters who are soldiers, or fighters, or meditative characters, and a lot of this stuff hasn't come out.

Ashly Burch

#51. Character is destiny. For the cronic do-gooder, the happy-go-lucky sociopath, the dysfunctional family, under the gun everyone diverts to who they are. We may hunger to map out a new course, but for most of us, the lines have been drawn since we were 5.

Mary McCormack

#52. I like to be able to play a character and act out a lot of things which I can't or don't do in my normal everyday life.

Leonardo DiCaprio

#53. Knowledge is an attitude, a passion, actually an illicit attitude. For the compulsion to know is like dipsomania, erotomania, and homicidal mania, in producing a character that is out of balance. It is not at all that the scientist goes after the truth.

Soren Kierkegaard

#54. The point was - he wasn't acting. It was as if he'd forgotten how! Jack still knew his lines, but he was out of character ... Jack had stopped acting. He was just Jack Burns - the real Jack Burns at last.

John Irving

#55. When you're doing an out-and-out comedy, the notion of preparing for a character - I hope I don't reveal too much of myself here - but, uh, no, I'm not doing anything.

Will Ferrell

#56. I write poems about relationships, love relationships, and I'm not able to do that all the time. I could go two years without writing poems, and then write a dozen. Having a novel to work on, with the intricate puzzle of character and plot to work out, is satisfying for the time there is no poetry.

May Sarton

#57. When I sign on to a television show [Mistresses], I have to love that show and character so much, but this was in and out, for seven episodes. And it was nice to be able to make some money again because I hadn't work in a year and a half. There were a lot of pluses.

Shannyn Sossamon

#58. 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

#59. People act out of character when they're in pain.

Sarah Jio

#60. In the case of 'Sweet Tooth,' and in the case of a lot of stuff I do, it all starts with the image. It may be something I sketch in my sketchbooks - something that reoccurs in the sketchbooks. Eventually, a character or story line starts to grow out of that.

Jeff Lemire

#61. The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.

Leon Trotsky

#62. I think we've all been kind of ... everyone's been hurt, everyone's felt loss, everyone has exultation, everyone has a need to be loved, or to have lost love, so when you play a character, you're pulling out those little threads and turning them up a bit.

Mark Ruffalo

#63. I don't believe you just create a character out of thin air, there's always something of yourself you bring.

Sean Bean

#64. It sounded nothing like the classic "That's all folks" that the character did. So everytime I'm asked to do it - and nine out of ten "Looney Tunes" shows ends with Porky coming out saying "That's all folks" - I'll say to them, which one do you want?

Bob Bergen

#65. You know it's gonna take more than some grave robbing charge to hold or stop the man. Besides, you didn't let me finish. The bodies were rising out of the ground.

Justin Bienvenue

#66. The House of Change... is bigger inside than out.

Michael Ende

#67. 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

#68. So if you want to have a great video game-based movie you have to keep the mood of the game, use the normal character setup - but you have to flesh out the story and provide more background for the characters.

Uwe Boll

#69. I've been in a lot of trouble and come out of it. I think it shows a lot of good character.

Stefan Edberg

#70. Readers tend to like a character who is at least superficially like themselves. But they quickly lose interest unless this particular character is somehow out of the ordinary. The character may wear the mask of the common man, but underneath his true face must always be the face of the hero.

Orson Scott Card

#71. I think 'Sightseers' was a bit of an epiphany, a massive learning curve, and it gave me loads of confidence to go out there, and also to create a female character which is completely unexpected and defies convention.

Alice Lowe

#72. I've been in the studio experimenting on making a CD of my own. I'm trying out different producers, styles, sounds. With music, as opposed to acting, you are not playing a character. You are showing people who you are. I really want to have my spirit in it.

Emmy Rossum

#73. You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.

Maya Angelou

#74. We have to say now we think the character of the party has changed so far it will take something very exceptional, something really out of the ordinary line to make us be convinced there's a chance of winning back the party.

Shirley Williams

#75. When you make a mistake. You can do a little song and dance, put on a little show and have everyone laugh it off.
Or you can own it, and next time show everyone how great you are. While silencing your critiques.

Personally speaking... I don't help no one make a fool out of you.

Vincent Edwards

#76. Sometimes I am a different character in different languages. I have different enjoyment from them. Sometimes different answers come out of me. Like, I didn't even know that about me. I get to know myself through different languages, actually.

Roger Federer

#77. Good nature, or what is often considered as such, is the most selfish of all virtues: it is nine times out of ten mere indolence of disposition. William Hazlitt, 'On the Knowledge of Character' (1822)

Alan Bennett

#78. I named my sons Brandon and Dylan after the Beverly Hills 90210 characters. Both of them were born in my bathroom. I had Dylan in my tub, and he came out underwater.

Pamela Anderson

#79. Sometimes great power brings out the worst in us, and unfortunately, it isn't until people are given it that we see the true shades of their character.

Barbara Kloss

#80. When you're on camera, even though you try to lose yourself in the character, you are aware that there is a camera there capturing every moment of it visually. With doing a voiceover job, you are worried about the sound of it, and you have to make all those visual colors come out with your sound.

Doug Jones

#81. A tree uses what comes its way to nurture itself. By sinking its roots deeply into the earth, by accepting the rain that flows towards it, by reaching out to the sun, the tree perfects its character and becomes great. ... Absorb, absorb, absorb. That is the secret of the tree.

Ming-Dao Deng

#82. I believe that the sphere of service, your career, the plan which God has mapped out for you and prepared for you, is the greatest agency in His hands to conform You to His character and to His will.

Alan Redpath

#83. God is a man of such perfect, flawless character that he only watches over everyone equally
the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor
and never plays favorites or reaches His hand out to any of them. Oh, what a wonderful God. He can just drop dead.

Yukako Kabei

#84. Well, perhaps Falconer will be able to figure it out; he's usually a good judge of character. I say the sooner we reach the Heartland the better. I, for one, am eager to rid him of our 'boring' company

Nicole Sager

#85. The power of our country relies on the character that comes out of each of our homes.

Dan Groat

#86. There is not a single soul that jealousy looks good on. Nobody! It looks ugly on everybody and it makes us act ugly - it makes us act out of character.

Beth Moore

#87. I do think that it's extremely important with this character show her assuming power with a great deal of grace, and find out how to do things she won't like - the things she's called upon to do.

Mary McDonnell

#88. You're dealing with a character who is, at some points, quite insane. And I hope that any wicked, dark sense of humor Eric exhibits comes out of the fact that he'd been pushed to the point where it seems quite sensible to say some of the ridiculous things he says.

Brandon Lee

#89. The character of a whole society is the cumulative result of countless small actions, day in and day out, of millions of persons.

Duane Elgin

#90. Life is a great university for the unfolding of the mind, for developing character. In choosing our life work, when we are free to choose, we should remember this, and choose that which will call the biggest man or woman out of us and not that from which we can coin the most dollars.

Orison Swett Marden

#91. Truth needs wisdom's guidance. Wisdom prevents a hard truth from getting the best of you when an imperfect character brings out the worst in you.

Stella Payton

#92. Life is a quarry, out of which we have to mod and chisel and complete character?" ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Matt Nelson

#93. I do not want a player who is a perfect man and has a fantastic character. That's the kind of guy I want for my daughter as a man.

Jose Mourinho

#94. The greatest compliment a writer can be given is that a story and character hold a reader spellbound. I'm caught up in the story writing and I miss a good deal of sleep thinking about it and working out the plot points.

Iris Johansen

#95. The world will find out that part of your character which concerns it: that which especially concerns yourself, it will leave for you to discover.

Arthur Helps

#96. The trap in Hamlet is he's the most passive of Shakespeare's characters. He's not a Richard III, not out there taking a lot of action. It's a lot of asides and soliloquies where he's wrapped in angst, and that's not a very interesting character.

Kurt Sutter

#97. For me, what I really want to come out of it is to show people that I can hold together a movie, be the number one character and play someone who is twenty or twenty-one.

Kaley Cuoco

#98. Being a director is almost like being another sort of character, but you're out of view.

Paddy Considine

#99. I'm more of a clown, a tragic clown. Yeah. I just like humor to come out of characters.

Amy Sedaris

#100. I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca