Protagonist Quotes

#1. At this stage of my life, I had reached the conclusion that I would never be the protagonist of any story. The only thing I could hope for was to make an appearance in somebody else's.

Cesar Aira

#2. People always want to identify a writer with their protagonist.

Monica Ali

#3. I gravitated to Judy Blume early on. 'Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing' was my favorite, with a realistic and relatable protagonist in Peter Hatcher. When I reached the fourth grade, I made the leap to science fiction and never looked back.

Jeff Kinney

#4. Don't act like a protagonist Raghu, be human," she said.
"Like Salman?" I asked and chuckled, she didn't react though.

Kavipriya Moorthy

#5. Treefingers is important, it's the point in which our protagonist crosses the icy tundra that is how to disappear completely to reach the island of Optimistic. But seriously, kill yourself.

Thom Yorke

#6. This is the time to remember that I'm the protagonist in my own story, facing every challenge with grace and wit.

Maya Van Wagenen

#7. Open Secret boasts a nifty plot and, in Coroner Fortin, a fascinating protagonist who will likely be around for a long time. Deryn Collier is a talent to watch,

Giles Blunt

#8. The depth of any story is proportionate to the protagonist's commitment to their goal, the complexity of the problem, and the grace of the solution.

Steve House

#9. With me it started as a child, going to the theater and being totally transported but also walking out of the theater thinking I was the protagonist in the film and reenacting the scenes.

Oscar Torre

#10. You couldn't escape the literary atmosphere in our home. I grew up as a Britisher. I played a protagonist of every nationality in stage adaptations of Shakespeare and Brecht. I graduated from Yale. When I moved to the U.S., I realized with some amount of surprise that I was seen as an ethnic actor.

Satya Bhabha

#11. If Life is the ultimate work of Fiction,does that make god the greatest Protagonist?

Diganta Sarkar

#12. If the reader is rooting for the protagonist, they'll forgive you just about everything else.

Andy Weir

#13. When I first began writing In the Country of Men all I had was the voice of the protagonist. He intrigued me and my desire to want to know him and his world became almost compulsive.

Hisham Matar

#14. American and Vietnamese characters alike leap to life through the voice and eyes of a tenyearold girl-a protagonist so strong, loving, and vivid I longed to hand her a wedge of freshly cut papaya.

Mitali Perkins

#15. Can Protagonist think of a single film that interests him as much as the three-hundredth best book he ever read?

David Markson

#16. Every time I revise, life just gets a little worse for my protagonist.

B.K. Raine

#17. I don't like writing romance in my books because that's the turning point of 90% of YA sci-fi/fantasy books and, quite frankly, it gets annoying after a while. The protagonist has more important things to worry about than boys and whether or not they like her.

Meghan Blistinsky

#18. 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

#19. Think 'Game of Thrones.' In the old days, this sort of show might be considered bad writing. It doesn't really seem to be moving toward a crisis or climax, it has no true protagonist, and it's structured less like a TV show or a movie than a soap opera.

Douglas Rushkoff

#20. Your protagonist is your reader's portal into the story. The more observant he or she can be, the more vivid will be the world you're creating. They don't have to be super-educated, they just have to be mentally active. Keep them looking, thinking, wondering, remembering.

Janet Fitch

#21. The only thing that makes me put down a book is if the characters are boring, or the situations aren't fraught with the potential for some great change or I don't mind if an author torments his protagonist, but I do expect a decent payoff in the end.

Michael Boatman

#22. In 2007, I sold my first book, 'Grimspace.' It says it's SF on the spine. I believe it to be SF, though it's certainly written differently. I write in first person, present tense, and the protagonist is a woman with a woman's thoughts, feelings, and sexual desires.

Ann Aguirre

#23. The glory of the protagonist is always paid for
by a lot of secondary characters

Tony Hoagland

#24. A lot of narrative films leave you no space for anything else but eating popcorn. I want to go in the complete opposite direction. I have to evacuate all psychology, to be less a protagonist and more a presence.

Elia Suleiman

#25. The nature of the universe probably depends heavily on who is the actual protagonist. Lately I've been suspecting it's one of my cats.

Wil McCarthy

#26. Tokyo Heist is a fast-paced, exotic reading adventure, a story where The da Vinci Code meets the wildly popular manga genre! Author Diana Renn infuses protagonist Violet with plenty of chikara (power) and Renn's fresh, spot-on author's voice is irresistible. I couldn't put it down!

Alane Ferguson

#27. The beauty of fantasy is that it allows the protagonist to pass through fear to come to know this different reality and to find a place in it.

Kate Milford

#28. Like the protagonist of her 2006 novel, 'Love and Other Impossible Pursuits,' Ayelet Waldman is a Jewish redhead who attended Harvard Law School and is madly in love with her husband. But the obvious similarities end there.

Katie Hafner

#29. In the average European oil painting of the nude the principal protagonist is never painted. He is the spectator in front of the picture and he is presumed to be a man.

John Berger

#30. The great movie can be as free of being a record of the progress of the protagonist as is a dream.

David Mamet

#31. The more complex and overwhelming the threat to a protagonist, the better the opportunity for the author to create a compelling conflict and a dramatic resolution.

Terry Brooks

#32. I think for some reason we're conditioned in movies that the protagonist must be heroic or redeemable in some way, whereas in theater, that's not a necessary.

Oscar Isaac

#33. I'm drawn particularly to stories that evolve out of the character of the protagonist.

David McCullough

#34. Terry Farish seems to breathe the reader into the emotional spaces of war, exile, and refugee life. The Good Braider is a delicate stunning exploration of its young protagonist's life and heart.

Uma Krishnaswami

#35. PRIMAL TEARS is a novel of tremendous power. Passionate and erotic, at times tenderly lyrical, it confronts head-on, without flinching, brutal environmental and feminist politics. Its protagonist, Sage, is unique, magical, and haunting.

Kate Wilhelm

#36. A stage play is basically a form of uber-schizophrenia. You split yourself into two minds - one being the protagonist and the other being the antagonist. The playwright also splits himself into two other minds: the mind of the writer and the mind of the audience.

David Mamet

#37. In male-driven [films], the protagonist is not the person who's necessarily in harms way. There's a sense that they're going to figure out how to persevere and take on the obstacles and foes and you don't necessarily know if that's going to happen with the subjects of love stories.

Todd Haynes

#38. I'm a girl, so I've experienced dismissal because I was a girl or because I write about girls: my book with a guy protagonist is treated as more literary and worthy than my other books with girl protagonists.

Sarah Rees Brennan

#39. Yeah. I can see that. I feel like sidekicks aren't as well developed as the main character in a story, but they're essential in defining that main character. And the protagonist needs the sidekick more than the sidekick needs the protagonist.

Penny Reid

#40. The conventional Aristotelian plot proceeds by means of a protagonist, an antagonist, and a series of events comprising a rising action, climax and denouement.

John Kessel

#41. The day had begun like any other ordinary day for Barnabas Crackle. That is to say, as extra-ordinarily as his days typically began, which were the usual for our faithful protagonist.

Brooke Warra

#42. I've always wanted to play a soldier and I'd never taken on a character where I'm the happy-go-lucky protagonist. I've played a lot of jerks recently.

Jesse McCartney

#43. What helped me a lot was that I chose an American lead protagonist, because that liberated a lot from my own knowledge. If I had approached it from the perspective of an Indian main character, I think I would have assumed a lot of knowledge and I would have resented the presence of the author.

Karan Bajaj

#44. A realist writer might break his protagonist's leg, or kill his fiancee; but a science fiction writer will immolate whole planets, and whilst doing so he will be more concerned with the placement of commas than the screams of the dying.

Adam Roberts

#45. With my earlier books, I got quite bored being with one protagonist all the way through. With the Alex Morrow books, I wanted to do something a bit more holistic, so there were lots of different points of view, and I wanted to look at aspects of crime that you don't tend to look at.

Denise Mina

#46. My intent is not to inflame Muslims but to entertain readers of great thrillers. At the end of the day, I want people to see a good protagonist struggle against serious odds and do so with courage and honor and integrity.

Brad Thor

#47. Like my fictional protagonist Tom Thorne, I love country. My tastes go back a bit further than his do, and I still listen to stuff from the late '70s and early '80s.

Mark Billingham

#48. We 'chicks' have munched our popcorn while romantic comedies became just comedies, and then each female protagonist got recast for Matthew McConaughey or Seth Rogan.

Emma McLaughlin

#49. In prose, leaps of logic can be made while the protagonist thinks about things and arrives at conclusions. Even with voiceover, there's no real way of having an inner voice without it taking over the entire story.

Denise Mina

#50. It can stand in the way of narration in cases where we want the protagonist to actually go through some kind of catharsis while our own (non-fictional) experiences and stories lead to something banal or completely uninteresting.

Sasa Stanisic

#51. People seem to need a likable protagonist more than ever.

Daniel Clowes

#52. I like to write stories that read like historical fiction about great, world-changing events through the lens of a flawed protagonist.

Carol Berg

#53. If you remember the pleasure of hearing a story many times, and you will remember that while you were listening you become three people. There is an incredible fusion: you become the storyteller, the protagonist, and you remember yourself listening to the story.

Marina Warner

#54. I've come to realize one thing, that stories are always bigger than we are, they happen to us and we are their protagonists without realizing it, but in the stories we live, we aren't the true protagonists, the true protagonist is the story itself.

Antonio Tabucchi

#55. You learn to read so you can identify the reality in which you live, so that you can become a protagonist history rather than a spectator Father Fernando Cardenal

Barbara Kingsolver

#56. Let's get right to it: On page 5 of Paul Murray's dazzling new novel, 'Skippy Dies,' ... Skippy dies. If killing your protagonist with more than 600 pages to go sounds audacious, it's nothing compared with the literary feats Murray pulls off in this hilarious, moving and wise book.

Jess Walter

#57. A biography is never a biography of one person, of course, but the individual life of your protagonist will never conform. It will always bang up against history.

Rachel Holmes

#58. Perfect heroines, like perfect heroes, aren't relatable, and if you can't put yourself in the protagonist's shoes, not only will they not inspire you, but the book will be pretty boring.

Cassandra Clare

#59. In most films - especially in regards to the protagonist - really from the get-go they set up some scenario that endears that character to the audience. Or imbues him with some nobility or heroism or something.

Joaquin Phoenix

#60. ... the midpoint of each film is the moment when each protagonist embraces for the first time the quality they will need to become complete and finish their story. It's when they discover a truth about themselves.

John Yorke

#61. On reading the first part of Anthony Powell's four-part masterpiece, 'A Dance to the Music of Time,' I was struck by one of the characters - an irritating peripheral character- who keeps showing up in the main protagonist's life.

Rebecca Pidgeon

#62. I'm not the protagonist of a novel or anything...
I'm just a normal college student who likes to read...
But...
If I were to write a book with me as tge main character...
It would be...
...A tragedy.

Sui Ishida

#63. When your protagonist bores you, you're in trouble.

Patrick DeWitt

#64. Most modern science fiction went to school on 'Dune.' Even 'Harry Potter' with its 'boy protagonist who has not yet grown into his destiny' shares a common theme. When I read it for the first time, I felt like I had learned another language, mastered a new culture, adopted a new religion.

Gary Ross

#65. Wolf Boy is absolutely beguiling. Evan Kuhlman has boundless empathy for all his characters, and his wonderful protagonist Stephen is, in turn, boundlessly inventive ... This is an auspicious debut.

Valerie Sayers

#66. That's the difference between a godly person and an atheist. Our stories are shorter and don't assume the protagonist is an idiot.

P.Z. Myers

#67. The fictional world seems larger, seems to have more dimension and richness when, for example, the protagonist from one novel you've read has a cameo role in another. I think that recognition is a very, very powerful phenomenon; it is one of the deepest and greatest pleasures of reading.

Paul Harding

#68. In most shows, there's usually a hero or a protagonist, and even if there are multiple heroes or protagonists, most shows try and make it so you really always know who's the good guy and who's the bad guy.

Jill Soloway

#69. Quite often my narrator or protagonist may be a man, but I'm not sure he's the more interesting character, or if the more complex character isn't the woman.

Ann Beattie

#70. I'd been upstaged, demoted from protagonist in my own drama to comic relief in my parents' tragedy

Alison Bechdel

#71. I couldn't imagine what Fox thought they were doing, contemplating such a jagged protagonist for a prime-time drama. I only knew that I wanted the role very much.

Hugh Laurie

#72. When you stop chasing the wrong things, you give the right ones a fighting chance- Victoria Barron- dedicated attorney and protagonist of Misplaced

SL Hulen

#73. As the Epic Film, Noah, debuts this weekend, those of you who have read Samrajni of Pemako know about the Noah subplot in the novel.
Yes, Safiya, the protagonist is distantly related to Noah...

Roy C. Marien

#74. I suppose 'This Little Life' and 'Brick Lane' both have things in common in that they have a female protagonist very much at the centre of the story, and they're subjectively told.

Sarah Gavron

#75. Any claim to actual identification as a drama must rest upon the construction of a plot independent of the assignment of affliction to the protagonist.

David Mamet

#76. Rasala had named the two new prototypes Tartis and Gallifrey, after the home planet and time machine of Dr. Who, the protagonist of a science fiction show on public TV.

Tracy Kidder

#77. In the Metaverse, Hiro Protagonist is a warrior prince.

Neal Stephenson

#78. I think in any movie really the two most interesting parts are the protagonist and the antagonist.

Cung Le

#79. I like animal sidekicks. They seem to be a pretty cool trope of post-apocalyptic fiction - just because if you're going to have this lone protagonist, they're going to need someone to talk to. Dogs are overused, and cats are dumb. So that leaves monkeys.

Brian K. Vaughan

#80. Thus the protagonist of this Dream of mine is ooze, here and forever call'd Oozymandias the King.

William T. Vollmann

#81. Putting a piece of you in your protagonist adds depth and merges the worlds of fiction and reality.

Adam Steven Page

#82. And you look like a protagonist ... You look like the person who wins in the end

Rainbow Rowell

#83. I think that ultimately any effective drama or tragedy tries to put you as much as it can into the protagonist's shoes.

Nicholas Jarecki

#84. As a writer, I am not opposed to killing off villains. That's not the kind of later biting in the ass I prefer for my protagonist.

Gabbo De La Parra

#85. The folktale world is oriented positively toward its protagonist; a folktale is defined by the hero's triumph: magic weapons and helpers are, with the necessary narrative retardation, at his beck and call.

Darko Suvin

#86. My first novel, 'Compromising Positions,' was a whodunit. The protagonist was a Long Island Jewish housewife who turns private investigator. But she was Jewish the way I was: lighting Sabbath candles but envying her Protestant and Catholic friends' December decorating options.

Susan Isaacs

#87. Thackeray is careful not to present a protagonist who is malevolently evil from birth; to trace a figure like this is unrewarding certainly to novelist and reader alike.

Martin J. Anisman

#88. Each of my novels features a protagonist undertaking a difficult personal journey. On the way, each of these characters - mostly female - discovers something about herself and at the same time makes an impact on other people's lives.

Juliet Marillier

#89. The reader is going to imprint on the characters he sees first. He is going to expect to see these people often, to have them figure largely into the story, possibly to care about them. Usually, this will be the protagonist.

Nancy Kress

#90. It's pretty easy to think of the idea of a story, and maybe even to write a scene or two, but understanding the ebb and flow of a narrative, where to leave the little clues your protagonist (and reader) need, while playing fair, takes a lot more skill and patience than you might think.

Dennis Green

#91. People often ask me if I am the book's Pakistani protagonist. I wonder why they never ask if I am his American listener. After all, a novel can often be a divided man's conversation with himself.

Mohsin Hamid

#92. We are each the protagonist of our life story.

E.L. Tenenbaum

#93. A lot of crime fiction writing is also lazy. Personality is supposed to be shown by the protagonist's taste in music, or we're told that the hero looks like the young Cary Grant. Film is the medium these writers are looking for.

Peter Temple

#94. I don't judge in my books. I don't have to have the antagonist get shot or the protagonist win. It's just how it comes out. I'm just telling a story.

Elmore Leonard

#95. It's not all 'Jane Eyre' out there. In her sweet, honorable, slightly passive-aggressive way, Jane was as perfect as a protagonist can get while remaining interesting; in fact, she's one of my favorites. But most characters are more morally ambiguous.

Susan Isaacs

#96. In my career, I've often played the protagonist or the hero of the movie, and there are so many rules inherent to that role. The audience needs to stay with you, identify with you and like you. When you play the bad guy, those rules go out the window. There's so much freedom there.

Ryan Phillippe

#97. Because there is actually something very interesting in Goodfellas, how the style of the film changes as time goes by and based on the mental state of the protagonist.

Alex Cox

#98. When I wrote the first [Bond novel] in 1953, I wanted Bond to be an extremely dull, uninteresting man to whom things happened ... when I was casting around for a name for my protagonist I thought by God, [James Bond] is the dullest name I ever heard.

Ian Fleming

#99. My foray into young adult lit was by no means planned. I wrote the first 'Alfred Kropp' book as an adult novel, which everyone loved but no one would publish - until I changed my protagonist from a thirty-something P.I. into a 15-year-old kid. After that, it was off to the races, and I am so glad.

Rick Yancey

#100. Identify the moral dilemma driving the novel. the successful novel will haunt a reader because it deals with some ethical or moral dilemma that makes the reader wonder what he or she would do in the protagonist's place.

Rick Riordan