Top 100 Quotes About Female Characters
#1. I think there is a wonderful trend of strong female characters on television right now.
Amanda Schull
#2. Why do you write strong female characters?
Because you're still asking me that question.
Joss Whedon
#3. I've always had difficulties with female characters.
John Le Carre
#4. There's just a deeper level of sophistication in the writing of female characters on TV.
Vera Farmiga
#5. It's like my characters, all my men are Dad and me in a mess; all my female characters are smart and hopeful, like Mom just trying to make the best of things.
Bret Easton Ellis
#6. I am really inspired by strong, badass, female characters. I would start with a revenge film, then ease into stories of badass everyday woman who make a difference in their own life for the better of people and environment around them. Stories of self realization.
Alicia Sixtos
#7. One of my favourite actresses is Kate Winslet. She plays strong female characters and seems like she has a strong political awareness. I really like Naomi Watts and Juliette Lewis.
Emily Perkins
#8. I don't try and write strong female characters or strong male characters, I just try and write, hopefully, strong characters and sometimes they happen to be female.
J.J. Abrams
#9. I've certainly seen stats that if you have a woman director or a woman screenwriter, the number of female characters goes way up.
Emma Donoghue
#10. So many female characters are the girlfriend of the person having the adventure. I want to play baseball, I don't want to be the girlfriend of the one [who plays].
Geena Davis
#11. There's a remarkable amount of sexism on TV. When male characters are flawed, they're interesting, deep and complex. But when female characters are flawed, they're just a mess. It's good to put more flawed but interesting female characters out there because it promotes equality.
Ellen Pompeo
#12. While my work is usually about the Igbo woman experience, there are many aspects of my female characters that women everywhere can and do relate to.
Chika Anadu
#13. I never really knew that I would be a lifer of strong female characters, but that seems to be the drops I'm being given, and I'm very happy for them. Hopefully, 'Divergent' will be the next thing.
Evan Daugherty
#14. The funniest things just come from honesty. We have a tendency to see female characters as representative of something larger than what they are, when male characters are just characters.
Elizabeth Meriwether
#15. There aren't enough good roles for strong women. I wish we had more female writers. Most of the female characters you see in films today are the 'poor heartbroken girl.'
Gal Gadot
#16. I would tell any actress that the trick is to play all the female characters on your show, and then all the men are yours.
Sarah Michelle Gellar
#17. I like my male characters as much my female characters, but I always seem to have less for them to say.
John Allison
#18. Romance novels feature nuanced portrayals of female characters having adventures, making choices, and accepting themselves just as they are. When we say these stories are silly and unrealistic, we are telling young girls not to expect to be the heroines in their own real lives.
Maya Rodale
#19. I think the type of actor I am, I tend to play strong leading female characters. The shows I've been on happen to be science fiction genre.
Alaina Huffman
#20. I'm attracted to films that have strong female characters because there are strong female characters in my life.
Ryan Gosling
#21. We're showing kids a world that is very scantily populated with women and female characters. They should see female characters taking up half the planet, which we do.
Geena Davis
#22. I wanted to have very strong female characters. I just thought it was always the way the world should be.
Elizabeth Hand
#23. I don't think male characters are as one-dimensional as female characters.
Geena Davis
#24. With 'Holes' I was troubled that there weren't very many female characters. I tried to put them in where I could. But the setting didn't lend itself to girls.
Louis Sachar
#25. I find that in the science fiction world, you have almost more women fans than male fans and I think it's because there's been such a shortage of strong female characters.
Katee Sackhoff
#26. James Patterson has a way with female characters. He understands women in a way that a lot of male writers don't.
Tracy Pollan
#27. The female characters in 'Peep Show' are not 'strong': they are idiots. As idiotic as the men.
Robert Webb
#28. So, why do you write these strong female characters?
Because you're still asking me that question.
[Equality Now speech, May 15, 2006]
Joss Whedon
#29. I have this theory that the likeability question comes up so much more with female characters created by female authors than it does with male characters and male authors.
Curtis Sittenfeld
#30. I actually have a peculiar feminism that does not involve the idea that women shouldn't be sexy. Female characters written in comics have always been pretty damned sexy, and used their sexuality. And I don't have any problem with that.
Ann Nocenti
#31. I've made movies that are real boy movies - but I've had so much fun over the years working with women and getting good performances with women and with strong female characters.
Michael Lehmann
#32. I would like to find a more precise way to not only tell the stories of female characters, but also do so in a female "way." My biggest advice would be to trust yourself.
Danae Elon
#33. When I look at female characters, I want to recognize myself in them: my trials, my tribulations as a mother, as a lover, as a daughter.
Vera Farmiga
#34. From its beginning, fan fiction has been written mostly by women. Originally, this was because of a dearth of interesting female characters in conventional sci-fi.
Russell Smith
#35. It's a convention, but in horror movies the female characters usually tend to believe easier in a supernatural event.
Fede Alvarez
#36. Because I had some roles that resonated with women, I immediately noticed that there were far more male characters than female characters in what we're showing little kids in the 21st century, which was stunning to me. But I couldn't find anybody else who noticed.
Geena Davis
#37. If I spoke all I think on this point, if I gave my real opinion of some first-rate female characters in first-rate works, where should I be? Dead under a cairn of avenging stones in half an hour.
Charlotte Bronte
#38. Sometime female characters, especially in the genre of something that people consider rom-com, make mistakes in a cute way or they're a mess in a way that's palatable. I like that.
Greta Gerwig
#39. Like most little girls, I found the lure of grown-up accessories astonishing - lipstick, perfume, hats and gloves. When I write female characters in my historical novels, getting these details right is vital.
Sara Sheridan
#40. I always want a challenge. My whole career has been based on trying to avoid female characters that don't get to do anything. And it's really hard to avoid those.
Geena Davis
#41. Two phrases I hate in reference to female characters are 'strong' and 'feisty.' They really annoy me. It's the most condescending thing. You say that about a three-year-old. It infantilises women.
Helen Mirren
#42. When I'm watching TV, I'm always drawn to those female characters who are doing something that I would want to do.
Gina Holden
#43. The female characters in my books tend to be independent, frisky, spunky, witty, emotionally strong, erotically daring, spiritually oriented and intellectually generous; in short, the kind of women I admire in real life.
Tom Robbins
#44. Often, as a young actress, you find yourself being the only girl in a room full of men ... and one of the reasons why I like 'Grey's Anatomy' is because they have such strong female characters and the women really drive this show.
Rachael Taylor
#45. 'The Hobbit' didn't include female characters at all and was a very linear story, a book for children, really.
Evangeline Lilly
#46. Sometimes female characters start out as the wife or girlfriend, but then I realize, 'No, she's the book,' and she becomes a main character. I surrender the book to her.
Elmore Leonard
#47. Strong female characters - even if they don't necessarily make the same decisions that we might - make such great narrative material, especially when there's an equally strong male character in the mix.
Meg Cabot
#48. I think there are more female characters in videogames now but I also think that's because videogames in general are more diverse now.
Tara Strong
#49. One of the most interesting female characters I've written about was Meg Riddoch, the lead character in 'The Thompson Gunner'.
Nick Earls
#50. I like strong female characters. I try to write them as role models for young girls.
L.J.Smith
#51. Especially in comedies, I think a lot of time the female characters are there to provide a balance for guys.
Zooey Deschanel
#52. I never set out to be the man who writes a lot of female characters.
John Allison
#53. Most mainstream male fiction is littered with heroines, and female characters are basically so great, you want to fall in love with them.
Iain Banks
#54. People focus on the darker female characters in my books, but for every one of those, I can also show you an equally screwed up man that no one ever comments about, or a nicer woman that no one comments about.
Gillian Flynn
#55. I really like getting inside the heads of female characters. I think I can do that well, and I enjoy it.
Michael Lehmann
#56. The fact that my female characters have strong personalities but are also physically attractive probably reflects the women I've known in my life.
Sidney Sheldon
#57. I love writing about men. To get by in the world you have to know how men think. Not that all guys think alike, but women tend to think about more things at the same time, an overgeneralization, but I find it easier to make my male characters focus than I do my female characters.
Bonnie Jo Campbell
#58. Sherlock Holmes gets to be brilliant, solitary, abrasive, Bohemian, whimsical, brave, sad, manipulative, neurotic, vain, untidy, fastidious, artistic, courteous, rude, a polymath genius. Female characters get to be Strong.
Sophia McDougall
#59. You're the absolute protagonist of this book, very well; but do you believe that gives you the right to have carnal relations with all the female characters?
Italo Calvino
#60. I'm not beholden to the confirmation of your prejudices; to be perfectly frank, the prospect of confining the female characters in my story to placid, helpless secondary places in the narrative is so goddamn boring that I would rather not write at all.
Scott Lynch
#61. My affinity, as a novelist, with Dickens has been overstated. I relish the way everything in his prose pulsates with life force, and I'm in debt to him every time I invest inanimate objects with uncanny animism. But his female characters annoy me.
Michel Faber
#62. It's nice to do something about something that scares you rather than just run from it and hope that someone saves you. I like seeing strong female characters and somebody who doesn't run away screaming when scared, but confronts the monsters.
Katie Holmes
#63. I was of the generation where most of the Disney princesses and female characters were not girls that I admired. They just weren't characters I looked up to and identified with.
Angelina Jolie
#64. Hollywood is lacking realness in their female characters. I don't think I'm the only one who thinks that and wants to change it.
Nicole Holofcener
#65. I'm drawn to female characters; not all of them are strong characters.
Todd Haynes
#66. I think women have such rich emotional lives that they are expressive about. I also think they're funny. I like watching strong female characters, and I like writing them. I don't know if it's conscious that I gravitate towards women, but it's certainly evolved that way.
Darren Star
#67. I was thinking about what I wanted to write next, after my first novel, and had decided that I wanted to write a story with a lot of strong female characters in it.
Joan D. Vinge
#68. As male characters level up and become more powerful, their bodies become better protected and covered. In contrast, as female characters level up and become more powerful, their bodies are uncovered and made more vulnerable. Thus, as women gain power, they are disempowered in another way.
Nick Yee
#69. It's only recently women got to be action heroes on TV. Progress is slow, and often non-existent. There's plenty of cool comics with female characters ... But all it takes is one Catwoman to set the cause back a decade.
Joss Whedon
#70. Once I got over the fear of writing female characters, it actually came quite easily and I was really happy with it. I just thought about girls I knew really, really well and I'd just have conversations with them and tried to relay how they talk about certain things.
Eli Roth
#71. AUTHOR'S GOODREADS PAGE: I love antiheroes. Female characters who don't just accept their faults, but downright exploit them.
No nice boys.
No shame.
Lime Craven
#72. I love flawed female characters, duking it out.
Lena Dunham
#73. The ratio of male to female characters in movies has been exactly the same since 1946. So if you've ever had people say, you know, "It's better now, it's all changed, it's all different," it's not, it hasn't. Not yet.
Geena Davis
#74. The beauty of 'The Hunger Games' and also 'Game of Thrones,' in fairness, both projects have really complex, three-dimensional, contradictory, strong women ... The writing of female characters is extraordinary and equal to the men.
Natalie Dormer
#75. A general philosophy of the female characters in my films is they all want something to believe in, and not having anything.
Woody Allen
#76. I think it's the source material. 27 Dresses was a famous book, and Devil Wears Prada was also a wonderful book, so it's coming out of the novelists who are really creating these wonderful female characters that we want to see on the big screen.
Jerry Bruckheimer
#77. I like any film where the female characters are complex and have a functioning imperfection.
Jenny Slate
#78. There's no need for a female character that does things like a male character; that's not what makes interesting female characters in my view.
Colin Trevorrow
#79. I don't mind being called a "feminist," as I certainly embrace the tenets of feminism, though it does feel a little sad to me that we need to call a novel "feminist" simply because the female characters are interesting and strong.
Laurie Foos
#80. I don't think there's any great mystery to writing female characters, so long as you talk to them. If you lived in a monastery and never met any women, maybe it would be difficult.
Ken Follett
#81. I think it's important that we have strong, female characters in movies now, which can really leave an impression on people - especially young people - and that they're not 'sexy' or 'cool.'
Saoirse Ronan
#82. Novels without female characters were a lifeless desert.
Ian McEwan
#83. I can't imagine writing a book without some strong female characters, unless that was a demand of the setting.
William Gibson
#84. Whether consciously or unconsciously, I felt myself drawn to writing a female character who was pretty flawed and not very virtuous or wonderful or attractive in these ways that throughout literary history we've come to expect female characters to be.
Leni Zumas
#85. In writing, a good guy must never break any of the Ten Commandments. A bad guy must break every one. That's why writing female characters is so much fun. They're not GUYS at all.
Kimberly Black
#86. I find it's bizarre that science fiction is the one branch of television to push the idea of strong female characters. And I only call it bizarre because strong women aren't fiction.
Steven Moffat
#87. I approach writing female characters the same why I approach writing male characters. I never think I'm writing about women, I think I'm writing about one woman, one person. And I try to imagine what she is like, and endow her with a lot of my own thoughts and history.
Jeffrey Eugenides
#88. I immediately noticed there were far more male characters than female characters in the programs, even now, in the 21st century.
Geena Davis
#89. I can't stand [female] characters that are not empowered in a certain way, or at least don't come to a conclusion at the end of the movie where they find empowerment in themselves.
Chloe Grace Moretz
#90. The stronger the participation of the female characters, the better the movie. They knew that in the old days, when women stars were equally as important as men.
Clint Eastwood
#91. You know, that kind of coldness, you know. And I think, yeah, I think that definitely helped. The female characters on the show, you can see some of them wanting to know what makes him tick. And I guess that translates into some of the fans outside. You know?
Matt Robinson
#92. As a writer, as much as I try, I can't stop writing female characters. They have so much more to offer; they have to wear so many different hats. There's so much wonderful gray matter in a female's life that it just makes for a stronger character.
Tate Taylor
#93. I tell about some of the female characters from the Bible so girls can be inspired and empowered and uplifted.
Roma Downey
#94. You are the Worst Kind of Animal. A Butcher by Day and a Pussy Cat by Night.
Monroe Ariel
#95. I couldn't shake this feeling that I had uncovered more than something ordinary.
Nicole Gulla
#96. No one wants to rattle the cage of a "crazy" person whose family tends to snap.
Nicole Gulla
#97. 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
#99. I can't seem to shake this perpetual awareness of being Molly.
Becky Albertalli
#100. 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
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