Top 100 Story And Characters Quotes
#1. With historicals, the research is half the fun. Contemporaries are especially easy. People are right out there in front of you; you meet them every day. You can concentrate wholly on the story and characters.
Heather Graham Pozzessere
#2. There's also something happening in television similar to what happened in the '80s, when people stopped taking so many drugs and wanted to hear real instruments in music again. I think people want plot, story and characters. Those are more important than having a big star.
Jessica Pare
#3. But because it was able to balance that kind of humor with a sweet story and characters you really rooted for and also got across the girls' point of view, I've heard nothing but great things from younger and older females as well.
Jason Biggs
#4. Anything with a good story and characters I think would be great.
Kara Hayward
#5. After we'd filmed one series of 'Kiss Me Kate,' everyone was saying: 'The guy's got great comic timing,' - that was the first I'd heard of it. I'm not a comedian, I don't want to depend on a singular box of tricks. I like story and characters, to take on world views that are not my own.
Darren Boyd
#6. There's a moment in every book when the story and characters are finally there; they come to life, they're in control. They do things they're not supposed to do and become people they weren't meant to be. When I reach that place, it's magic. It's a kind of rapture.
Sara Gruen
#7. It is s shame that more people do not appreciate the value of "a good read". I was fortunate enough to have had elementary school teachers who would read to us while we were to put our heads down on the desk and visualize the story and characters. It set me up for a lifetime of enjoying reading....
Linda Roberts
#8. I write what I call "Factual Fiction," whereby my plot, story and characters are not loosely set in history but intrinsically tied to real events, people and places.
Karen A. Chase
#9. I write - and read - for the sake of the story ... My basic test for any story is: 'Would I want to meet these characters and observe these events in real life? Is this story an experience worth living through for its own sake? Is the pleasure of contemplating these characters an end itself?
Ayn Rand
#10. 'Push' had a story, 'The Paperboy' story you could just throw up in the air and shoot holes through the book because the story wasn't as strong. But I felt the characters were stronger in 'The Paperboy'; they were vivid.
Lee Daniels
#11. I like to let the story flesh itself out, and usually, the characters make their own decisions as things get under way. Dialogue especially seems to write itself once I'm familiar with the characters and their backgrounds.
Victoria Aveyard
#12. They are young, full of ambition and dreams; they are still unable to imagine that there might be a story in the world in which they are not the main characters.
Juan Gomez Barcena
#13. Sometimes you have to go places with characters and emotions within yourself you don't want to do, but you have a duty to the story and as a storyteller to do it.
Hugh Jackman
#14. The story is always in service to the characters, and is only as long or short, or neat or ragged as it needs to be.
Stewart O'Nan
#15. It's a real challenge to complete a story arc and end up with a cool punchline in 120 characters.
Mark Hoppus
#16. When you close the book, does the story end? No! That's such a bland way to read. Every story goes on forever in our imaginations, and its characters live on.
Mizuki Nomura
#17. I write for the kid in me ... Often when I'm working on a story, I'll find myself laughing at something my characters have done, or even being surprised at where they've taken the story. It's as if they have a life all their own. What I do is create them and then let them go on to entertain me ...
Elvira Woodruff
#18. Certainly, I read a lot and follow the news. But as a writer, I am not interested in a political story. I am searching for the humanity of the characters. I never set out to write a book about an 'issue.'
Cristina Henriquez
#19. None but the most blindly credulous will imaging the characters and events in this story to be anything but fictitious. It is true that the ancient and noble city of Oxford is, of all the towns of England, the likeliest progenitor of unlikely events and persons. But there are limits.
Edmund Crispin
#20. I'm not first and foremost interested in story and the what-happens, but I'm interested in who's telling it and how they're telling it and the effects of whatever happened on the characters and the people.
Amy Hempel
#21. I'm not really a plot writer - I'm more interested in the characters and sort of small events that propel the story forward.
Sara Zarr
#22. I like dialogue in novels. I wanted to avoid laying history on with a trowel - appearing to be lecturing, as opposed to the characters lecturing their children or students. Dialogue can humanise the story and make it go down somewhat more smoothly.
Elliot Perlman
#23. The hours go by without my knowing it. Sitting there I'm wandering in countries I can see every detail of
I'm playing a role in the story I'm reading. I actually feel I'm the characters
I live and breathe them.
Gustave Flaubert
#24. I start with the story, almost in the old campfire sense, and the story leads to both the characters, which actors should best be cast in this story, and the language. The choice of words, more than anything else, creates the feeling that the story gives off.
Donald E. Westlake
#25. Basically the children who watch it just see the little characters they love, and so they're not discerning about whether it looks great or it's a great story or anything.
Don Bluth
#26. With action films, it's great if it's not just driven by action, but by a good story and interesting characters, as well. Though, there's nothin' like kicking butt!
Dwayne Johnson
#27. I believe a novel must first of all be a good story. My hope is that the spiritual message is woven in so well, is such a part of the fabric of the story and of the characters' lives, that it is subtle but meaningful. This is difficult to do well and is something I constantly endeavor to improve.
Julie Klassen
#28. When Josh and I are recording a record, we're very mindful of how the music will manifest itself live. That's where we have to live every day. When we tour for the next record, I imagine there will be a new story to tell, and we'll introduce new characters.
Tyler Joseph
#29. He invented this idea of telling the life story of a great writer through becoming his characters and becoming him. It was such a pleasure and I thought we must find another writer.
Simon Callow
#30. You'll work hard to create characters that are compelling and unforgettable. But in the end, it's the story that matters.
James Dashner
#31. I don't see a difference between playing a performance capture role and a live action role, they're just characters to me at the end of the day and I'm an actor who wants to explore those characters in fantastically written scripts. The only caveat is a good story is a good character.
Andy Serkis
#32. I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds. Characters develop backgrounds, adding depth and feeling. Writing feels like exploring.
David Brin
#33. The true marriage movie involving in-laws and children is a story about how marriage is directly affected by external characters who impact the central relationship in various ways.
Jeanine Basinger
#34. I detest the word plot. I never, never think of plot. I think only and solely of character. Give me the characters; I'll tell you a story-maybe a thousand stories. The interaction between and among human beings is the only story worth telling.
Stirling Silliphant
#35. And almost always there has to be change, change in the characters is the journey - it's the story.
Graham Brown
#36. The Cloud Roads has wildly original worldbuilding, diverse and engaging characters, and a thrilling adventure plot. It's that rarest of fantasies: fresh and surprising, with a story that doesn't go where ten thousand others have gone before. I can't wait for my next chance to visit the Three Worlds!
N.K. Jemisin
#37. I get bored with the same old film coming out every weekend. It feels like it's the same story all the time, and the same visuals, and the characters' dilemmas are remarkably similar.
Josh Hartnett
#38. I have an idea for a story, and if the idea is going to work, then one of the characters steps forward, and I hear her voice telling the story. This is what has happened with all the books I've written in the first person.
Laurie Graham
#39. You want to tell a great story. You want these characters to become part of people's lives. And then, hopefully, that generates discussion.
Todd Lieberman
#40. Before I start, I trick myself into thinking I know what's going to happen in the story, but the characters have ideas of their own, and I always go with the character's choices. Most of the time I discover plot twists and directions that are better than what I originally had planned.
Neal Shusterman
#41. All the writing elements are the same. You need to tell a good story ... You've got good characters ... People think there's some dramatic difference between writing 'Little Bear' and the 'Hunger Games,' and as a writer, for me, there isn't.
Suzanne Collins
#42. He felt a little lost, after that experience. Lost as the girls on their knees. It was a never-ending story of young girls losing themselves, such that they were no longer humans with any souls or characters, but pretty girls with fat asses and nice tits.
Jess C. Scott
#43. I used to be surprised and a little annoyed when characters would reappear in my mind, itching to be in another story. Now I realize it's part of the deal, that you create these people out of thin air but then, if you do it right, they actually live.
Peter Orner
#44. It's sort of like books. Yeah, you know how you read certain books and at the last page you're filled with the story and you sort of don't want to leave the characters?
Tracy Ewens
#45. The apple which tempts my characters is the one that will remove the knowledge of good and evil. I suppose it's something of a reversal of the conventional Eden story: Freedom of thought is perhaps the greatest good, and needs to be fought for and sacrificed for.
John Christopher
#46. 'Deity' will be a compelling and exciting thriller with complex and interesting characters. A neo-realistic style to story and images will take the audience deep into Calcutta's many different levels. A fascinating clash between American and Indian culture.
Niels Arden Oplev
#47. If a movie has more characters than an audience can keep track of, the audience will get confused and lose interest in the story.
Seth Grahame-Smith
#48. That's the great thing about a series: you're driving to work, and you have an idea for a story for your characters, and you can go into work, and it's gonna be a television show. I mean that's what's great about the job.
James L. Brooks
#49. The key to writing is concentration, not inspiration. It requires deep attention to your characters, to the world they live in, and to the story you have to tell.
Salman Rushdie
#50. 'The Art Student's War' is, at its core, a traditional American wartime love story. As such, it is timely and engrossing. By the end, all its principal characters 'have been to Hell and back.'
Floyd Skloot
#51. I see myself as a novelist, period. I mean, the material I work with is what is classified as science fiction and fantasy, and I really don't think about these things when I'm writing. I'm just thinking about telling a story and developing my characters.
Roger Zelazny
#52. Once we got over the origin story, we could really delve deeper into their lives and characters and angst. So this movie actually has more heart, more humor.
Avi Arad
#53. When you're in sync with the director, on the type of movie you want to make, the arc of the characters, how the characters intertwine and interact, plotlines and story, and things like that, it really makes a difference.
Dwayne Johnson
#54. The only difference is that religion is much better organised and has been around much longer, but it's the same story with different characters and different costumes.
James Randi
#55. I'm absolutely removed from the world at such times ... The hours go by without my knowing it. Sitting there I'm wandering in countries I can see every detail of - I'm playing a role in the story I'm reading. I actually feel I'm the characters - I live and breath with them.
Gustave Flaubert
#56. I'm not a purist - I like films that are narrated and films that aren't, films that are beautiful and films that are clumsy but heartfelt. Mostly, I just like a good story and good characters.
Marshall Curry
#57. As a writer, my main objective is to tell the story urgently - as if whispering it into one ear - and to know the characters intimately.
Julianna Baggott
#58. There is a natural progression to 'Lost,' and as the story goes forward, it's going to change. It's not a static story. The franchise of 'Lost' is not characters sitting on a beach.
Carlton Cuse
#59. You set up the story, but the characters start talking, and they go places that you didn't expect. You have to follow.
Zoe Kazan
#60. Ending a series is a difficult one ... where should a story that you have followed for so long end? When do you step away from the characters and let the readers decide their fate from there? When they can stand on their own is my only answer for that.
Shandy L. Kurth
#61. Every paragraph should accomplish two goals: advance the story, and develop your characters as complex human beings.
Nancy Kress
#62. And when I'm writing, I write a lot anyway. I might write pages and pages of conversation between characters that don't necessarily end up in the book, or in the story I'm working on, because they're simply my way of getting to know the characters.
Norton Juster
#63. I used to think that one day I should write a really great novel, but I've long ceased even to hope for that. All I want people to say is that I do my best. I do work. I never let anything slipshod get past me. I think I can tell a good story and I can create characters that ring true.
W. Somerset Maugham
#64. Voice isn't fixed or unmalleable, it adapts to the characters you are creating and the story being told. I suppose in some way that's true in life - a little flexibility goes a long way.
Ayana Mathis
#65. 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn' by Betty Smith is one of my favorites. Even though it doesn't have any monsters or crazy fantasy in it, it's such a raw story, and I can really relate to the characters. I think it's a beautiful story.
Amandla Stenberg
#66. Good story' means something worth telling that the world wants to hear. Finding this is your lonely task ... But the love of a good story, of terrific characters and a world driven by your passion, courage, and creative gifts is still not enough. Your goal must be a good story well told.
Robert McKee
#67. The story line, the comparisons to this show and the Bible Ends after the names of the characters.
George Jackson
#68. Poignant, earthy, intensely human, Letters From A Stranger is a love story that is as unusual and courageous as its characters.
Elizabeth Lowell
#69. Changes have taken place since year one. When Caruso left, that was a big change. We've been able to adapt nicely. It's given us new opportunities for different characters and story lines.
Dennis Franz
#70. But what I did think would be interesting is if we created a fictitious story of our own, and then took these stories that we had collected and assigned them to characters who would be played by actors.
Jim McKay
#71. I tend to favour films that have multiple plot and story lines, multiple characters and ensemble pieces.
Spike Lee
#72. That's what was so amazing about 'Mulan.' Here is this story with all Chinese characters, and yet so many people related to her character and loved the story. So I really think as long as you have a good story that relates to a lot of people, it doesn't matter what ethnicity it is.
Ming-Na Wen
#73. Any jokes I make I try to make sure it's on story and helps the characters and makes sense with the movie.
Aziz Ansari
#74. Short story characters, mine anyway, are usually driven by impulse, not so much by their histories and the choices that they have to make.
Charles Baxter
#75. There are no composite characters or events in this book. I occasionally omitted people and events, but only when that omission had no impact on either the veracity or the substance of the story.
Cheryl Strayed
#76. There are certainly times when my own everyday life seems to retreat so the life of the story can take me over. That is why a writer often needs space and time, so that he or she can abandon ordinary life and 'live' with the characters.
Margaret Mahy
#77. I'm just an entertainer. In a way crime stories are boring. A crime's been committed and at the end you know it will be solved. So you've got to make the story interesting besides it just being a plot. And that's why character matters, why you've got to make the characters interesting.
Jo Nesbo
#79. But the people who took the bus didn't experience the city as we experienced the city. The pain made the city more beautiful. The story made us different characters than we would have been if we had skipped the story and showed up at the ending an easier way.
Donald Miller
#80. Whether your characters journey daily to a distant moon or just down the street to the corner bar, what matters to the reader is the singular event that distinguishes one such voyage from all the others and makes for a story worth telling.
Peter Selgin
#81. I find it very hard to sit down and create an idea or especially a new character on command. Usually my characters evolve by accident out of some story context.
John Kricfalusi
#82. It's always a dangerous thing for a writer to resurrect a character. It threatens to undermine the consequences in a story, and minimizes the risks characters take. At the same time, I knew Kelsier's story - in specific - was not yet finished. Readers sensed this. There was more to be told.
Brandon Sanderson
#83. I've managed to include only enough historical detail to give the "flavor" of the time period while keeping the characters and story focal.
Julie Klassen
#84. We don't usually start out with a plot that we can pitch in two lines. We spend a year brainstorming and discussing ideas that are sometimes of a visual nature, sometimes just about characters and then we try to structure the story.
Joachim Trier
#85. I think I technically learned some things, hopefully. But I go to the movies for characters and story and a berserk vision.
John Waters
#86. I think the tricky balance, the most important thing more than the horror is to have a compelling story, compelling drama, a show about great characters that you care about and you want to come back every week to see what they're up to.
Oren Peli
#87. A two-hour movie tends to be a plot-delivery device; you tend to have to introduce all the characters, say what the goal is, and then get there with a setback, but that's not really how life is or what a story necessarily wants to be.
Noah Hawley
#88. Every word I write is like a drop of my blood. If it's flowed passionately and long, I need time to recover from the emotion spent before I begin a new story. My characters are aspects of my life. I have to respectfully and carefully move between them.
Red Haircrow
#89. A literary creation can appeal to us in all sorts of ways-by its theme, subject, situations, characters. But above all it appeals to us by the presence in it of art. It is the presence of art in Crime and Punishment that moves us deeply rather than the story of Raskolnikov's crime.
Boris Pasternak
#90. What I like about fairy tales is that they highlight the emotions within a story. The situations aren't real, with falling stars and pirates. But what you do relate to is the emotions that the characters feel.
Charlie Cox
#91. To have a song work for the movie, it can't just be written apart and shoved in. It's got to come out of the action. It's got to talk about the characters, not the story: it has to augment that action.
John Hughes
#92. Nightclub City tells the behind-the-scenes story of Manhattan's glamorous nightlife at its peak. Packed with colorful characters, terrific original research, and an unusually accessible writing style, Nightclub City is a gritty social history of America's most glitzy fantasies.
Debby Applegate
#93. I believe that the writer should tell a story. I believe in plot. I believe in creating characters and suspense.
Ernest Gaines
#94. There are secrets at the heart of every story; there is something that must be uncovered or discovered, both by the reader and by the characters.
Hannah Kent
#95. I love every part of the book writing process from the excitement of the initial idea to weaving all the tiny elements of the story from the air. I draw my inspiration from the landscape around me, from quirky characters I meet and from the strange and convoluted thoughts that dance between my ears.
JoAnne Graham
#96. An adventure game is nothing more than a good story set with engaging puzzles that fit seamlessly in with the story and the characters, and looks and sounds beautiful.
Roberta Williams
#97. It's just so much fun to make up characters, situations, and everything else about a story. I have so much freedom and flexibility to do whatever I want.
Margaret Haddix
#98. I don't think you make fans happy by just replicating frames. What they want to see is that you stayed true to the story, true to the characters and true to the design.
Sylvain White
#99. Say no! I thought. Say you want yourself all for your own self. Say that you have no specific country, say that you are important without any story from above, say that your home is with me and the other girls up in the sky.
Darcey Steinke
#100. As a rule, I don't worry about genre. I just want to tell a good story, with characters that interest me and my readers.
Stephen King
