Top 100 When A Character Quotes
#1. I doubt that I could create a character I loathed simply because when a character takes life, it is impossible not to be a little amazed by the phenomenon, and to find that the amazement has something of the quality of delight.
Marilynne Robinson
#2. 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
#3. When a character wants to do one thing and I want him to do another, the character is usually right.
Madeleine L'Engle
#4. He was going through one of those moments that you read about in books, when a character reacts in an unexpectedly extreme way to the normal discontents of living.
Elena Ferrante
#5. Unlike novel characters, comic book characters last an eternity. When a character is changed beyond recognition, there's no longer the merchandising aspect.
Grant Morrison
#6. It's not hard to read about death abstractly. I do find it tough when a character I love dies, of course. You can truly miss characters. Not like you miss people, but you can still miss them.
Will Schwalbe
#7. The moment comes when a character does or says something you hadn't thought about. At that moment he's alive and you leave it to him.
Graham Greene
#8. It's my chance to challenge myself to the fullest, which is one of the great joys about my job ... I love it when a character requires me to look less than my red-carpet best. It's more fun playing a character that requires you to look like dog s - t.
Kate Winslet
#9. When a character does something appalling but you still want to root for them, I find that the most exciting challenge to play, if you can pull it off. You're not supposed to like it, but you can't help it.
David Walton
#10. Certainly as a kid, I grew up with Batman, Superman, whoever - they didn't need to be black for me to relate to them. But when a character like Cyborg came along, I got excited, because he looked a little bit more like me; his experiences were a little bit more like mine.
John Ridley
#11. A song in a musical works best when a character has to sing - when words won't do the trick anymore. The same idea applies to a long speech in a play or a movie or on television. You want to force the character out of a conversational pattern.
Aaron Sorkin
#12. When a character bears the same name as the author it's just an invitation to have some fun.
Arthur Phillips
#13. I love it when a character requires me to look less than my red-carpet best.
Kate Winslet
#14. When a character comes to life, it's like meeting a new friend for the first time.
Lynette Mather
#15. I felt like I'd culturally arrived when a character on the HBO show 'True Blood' was reading a hardback of 'Heartsick' at Sookie's kitchen table.
Chelsea Cain
#16. Rule of storytelling: When a character is shoved against a wall, shove them against a wall harder.
Aaron Sorkin
#17. In any great narrative, there is a moment when a character must decide to become more than a bystander.
Jeff Goins
#18. When a character is born, he acquires at once such an independence, even of his own author, that he can be imagined by everybody even in many other situations where the author never dreamed of placing him; and so he acquires for himself a meaning which the author never thought of giving him.
Luigi Pirandello
#19. You can say "ass," but you can't say "asshole." That's why I always cringe when a character in a TV show refers to someone as an "ass." Unless you're British, calling someone an ass really doesn't work. But those are the rules of television. You can be a dirtbag, but not a scumbag.
Gilbert Gottfried
#20. One of the things I like about a character: I always think it's fascinating when a character can turn on a dime and go from one emotion to another. I like watching that.
Albert Brooks
#21. There are certain moments that you have to hit in a film, like when a character cries.
Kiefer Sutherland
#22. Melville to Hawthorne: "In your stories, you seem to understand that the dramatic moments come not when a character must choose between right and wrong buy when he must choose between two wrongs.
Mark Beauregard
#23. 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
#24. It makes it fun. When an actor plays a character, you want what that character wants. Otherwise it doesn't look authentic. So I really want to defeat Jimmy - I mean Jimmy as the character.
Alan Alda
#25. My scars tell a story. They are a reminder of times when life tried to break me, but failed. They are markings of where the structure of my character was welded.
Steve Maraboli
#26. Well, everybody knew their character. I was the only one who didn't have a partner. I basically showed up when people got in trouble. Where I came from, I don't know. Nobody knows. But I would show up to help.
Bubba Smith
#27. A whole lot of good my IQ came when it came to judging his character.
DiAnn Mills
#28. Character - in things great and small - is indicated when a man (or person) pursues with sustained follow-through what he feels himself capable of doing.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#29. A novel I read when I was about 17 or 18 - 'The World According to Garp,' by John Irving - really made me want to become a writer. The character of Garp is a novelist, and at the time, the whole lifestyle of being a writer was hugely appealing to me.
John Niven
#30. The harsh light above them caught her face, and Sean could see what she'd look like when she was much older - a handsome woman, scarred by wisdom she never asked for.
Dennis Lehane
#31. Especially when you play a character for so many years, the character ends up reflecting a lot of who you are and I think I've changed a lot since then, but that represented a lot of who I was as a teenager.
Sara Gilbert
#32. As an actor I'm always interested in dialogue, the way the characters speak to each other. I also enjoy a bit of humor, especially when it's unexpected.
Michael Boatman
#33. Even Mahatma Gandhi - hardly a comfortable character - always wore a bowler hat with his loin cloth when practising as a barrister in London.
William Donaldson
#34. When introducing a character, you're usually better off sticking with broad strokes. The important thing at that point is not what color hair someone has or how tall they are, but rather, what kind of person they are.
Jason Black
#35. I'll tell you what I really enjoy. We all go to the movies, we all watch television, we know what they're about, how they work. When the main character is a cop or a spy, it's very exciting, but I also very much enjoy when the main characters are nobodies - a trucker.
Nathan Fillion
#36. A man kept his character even when he was insane.
Graham Greene
#37. All of us have areas of weakness. God wants these character flaws to show us how totally dependent we are upon Him. When we handle them properly, they drive us into a deeper, more intimate relationship with the Lord. But uncontrolled weakness wreaks havoc in a person's life.
Charles Stanley
#38. 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
#39. 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
#40. I think that the joy of writing a novel is the self-exploratio n that emerges and also that wonderful feeling of playing God with the characters. When I sit down at my writing desk, time seems to vanish ... I think the most important thing for a writer is to be locked in a study.
Erica Jong
#41. When I start, I have a feeling for the characters, and maybe the shape of the story. Sometimes I might even have the last sentence in mind. But, no book I've ever written has ever ended the way I thought it would. Characters disappear, others come forward. Once you start writing, everything changes.
Paul Auster
#42. All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.
Sophocles
#43. A nation is truly corrupted when having ... lost its character and it's liberty, it passes from democracy to aristocracy or to monarchy. That is the decrepitude and death of the body politic ...
Maximilien De Robespierre
#44. I've been doing It's Aways Sunny for 12 years, and so I have this cable sensibility. When I read the Grinder script, I was like "this is edgy," which is great, but in a different way from Arrested Development. I feel like the characters are a little more relatable, so maybe that's the difference.
Mary Elizabeth Ellis
#45. When a man thinks he is reading the character of another, he is often unconsciously betraying his own.
Joseph P. Farrell
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. Self-respect will keep a man from being abject when he is in the power of enemies, and will enable him to feel that he may be in the right when the world is against him.
Bertrand Russell
#49. When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part.
Laurence Olivier
#50. When I draw a character, very often as I'm doing a face, my face mirrors the expression.
Matthew Ashford
#51. 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
#52. When I look at life I try to be as agnostic and unmetaphysical as possible. So I have to admit that, most probably, we do not have a fate. But I think that's something that draws us to novels - that the characters always have a fate. Even if it's a terrible fate, at least they have one.
Daniel Kehlmann
#53. It's always tense when you move a character from a book to the screen. Always tense.
Lee Child
#54. GreenHollyWood is a bad character, fat, liking jokes, liking jokes about size, about the large, about the how big are you. Likes to laugh when you make a mistake, ... but but he is a teacher?! With a glasses a fat guy!
Deyth Banger
#55. You know, I've always wrote my best stuff when it takes me hardly any time at all. Actually I wrote ... this is actually a really funny story ... 'Ghost Of Vincent Price', I've been wanting to write a song about Vincent Price coz he's one of my favorite characters of all time.
Wednesday 13
#56. All these boundaries - Africa, Asia, Malaysia, America - are set by men. But you don't have to look at boundaries when you are looking at a man - at the character of a man. The question is: What do you stand for? Are you a follower, or are you a leader?
Hakeem Olajuwon
#57. Every character in a story, I thought when I had folded up the phone, has both a purpose and a secret purpose.
Paul Park
#58. What I do when I create a character is put in details from all the people I know who might be like that person, and then put in a huge amount of myself.
Jeffrey Eugenides
#59. When you're an actor, you're very much exposed, but in a strange way you're totally protected behind a character, behind a script, behind a director.
Mathieu Demy
#60. We never really know what's around the corner when we're filming - what turn a story will take, what a character will do or say to surprise us, how the events in the world will impact our story.
Barbara Kopple
#62. When you have a book as material as it is, it's a lot easier to create a character because you have so many resources to draw upon when acting.
Asa Butterfield
#63. My husband doesn't like to fly. He does fly now because he doesn't want our daughter to grow up thinking he is a Don Knotts character. But when we were first married, he didn't fly.
Tina Fey
#64. 'The Cape' is a really good comic! They invented the whole character, and now they've built a book of 'The Cape' for the show. When I was a kid, I used to love Batman, and I loved Spider-Man. My favorite was this guy called Judge Dredd. I know they made a movie of that in the '90s.
James Frain
#65. Englishmen are so odd. They are like a nest of Chinese boxes. It takes a very long time to get to the centre of them. When one gets there the result is unrewarding, but the process is instructive and entertaining.
Ian Fleming
#66. One exercise I always do when I'm getting to know a character is ask her to tell me her secrets. Sit down with a pen and paper, and start with, 'I never told anybody ... ' and go from there, writing in the voice of your character.
Jennifer McMahon
#67. 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
#68. 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
#69. We are poor in character when we think getting by is a substitute for doing our best.
Marvin J. Ashton
#70. 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
#71. I always go in with the feeling that I'm gonna have a good time in what I'm doing. I entertain myself when I perform. If I do that, then I can see the other performers enjoying my character.
Seymour Cassel
#72. When you've got good writing, you can kind of give up all the research, in a way, and start just following the emotional integrity of the journey of your character.
Linus Roache
#73. 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
#74. The only time I ever met a character that I wrote was when I met Ian McKellan, when he was playing Magneto in the 'X-Men' movies.
Grant Morrison
#75. 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
#76. I think it's such a risky thing doing interviews. I try to limit the amount of interviews that I do because no one is that interesting especially when you're not really saying anything. And I don't particularly want to be an character in society or whatever.
Robert Pattinson
#77. When I did the film Generations, in which the character died, I felt like a guest for the first time. That made me very sad.
William Shatner
#78. Fucking NASA. In a horror movie, when everyone is hugging their shins and shouting for the main character to turn and run, or crawl under the bed, or call the cops, or grab a gun, NASA would be the dude in the back shouting, Go see what made that noise! And take a flashlight!
Hugh Howey
#79. The actions of our closest friends say a lot about our character - what we overlook, what we contribute to and what is important to us when the world doesn't take notice.
Shannon L. Alder
#80. Walking into a show when I was 16, at that time when it was the No. 1 hit show, and replacing a character comes with so many expectations. I felt a lot of pressure with that.
Sarah Chalke
#81. 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
#82. The real self is who you are when you're at home, when you're comfortable, and the false self is what you're pretending - and the reason you pretend is because you want to create a character for the surroundings you're within.
Benjamin Clementine
#83. 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
#84. To Lilo, Suleika, Constance, and Raul, thank you for coming up with some really good character names when I was in a pinch.
Kayti Nika Raet
#85. First of all, I never think of my characters as good or evil. I play them as honestly as I can. When you're playing a good character, you have an idea that you're playing the hero and the good guy.
Dennis Haysbert
#86. Especially when you are advertising a product, I talk to the photographer and we create a character - it always gives you more freedom because it makes it less about yourself.
Penelope Cruz
#87. A passion for any novel, and any character, can crystallise your ideas when you really need to be as open as possible as a performer.
Romola Garai
#88. Coach Noll had always told me, Being stubborn is a virtue when you're right; it's only a character flaw when you're wrong.
Tony Dungy
#89. When you do a TV show, the cumulative intimacy you develop with the audience through your characters is pretty profound. It may be the most profound storytelling there is, because the character gets to live and roll around in the audience's mind week after week.
Howard Gordon
#90. You've got to learn to survive a defeat. That's when you develop character.
Richard M. Nixon
#91. I don't think you can sing about certain things when you're a teen-ager or in your early 20s, because you haven't lived long enough. So I think living gives you character and that comes out in your voice.
Tom Jones
#92. I lost 90 pounds and my blood pressure went down to a normal level and the salt in my urine disappeared. And that was when I had to make the transition from fat character actor to thin character actor.
Ron Perlman
#93. When something really extreme happens, you have to find a way to embrace that and include it in how you think about the character. Sometimes it's not easy.
David Ogden Stiers
#94. A really good style comes only when a man has become as good as he can be. Style is character. A good style cannot come from a bad undisciplined character.
Norman Mailer
#95. When I work on a novel, I usually have one character and a setting in mind.
Kevin Henkes
#96. When we think of the ideal, we do not add virtue to virtue, but think of Jesus Christ, so that the standard of human life is no longer a code, but a character.
E. Stanley Jones
#97. When you see a singer on stage who is 100% committed to the personality, character and temperament of the role being sung, it's truly awesome and very powerful.
Claron McFadden
#98. Sometimes we fall, sometimes we stumble, but we can't stay down. We can't allow life to beat us down. Everything happens for a reason, and it builds character in us, and it tells us what we are about and how strong we really are when we didn't think we could be that strong.
Gail Devers
#99. One of the reasons they [the Japanese] have bad eyesight is probably these microscopic characters [furigana] which have many lines and strokes to them.& We wonder why they went mad and bombed Pearl Harbor when they knew they couldn't win. That [the Japanese language] would be a reason.
L. Ron Hubbard
#100. A mysterious character of UFOs is that they are sighted only in the First World,' she said, 'and no alien conquest of Earth begins until the mayor of New York holds an emergency press conference. When Mars attacks, it attacks America.
Manu Joseph
