Top 100 When A Character Quotes
#1. 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
#2. 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
#3. 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
#4. 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
#5. A whole lot of good my IQ came when it came to judging his character.
DiAnn Mills
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. 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
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. 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
#12. 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
#13. 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
#14. 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
#15. 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
#16. A man kept his character even when he was insane.
Graham Greene
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. 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
#20. 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
#21. 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
#22. 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
#23. 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
#24. 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
#25. When a man thinks he is reading the character of another, he is often unconsciously betraying his own.
Joseph P. Farrell
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. 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
#29. When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part.
Laurence Olivier
#30. When I draw a character, very often as I'm doing a face, my face mirrors the expression.
Matthew Ashford
#31. 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
#32. 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
#33. It's always tense when you move a character from a book to the screen. Always tense.
Lee Child
#34. 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
#35. 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
#36. 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
#37. Every character in a story, I thought when I had folded up the phone, has both a purpose and a secret purpose.
Paul Park
#38. 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
#39. 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
#40. 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
#42. 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
#43. 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
#44. '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
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. 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
#49. We are poor in character when we think getting by is a substitute for doing our best.
Marvin J. Ashton
#50. 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
#51. 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
#52. 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
#53. 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
#54. 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
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. 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
#58. 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
#59. 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
#60. 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
#61. 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
#62. 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
#63. 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
#64. 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
#65. 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
#66. 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
#67. 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
#68. 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
#69. 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
#70. You've got to learn to survive a defeat. That's when you develop character.
Richard M. Nixon
#71. 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
#72. 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
#73. 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
#74. 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
#75. When I work on a novel, I usually have one character and a setting in mind.
Kevin Henkes
#76. 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
#77. 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
#78. 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
#79. 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
#80. 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
#81. 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
#82. 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
#83. When you're in your early 20s, a lot of characters can be one or two dimensional. You want a role to substantiate the drama, as opposed to actually analyzing the psychology of a human being. That's what drew me to acting, particularly the contradictions in people.
Tom Hughes
#84. When the character is lacking in purity, when sin has become a part of the character, it has a bewitching power that is equal to the intoxicating glass of liquor.
Ellen G. White
#85. I think when your image becomes so big that it's hard for a viewer to see a character, then I think you're in danger as an actor of being unable to perform what you should be doing.
Hugo Weaving
#86. Allowing alternative narrative modes in popular entertainment may seem obvious, yet when you turn a pilot into the people upstairs and the main character isn't after what she wants by the top of page two, you get treated as if you've failed at writing.
Andrea Seigel
#87. I would have to say that I have to concentrate more when I'm doing comedy. There are so many details that make up any character, but developing a character for a dramatic role seems to come more naturally.
Kaitlyn Dever
#88. When men write women, they tend to write women the way they want women to be, or the way they resent women for being. They don't really - they seldom nail it. It takes a woman to write a really good female character. I like that.
Simon Pegg
#89. One of the things that separates a good genre movie from a bad genre movie, I always think, ironically, is when you care about the people. The dime a dozen ones are where you don't have any awareness of the character.
Ethan Hawke
#90. 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
#91. For me, the challenge of a period film is that, unlike a contemporary film where the character can be very free-form when it comes to the acting, there's a burden to acting in a period film because you have to stay within the character's historical background and the gestures of certain periods.
Donnie Yen
#92. What I enjoy most are those times when I get an idea and it just flows - the words coming so fast that I'm scribbling to keep up with my characters. I don't have any writing must-haves; this is a good thing, since I've done a lot of my writing in random places like the playground or the subway.
Leah Cypess
#93. The great thing about writing is that you always put yourself in the shoes of the character. If you're doing it right, you can see into the heart of all your characters. Usually, when there's a writing problem, it's because you aren't doing that.
Peter Gould
#94. Learning to trust God when He says "no" is a very important step in handling rejection. This is because God's character is not only seen in what He does, but in what He does not do.
Jamie Larbi
#95. Michael Myers is a very famous character. This is the ninth movie with Michael Myers, and when you put on that mask for the first time, you get a little chill going down your spine.
Tyler Mane
#96. 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
#97. I think it's bad for fellas when they lose their mothers. Mine was such a character. Oh it was sad, really sad. And, with her gone, the family home was gone, so what was left of any roots I had were completely dug up.
Paul O'Grady
#98. When a character wants to do one thing and I want him to do another, the character is usually right.
Madeleine L'Engle
#99. When you do animation - well, straightforward animation, although it's not straightforward - the voice for a character or something, they're always singular experiences, really.
Andy Serkis
#100. When it comes to building character, wealth, good looks, athletic ability and even a high IQ are more likely to be impediments than advantages.
Michael Josephson
