You Have Character Quotes

#1. Just because you are a character doesn't mean you have character.

Quentin Tarantino

#2. You can't be a successful leader or mentor until you have served. You can't serve until you have stepped out of your comfort zone. And you can't step out of your comfort zone unless you have character and keep your word.

Bill Courtney

#3. It is attitude, infinitely more than circumstance, that determines the quality of life. Life is often quite tough, challenging us to choose between seemingly esoteric, intangible ideals and getting goodies or good vibes right now. You have character when you most often choose ideals.

Laura C. Schlessinger

#4. Character is beyond obligation. You could kick your shoes off at the door, flick your cigarete butts onto the sidewalk or talk only in slang, those things are forgivable if you have character

Novala Takemoto

#5. Once you have love as a motivator in a story, your character is free to do anything. Once you say the character is in love, he can do the craziest thing that nobody would do who's not in love. Once you're in love, you have that excuse to go and do whatever you want.

Josh Hutcherson

#6. Fame is what you have taken, character is what you give; when to this truth you waken then you begin to live.

Bayard Taylor

#7. I feel like any experience you can have which adds to your repertoire of things you've done and can add to your character - I'm willing to try.

Christa B. Allen

#8. I just think that unless you have that cohesiveness in the family unit, the male character tends to become very dominant, repressive and insensitive. So much of this comes also from a lack of education.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

#9. I have quite a normal family and I'm bored with how normal my family is. I want to mess stuff up a bit. I chose the messed up characters because I find that that's acting. I want to explore emotions that you otherwise wouldn't be able to explore.

Chloe Grace Moretz

#10. I think the genre of comics sometimes overtakes the medium, and people assume that they are kind of frivolous. If you have a good, strong story teller, they can be as affecting as any character in literature. Period.

Chip Kidd

#11. People that are brilliant and successful, we think they've just always been that way. That's not the case. Most of them have had some tough adversity in their life. It's prepared them. I've never felt like you could develop character without adversity.

Bobby Bowden

#12. I find with television, you have to play personality, whereas onstage, everyone talks about 'the character,' and what you do. It's a very different thing, because stage is much bigger, but on television, for things to come across to the public, I think you have to play a bit of your personality.

John Barrowman

#13. What happens if you're the guy who's been on the show ten years and is highly paid but they have nothing for you to do is that they bring in other people, and you become a supporting character to those people.

Ted Shackelford

#14. If one doesn't have a character like Abraham Lincoln or Joan of Arc, a diet simply disintegrates into eating exactly what you want to eat, but with a bad conscience.

Maria Augusta Von Trapp

#15. In Endless Quest books, you start the plot, and the character has to make choices. Then you have to write one choice over here, one choice over there. The author might get one or two choices out.

Margaret Weis

#16. I think if you play characters, it's very important not to ever tag them with any sort of disorder, or diagnose them, or whatever. You have to normalize the behavior to get inside the character.

Cillian Murphy

#17. True greatness means that, even if you forget what you've done for others, you never forget what others have done for you. It means always doing your utmost to repay debts of gratitude. Such people radiate integrity, depth of character, bigheartedness and charm.

Josei Toda

#18. 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

#19. With big, emotional roles it's very easy, especially if you've grown up in the American school of acting, to exploit your own pain. You have to be careful about that, because 9 times out of 10, your pain is not appropriate to the character.

Laura Linney

#20. Because I was able to submerge myself into the character, I didn't have to go back and forth. You don't have to work hard to bring emotions. It all just comes naturally, you're there living it.

Camilla Belle

#21. On the question - which is more important for a story-plot or character. "It's a bit like asking whether your need your left or right leg. Maybe you have a preference, maybe one is stronger (for you) but really, you need both." (on Facebook)

Jeanette O'Hagan

#22. If you have the character to hang in there when its tough, you will develop or acquire every other characteristic necessary to WIN in the game of life.

Zig Ziglar

#23. I think the business of writing a great deal of it is the business of paying attention to your characters, to the world they live in, to the story you have to tell, but just a kind of deep attention and out of that if you pay attention properly the story will tell you what it needs.

Salman Rushdie

#24. Well you just have to own it, I suppose. Own the character, which is difficult.

David Wenham

#25. If you have no enemies, you have no character.

Paul Newman

#26. Be the kind of person others admire, can count on, trust, and enjoy spending time with. After you have developed that reputation, people will start to ask you what you do and you will be amazed at how many people will want to work with you. You will attract others based on your character.

Larry Winget

#27. The more conflict and contrast you have with a character makes it more interesting.

Chris Hemsworth

#28. 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

#29. I love the stories that have come before, that we know of. I think for me it's always more interesting to start from square one and you take the fundamental pillars of the character and, around that, try to create something new and different.

Chris Pine

#30. You have to be like a sponge and use what you can and how it relates because TV is fluid. Things change on a week-to-week basis. Those are the things that I do with every character. If I'm involved in a boxing movie, I go see fights and learn about boxing. It's part of what we do.

Jimmy Smits

#31. your character is the sum total of your habits. You can't claim to be kind unless you are habitually kind - you show kindness without even thinking about it. You can't claim to have integrity unless it is your habit to always be honest.

Rick Warren

#32. There is the moral spectrum in 'Fargo,' and you see it in other Coen brothers movies, where you have a very good character on one end and a very bad character on the other.

Noah Hawley

#33. You have to defend your character. That's your job, if they're hiring you. That doesn't mean you can't collaborate, but you do have to make some big, bold choices. We do that in real life, too.

Jonathan Tucker

#34. I wouldn't do a film like 'The Dirty Picture.' I have a husband and kids, and I won't be able to do justice to such a role. You need a certain mentality and ease to carry such a character.

Kajol

#35. I don't judge the character at all. It's a bit like being someone's defense lawyer - you have to believe in their innocence in order to defend them.

Rachel Weisz

#36. I love rehearsals and I love creating a character, sticking with it until you have something to tell. It's always different though. Sometimes a director will tell you from day one what they want. Then you throw in your idea.

Gael Garcia Bernal

#37. Filmmaking is finding a piece of granite and you start to chip away and then you have the shape of a head, the shape of the arm, you can see the shape of the face and the face starts to gather character. You have to find it.

Jason Reitman

#38. For me, I always have to establish a reality for the character. In very actor-y terms, you just have to understand his reality.

Patrick Wilson

#39. While you, the leader, can teach many things, character is not taught easily to adults who arrive at your desk lacking it. Be cautious about taking on reclamation projects regardless of the talent they may possess. Have the courage to make character count among the qualities you seek in others.

John Wooden

#40. I want a character to wake up one day and feel like, 'I can face it'. That, to me, is happy. I want the characters to rescue themselves, though you use the relationships you have, to make you strong enough to be able to do that.

Cecelia Ahern

#41. The physicality of any character is always split up into fast, slow, high energy, low energy, what kind of personality he has. So that's where the physicality comes in. And flying through the air is just something you have to do if they ask you.

Mads Mikkelsen

#42. You know how sometimes department stores have these things where, if you win, you get 10 minutes to go in and take anything you want from the store? That's basically what I'm doing. I'm running in and just trying to grab as many characters as possible before they pull the plug on me.

Ryan Gosling

#43. 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

#44. Dad: Honey, have you seen my glasses? I cant find them. Mom: I haven't seen them. Calvin: (with glasses, to Dad) Calvin, go do something you hate! Being miserable builds character!

Bill Watterson

#45. I'm not a fan of anybody music who I feel like a sucka. I don't listen to you. They play you in the club, you can have the #1 jam, but if I know your character, how can I listen to your music?

Gucci Mane

#46. You are not defined by the clothes on your body, the shoes on your feet, or the money in your pocket. You are defined by the choices you make, the character that you choose to have, and the respect you show yourself and to those around you.

Quinn Loftis

#47. I've been doing this 17 years but I can tell you I have more websites now than I have ever had devoted to me or my past career or my character. When I got this show, I think I had two fans out there that had created websites on my behalf.

Robert Patrick

#48. If you're playing the a historical character that's in the public consciousness, then obviously you've got to make an effort to look like that person and there's a huge amount of historical record there that you have to kind of comply to.

Colm Meaney

#49. You can't just pretend that the things you watch, and the things you hear, and the places you go will not have an impact on your character. They will.

Nouman Ali Khan

#50. Scenes change all the time. Scenes will change while you're shooting them, and you just have to roll with it 'cause that's what makes it funny. It's not being stuck in your character and how you're gonna do something, but to react to other people and to really have a real-life conversation.

Yara Shahidi

#51. You have to believe in its principles. Anything is possible, as long as it's for the good of the world. Make the exception. Live exceptionally. And if you can't do that, maybe we should consider whether you're right for the project. Think about it, then let's talk tomorrow.

Amy Tan

#52. I care about Bond and what happens to him. You cannot be connected with a character for this long and not have an interest. All the Bond films had their good points.

Sean Connery

#53. Your talent and giftedness as a leader have the potential to take you farther than your character can sustain you. That ought to scare you.

Andy Stanley

#54. Woody Allen - nobody has been a better joke teller than him - and even in his great films, it's always coming out of the character. If you don't have that, jokes are just empty and I think that people rely too much on jokes.

Brett Gelman

#55. Matthew Wiener on 'Mad Men' writes the entire series before they start shooting, and if you have that, then what you can do with character and story is not at all unlike what you can do in a novel.

Salman Rushdie

#56. Then a woman of good character will be very attracted to you, will consider you a wonderful potential husband, even if she does not show it." Avelina had to swallow the lump that rose into her throat. "She will count herself fortunate to have secured your good opinion." He

Melanie Dickerson

#57. Even as a stage performer, I have my garb which is leather jackets and black jeans to make me feel a certain way. The wardrobe is really important to feeling the character you're playing.

Andrew Dice Clay

#58. Obviously, with a CGI character, you're building a character in much the same way as a real creature is built. You build the bones, the skeletons, the muscles. You put layers of fat on. You put a layer of skin on which has to have a translucency, depending on what the character is.

Peter Jackson

#59. 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

#60. My mom always tells me that ... Nobody is going to remember you for the great basketball player you are but they will remember you for the character you have off the court and how many lives you're changed.

Isaiah Austin

#61. If you play a real character who's famous and still alive, it makes things easier if you have the luck to have a good relationship with them.

Daniel Bruhl

#62. 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

#63. I find that a lot of my best character stuff and ideas come unwittingly from novels. In scripts, it's a lot about the outward signs of whatever's happening - you have the end result. Whereas in a novel you get a buildup of the whys and wherefores, and you're let into the backstory.

Alison Pill

#64. Authors have to write for their characters, for who they are, that's the strength of books. Don't worry about censors. Just write the story you need to tell and the rewards will come.

Ellen Hopkins

#65. You have to be aware of all the latent possibilities that give a work its special character - its atmosphere, its moods, its contrasts.

Alfred Brendel

#66. Acting is a skill that not only requires talent, but a determination: The willpower to shake off reality and plunge yourself into yourself into a character than you have to act on.

Low Kay Hwa

#67. I really was a fan of his and always have been - his writing especially, you know? I think people a lot of times overlook that part, because he kind of got into that party character so heavy.

Alan Jackson

#68. 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

#69. 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

#70. I have to say from an actor's perspective, to work with a director who has been an actor through most of their career is a pleasure. They generally have a very deep understanding of the process of what you're doing, of how you are building and exploring the character.

Karen Allen

#71. Casting is so important, with any film you do. You have to get actors that you believe will fulfill the promise of the characters that are on the page.

Jerry Bruckheimer

#72. It is harder to get adult, character-driven material on television than it used to be, but there are lots of other places that you can go to sell it. If you can do it for basic cable or pay cable, we have those outlets.

John Wells

#73. That's what acting is all about - it's all about bringing truth from your own life, and putting it into your characters. If you have the advantage of using your own life in your work, that's always the way to go.

Michael Eklund

#74. You want people - I want people to relate to me as a character. I want them to go, 'That could have been me,' or, 'I know someone like that.'

Marcia Gay Harden

#75. Of course, every actor has their box and you have to respect and play for it, but I do love challenging myself. I love every role to be new, and I always like to bring a freshness to every character I play.

Aneurin Barnard

#76. Could there be a cowgirl in my future? You know, I never know what character is going to come and tap me on the shoulder and say, 'Hey, tell my story.' So maybe the next one will have boots.

Susan Isaacs

#77. Life is a book that someone else is reading - and you, a key character - hence the need for continual conflict and resolution. We can't have any boring books.

Richelle E. Goodrich

#78. I don't think anyone can do any character that doesn't have at least some ounce of themselves in it. You are who you are, and your brain is drawing on things that you've experienced.

Thomas Middleditch

#79. The roles I was lucky enough to get were real stretches for me: usually a character who was older, or a little weird, or whatever. And it was hard, not just for the lack of work but because you have to face up to how people are looking at you.

Kathy Bates

#80. I do what I can, but I'll always give it a shot. You're not going to see me playing a Welsh character any time soon, not because I wouldn't love to. I went up to Wales once and read for a film with Rhys Ifans, and haven't been asked back since. We did have a nice time on the train on the way back.

Aidan Gillen

#81. When you are dealing with approximately two-plus hours every few years to do a story, you don't have the luxury of having excessive screen time to explore, in detail and in-depth, lots of other subsidiary or ancillary supporting characters.

Michael Uslan

#82. In acting, you have to pull from real-life situations, from people, to help develop a character.

Kevin Hart

#83. You have a story in there, Lucy," she said, touching my head. "Or a character, a place, a poem, a moment in time. When you find it, you will write it. Word after word after word after word," she whispered.

Patricia MacLachlan

#84. You have a lot more leeway to be contradictory playing a character than most of the scripts have in them. That's how all actors are. We have so many different sides of ourselves and we're so different, in meeting with different people. The audiences relate more to that and find that more believable.

Joel Kinnaman

#85. A film is a living thing. The screenplay is a guideline. You really need to have a good, sound script to know that you have a dramatic structure that's going to work thematically, and to know how one scene will got through another, and to get a sense of character.

Jose Padilha

#86. I don't think you necessarily identify and believe in the motifs of the character, but you have to want to play it and want to commit to the lines.

Clive Owen

#87. What happens with every role, you have to trick yourself, you have to creatively find ways to explore the mental state of your character.

Irrfan Khan

#88. You can grow softly, lovely and delicately amidst the hard surfaces. Not all who passed tougher times in life have a hard heart, kindness and tenderness do breathe despite of worse times.

Angelica Hopes

#89. I think we've all been kind of ... everyone's been hurt, everyone's felt loss, everyone has exultation, everyone has a need to be loved, or to have lost love, so when you play a character, you're pulling out those little threads and turning them up a bit.

Mark Ruffalo

#90. 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

#91. You have something special, you have GREATNESS within you!

Les Brown

#92. To try to create a character without a whole lot of information can be taxing. At the same time, it's fun to just stay on your toes and let the next bit of dialogue come in, and turn the page as you read the next script and see what they have in store for you next.

Dallas Roberts

#93. I have always had the deepest respect for Bill Nicholson as a person and as a manager. The Spurs boss is an honest Yorkshireman and you will go a long way before finding a straighter character than that. Bill has never wavered in his determination to give White Hart Lane fans the best.

Bill Shankly

#94. If you don't have enemies, you don't have character.

Paul Newman

#95. Have fun, entertain yourself with your work, make yourself laugh and cry with your own stories, make yourself shiver in suspense along with your characters. If you can do that, then you will most likely find a large audience; but even if a large audience is never found, you'll have a happy life.

Dean Koontz

#96. So if you want to have a great video game-based movie you have to keep the mood of the game, use the normal character setup - but you have to flesh out the story and provide more background for the characters.

Uwe Boll

#97. I think it's interesting to have a cool character not look so cool, you know?

Norman Reedus

#98. Have you ever seen that movie "Despicable me," the first one? Gru, the main character has become a criminal, and in a simple way, the creators of the movie suggest that he became that way because he was neglected by his mother.

Rita Chester

#99. With a film, things constantly have to go up in the story, and you're constantly putting pressure on the main character. It allows to go really deep into what its relationship is.

Jennifer Lee

#100. With any video you see online, like with YouTube, you gotta watch an ad, and that's gotta stop. And I think it'll stop by ... the shitty network shows they put out will just have the ads in the shows. The characters will be eating Cheetos or whatever.

Derek Waters