Character Quotes

Wit goes for the jugular, not the jocular, and it's the opposite of football; instead of building character, it tears it down.

I certainly don' think I could've played the character [Idi Amin] the same way without being in Uganda. I loved working in Uganda.

Milan is showing a new and different face. At Porta Nuova, too, when they started construction, everyone was up in arms, saying Milan was going to lose its character.

To tell an adult exactly what steps to take towards his salvation was apt to weaken him. It deprived him of his inalienable right to trial and error which was tonic to the character.

The condition of women affords in all countries the best criterion by which to judge the character of men.

I desire that on no occasion ... shall demonstrations of a political or religious character be made before my remains.

I'm trying to learn to smoke, which is rather weird when everyone is trying to stop. I'm not a smoker. But my character only smokes as an affectation.

The qualities we have do not make us so ridiculous as those which we affect to have. [Fr., On n'est jamais si ridicule par les qualites que l'on a que par celles que l'on affecte d'avoir.]

Our enemies' opinion of us comes closer to the truth than our own.

My love of pleasure seems to be the only consistent side of my character. Is it because I have not read enough?

For example, I like using strong Greek and Roman Renaissance characters as part of my series.

From my sketch files I'll find a pose that shows the emotion behind a particular character's story.

The challenge is creating a character that's rich and interesting to warrant following for a number of years.

I enjoy the kind of characters that allow you to write the dark stuff. I love Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky, and when I'm writing for Dracula or Jekyll & Hyde, I get a chance to use that vocabulary.

As the audience, I always love to get to a point where, surprisingly, I find myself in a secret friendship allegiance with the characters that are unexpected.

What raises great poetry above all else--it is the entire person and also the entire world.

I'm an actor's director. I love it when talented actors can bring characters to life.

In general, I'm always interested in characters who have kind of extreme aspects to them, who are in some ways larger than typical people.

I'm not a massive fan of just playing myself on screen. If you can play lots of different characters, that's fun. As long as the material is good, that's what the attraction is for me.

In a film, you always try to have your main character be changed by the end.

I'm trying to listen to my past, listen to what's most deeply going on inside myself, my creative set of fictional characters, a fictional world - to listen to that world, to search.

When you are writing a character, what the character says is obviously crucial. But what the character doesn't say is absolutely as important as his words.

Meryl Streep is expert at only using the requisite amount of energy to express her character, not an ounce too little or too much. She's Zen and doesn't know she's Zen. That's very Zen!

The Zen Master was constantly attempting to break up concepts that people had about what it was like to be a spiritual teacher. We have a traditional image. Each Zen master was a complete character.

If you want to create a different character, you can do so just by altering your style of dress and cosmetics.

There is a great deal of self-will in the world, but very little genuine independence of character.

A married philosopher is a comic character.

He who recites dramatic works makes discoveries about his own character.

Unresolved dissonances between the characters and dispositions of the parents continue to reverberate in the nature of the child and make up the history of its inner sufferings.

Whoever has character also has his typical experience, which returns over and over again.

Individual character is in the right that is in strict consistence with itself. Self-contradiction is the only wrong.

Education lays hold of what is best in a person, but character lays hold of what is worse. It takes hold of a failing and by very skillful manipulation and training turns it into a perfection.

If you're writing on your own, each character is just you. It's just you.

The readers are very similar. The books they know, the questions they ask, the characters they like. That is similar.

Not to oversimplify it, somebody once said a good rule of thumb in interpreting a character is to find the good in the bad people that you portray and the bad in the good.

By putting myself out there the way I've been doing people see me as a real person. Even though I do character voices and funny noises the stories are still real and I put them all out there.

It's funny, people talk about the characters they play and who do you sort of see yourself as or which ones maybe were closest to you and in some ways.

We all have a cross-gender character: Every woman has a man that they can play, and every man has a woman that they can play.

I just like a good story. I want the story to be good and I want the character to be different than the last one I played. That's not always possible, but that's what I want.

Weaknesses of character are normally shown in a game of chess.

I don't really like discussions about a supposed Russian national character.

There's immense fun to be had as long as you can sort of sneak it past DC. I have been told on occasion that I need to have more respect for these characters.

The one nice thing about doing a character for a long time is, you begin to feel more comfortable, and you are thinking less and behaving more.

Each role you play, they set a bar of challenges that you meet. And in the past, I've played characters that emotionally expressed themselves a bit more in a physical way. It was a joy, actually.

The book tells you everything you need to know. The book is the map of the world that you're in with the character.

You rarely get a tentpole that has this much emotional depth, this much character to dive into.

My natural inclination to be improv rather than an educated character serves me well.

I think an actor can actually gather moments, memories and emotions for his next character. So, it's a constant work.

I've always as a performer on stage tend to sort of throw myself into the character, whatever I've written about, so it depends on how I'm writing or what I'm writing about.

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.