Character Quotes

Good intentions are simply not enough. Our character is defined and our lives are determined not by what we want, say or think, but by what we do.

My job is to bring to life the character, not to put the words on the paper.

I'm looking for diversity, all my characters may or may not be on the wrong side of the tracks. It doesn't mean that they're all the same.

For me, my past characters been hard, the way they died, being murdered, the sadness that goes around, the death. It's a very hard thing to do.

Ending a television character that you've been, especially someone like Omar Little, it hurts. For me, it's a huge thing. You feel like a part of you is gone.

You have to put your character to rest after x amount of years.

I have a very healthy appetite for good writing and good characters. Having weak writing is my biggest fear.

Music is always a part of my characters' make-up.

All my characters have playlists.

I'm totally comfortable today with the success that Omar and 'The Wire' have brought me - living with that character, being recognized and remembered for that character.

My characters are actually usually pretty smart and admirable.

You know, it's hard as a writer to lose characters (and actors) you like. You really don't want them to die because you're not going to get to see them anymore.

When you play a character that's someone real, when you're playing a true story, it's really great, 'cause you're not pretending to make up some silly thing.

I much prefer to watch actors and writers create "humanizing" moments for characters. In a drama, "humanizing" is far more impactful and powerful than "redeeming."

I'd got over playing a character. People accepted who I was, and if I was incompetent and useless, they felt quite endeared to me.

When you find you don't like a character, you just type four letters and he's dead.

Every character when born is a stereotype.

I needed to stay in the character.

When you're playing this bad of a character, it's obviously not reality for someone who's not living that life.

I would far rather add a character who generates strong feelings than someone who just kind of floats along, generating medium-warmth smiles of gentle affirmation.

It's so much easier to write for an actor than for an imaginary character and then try to fit that character to an actor. It doesn't work very often in my experience.

I care more about making sure the story is correct and the characters are behaving in character than I do about the individual jokes.

Every story starts with an idea, but it is the characters that move this idea forward.

I never base characters on real people - you can get into so much trouble that way!

They [my characters]speak to me all the time! In fact some of them never shut up!

Most writers, I'm afraid, live very boring lives sitting in front of a screen. However, having said that: every writer puts a bit of themselves into the characters to bring them alive.

I am thrilled when I read about fans using my stories as springboards to read about either the historical characters or the myths and legends in the books.

A lot of times the characters I play tend to be kind of loners or they don't have best friends or best buddies.

I get pretty attached to the majority of the characters I play. I can't help myself.

I'm a big fan of vampire movies generally and that sort of tradition of characters.

I suppose I've got a reputation for playing quite extreme characters and making them quite believable.

To get into the character you have to really use your imagination.

I broke into acting doing Latino roles. I played a Latino casanova in 'The Winner' and a Latino character on 'Hannah Montana.'

To see those two characters [Steve Jobs and Andy Hertzfeld ] juxtaposed against each other shows an interesting dynamic of how gifted people might function differently in the world.

Characters are an extreme form in Shakespeare's theater.

Every actor will tell you it's so much more fun to play the bad guy because usually those characters are more complex and more broad and more interesting, and have more sides to them.

I wish I were a character actor. Of course, if I played hockey without a mask, I could become one.

Characters can be mysterious and you're not really sure which way they might turn at a given point.

Here was a man with loads of talent, loads of ability, lots of love to give; but that had been stifled and aborted. I became very fond of that character.

I like actors who just are who they are, with a little bit of qualification to adapt to their character. But mostly they just use their own personality to embody the character.

When you work on a character, you form in your mind an image of what he ought to look like. Then you go and find one who resembles him.

I learned a lesson that I keep learning over and over, and that is that the most fun is to watch our main characters interact with each other. The most fun comes from their tight interaction.

I find that in preparation for a drama you can do a lot of character work and develop the character and know what you want to achieve and project throughout the course of the film.

But we are all sorry when loss comes for us. The test of our character comes not in how many tears we shed but in how we act after those tears have dried.

I think once everything is in place, once you've kind of wrapped your head around the story and the character, it's very liberating and you can start doing things like you would do.

You have to write a song around this specific character or to enhance a specific scene. A lot of other craft goes on.

In the music industry, you meet some not very nice people, some very strange characters.

It's wonderful to watch pretty women with character grow beautiful.

The same way that you are the main character of your story, you are only a secondary character in everybody else’s story.

I'm not one of those people who writes a biography or tries to figure out what kind of ice cream the character liked when he was 10.