Don't use your conscious past. Use your creative imagination to create a past that belongs to your character. I don't want you to be stuck with your own life. It's too little.
- Stella Adler
Money is good, but it is not all about a man. You will have successes and reversals, but remember it is your reaction to each of them that counts for your character.
- Matthew Pearl
You will have many successes and reversals, my boy, but remember it is your reaction to each of them that counts for your character.
- Matthew Pearl
Drugs age you after mental excitement. Lethargy then. Why? Reaction. A lifetime in a night. Gradually changes your character.
- James Joyce
Try to think about more important things,' he said. 'Think about your soul, your character. Think about the freezer. It's a solid block of ice. It needs defrosting. There might a steak in there. Concentrate on things like that. There could be a meal in it.
- Jonathan Ames
The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you choose, what you think and what you do is who you become.
- Heraclitus
The sisters and brothers that you meet give you the materials which your character uses to build itself. It is said that some people are born great, others achieve it, some have it thrust upon them. In truth, the ways in which your character is built have to do with all three of those. Those around you, those you choose, and those who choose you.
- Maya Angelou
Ever hear the expression "write what you know?" My version says "write what you want to know." If you want to know about the history of Spain, write about the history of Spain - fiction or nonfiction. If your fascinated by the old west, maybe your character lives there.
- Amelia Atwater Rhodes
I might as well enquire," replied she, "why with so evident a design of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me against your will, against your reason, and even against your character?
- Jane Austen
May I ask you what these questions tend?'
'Merely to the illustration of your character,' said she, endeavouring to shake off her gravity. 'I am trying to make it out.'
'And what is your success?'
She shook her head. 'I do not get on at all. I hear such different accounts of you as puzzle me exceedingly.
- Jane Austen
The simplicity of your character makes you exquisitely incomprehensible to me.
- Oscar Wilde
Usually, it gets worse and worse as they downsize your character; mine just kept getting better.
- Christine Baranski
Parents look at me like I'm somebody pretty important, and say, We were raised on your characters, and now we're enjoying them all over again with our children.
- Joseph Barbera
Directors are always changing things at the last minute. Actors will do a scene, and the director will say, 'Okay, that was perfect, but this time, Bob, instead of saying "What's for dinner?" you say, "Wait a minute! Benzene is actually a hydrocarbon!" And say it with a Norwegian accent. Also, we think maybe your character should have no arms.
- Dave Barry
No matter how good the walls and the materials are; if the foundations are not strong, the building will not stand. By and by, in some upper room, a crack will appear; and men will say: "There is the crack; but the cause is the foundation." So if, in youth, you lay the foundation of your character wrongly, the penalty will be sure to follow. The crack may be far down in old age, but somewhere it will certainly appear.
- Henry Ward Beecher
If you have a very good concept of your character, you can snap into it.
- Sean Bean
By knowing your character so well you can't go wrong. All of us kind of fell into that.
- Camilla Belle
...I'm sorry, and a little dissatisfied as well. Miss Stacy told me long ago that by the time I was twenty my character would be formed, for good or evil. I don't feel that it's what it should be. It's full of flaws.' 'So's everybody's,' said Aunt Jamesina cheerfully. 'Mine's cracked in a hundred places. Your Miss Stacy likely meant that when you are twenty your character would have got its permanent bent in one direction or 'tother, and would go on developing in that line.
- L M Montgomery
You don't realize how much a part of your character is part of yourself until you are no longer playing that character.
- Julie Benz
Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation, for your character is what you are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
- Dale Carnegie
Never compromise your character's personality just to make a scene more exciting. Stories flow through your character, so never forget who they are.
- Giuseppe Bianco
We all lose our looks eventually. Better develop your character and interest in life.
- Jacqueline Bisset
Money is always on its way somewhere. What you do with it while it is in your keeping and the direction you send it in say much about you. Your treatment of and respect for money, how you make it, and how you spend it, reflect your character.
- Gary Ryan Blair
Things present themselves to you, and it's how you choose to deal with them that reveals who you are. We all say a lot of things, don't we, about who we are and how we think. But in the end it's your actions, how you respond to circumstance that reveals your character.
- Cate Blanchett
I have the embarrassing thing where often if you're watching a film, you kind of go through the emotions and the thought stages that your character went through, but you sort of do it with Tourette's. So I end up often crying when I'm crying, and looking angry when I'm looking angry, so it's pretty ugly.
- Cate Blanchett
The best books come from someplace deep inside.... Become emotionally involved. If you don't care about your characters, your readers won't either.
- Judy Blume
If you're very open to watching the world go by, with people's different tics, you absorb it all without realizing it and find ways to put something into your character. I'm not sure I'm always aware I'm mimicking someone.
- Emily Blunt
Music... will help dissolve your perplexities and purify your character and sensibilities, and in time of care and sorrow, will keep a fountain of joy alive in you.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.
- Ray Bradbury
The way you make an omelet reveals your character.
- Anthony Bourdain
To keep your character intact you cannot stoop to filthy acts. It makes it easier to stoop the next time.
- Katharine Hepburn
Tanner: My dear Tavy, your pious English habit of regarding the world as a moral gymnasium built expressly to strengthen your character in leads you to think about your own confounded principles when you should be thinking about other people's necessities.
- George Bernard Shaw
All your scholarship would be in vain if at the same time you do not build your character and attain mastery over your thoughts and your actions.
- Mahatma Gandhi
Unless you look like Brad Pitt, it's really hard to have full control of your character.
- Vincent Donofrio
In the initial season of a show, you're figuring out your character and their life and their background and you're putting together all the chapters of the book.
- Sophia Bush
Maybe the midnight disease was like that, too. After a while you lost the ability to distinguish between your fictional and actual words; you confused yourself with your characters, and the random happenings of your life with the machinations of a plot.
- Michael Chabon
Any time you get to dig deeper into your character, you welcome it, especially on a TV show.
- Josh Charles
In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations!
(Letter to Alexander Chekhov, May 10, 1886)
- Anton Chekhov
You love all your characters, even the ridiculous ones. You have to on some level; they're your weird creations in some kind of way. I don't even know how you approach the process of conceiving the characters if in a sense you hated them. It's just absurd.
- Joel Coen
Be fearless. Have the courage to take risks. Go where there are no guarantees. Get out of your comfort zone even if it means being uncomfortable. The road less traveled is sometimes fraught with barricades bumps and uncharted terrain. But it is on that road where your character is truly tested And have the courage to accept that you're not perfect nothing is and no one is and that's OK.
- Katie Couric
In real life, people are constantly saying one thing and doing another, but if you write your characters that way, the story becomes too hard to follow.
- Jessica Cutler
When you finish a film, if you believed in your character, you're empty.
- Jean Claude Van Damme
Make your characters want something right away even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.
- Kurt Vonnegut
Well, first of all, you read the script a million times. Because what the script gives you are given circumstances. Given circumstances are all the facts of your character.
- Viola Davis
Not long ago I learned from a certain person in considerable detail about the worthlessness of your character. All the same, it is you who have given me strength, you who have put the rainbow of revolution in my breast. It is you who have given an object to my life.
- Osamu Dazai
There's different ways to be impacted by truth. One is to read the scriptures. Another is to read other works by other people who have read the scriptures, non fiction for example. Another is to do studies. Another is to go to a place of worship. Another thing is to sit and listen to someone who's speaking. There's all kinds of ways. Another way is to write. About the truth. Discover the struggle through your character.
- Ted Dekker
God is more interested in your character than your comfort. God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your life happy.
- Rick Warren
Your reputation is in the hands of others. That's what the reputation is. You can't control that. The only thing you can control is your character.
- Wayne Dyer
Live as you like best, and your character will take care of itself. Most things are good for you; the exceptions are very rare.
- Henry James
I think theatre is by far the most rewarding experience for an actor. You get 4 weeks to rehearse your character and then at 7:30 pm you start acting and nobody stops you, acting with your entire soul.
- Christopher Eccleston
I love performing on stage the most. It's getting that instant reaction from a live audience. There are no boundaries, you can take your character as far as you want to, you can be the craziest person ever.
- Jennifer Ellison
Watch your thoughts for they become words.
Watch your words for they become actions.
Watch your actions for they become habits.
Watch your habits for they become your character.
And watch your character for it becomes your destiny.
What we think, we become.
My father always said that... and I think I am fine.
- Margaret Thatcher
The great thing about films is that you have access to this whole world of experts who teach you the skills your character's supposed to have.
- Joseph Fiennes
So much of movie acting is in the lighting. And in loving your characters. I try to know them, and with that intimacy comes love. And now, I love Voldemort.
- Ralph Fiennes
Yet as a director, I don't feel you have to identify with your characters as a requirement to make a movie.
- David Fincher
Your reputation is what you're perceived to be,
Your character is what you really are
- John Wooden
Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
- John Wooden
I can't imagine how anyone can say: "I'm weak," and then remain so. After all, if you know it, why not fight against it, why not try to train your character? The answer was: "Because it's so much easier not to!
- Anne Frank
You don't build your character by doing what everybody else is doing.
- Carlos Ghosn
When all is said and done the only thing you'll have left is your character.
- Vince Gill
Success is always temporary. When all is said and one, the only thing you'll have left is your character.
- Vince Gill
You play your character and it isn't right to step out of it. You have to stay in that character.
- Robert Goulet
LAW 25
Re-Create Yourself
Do not accept the roles that society foists on you. Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience. Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define if for you. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.
- Robert Greene
Your lyrics lack subtlety! You can't just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!
- Matt Groening
Don't resist the urge to burn down the stronghold, kill off the main love interest or otherwise foul up the lives of your characters.
- Patricia Hamill
Never argue with your characters; they know themselves better than you do.
- Laurell K Hamilton
My characters surprise me constantly. My characters are like my friends - I can give them advice, but they don't have to take it. If your characters are real, then they surprise you, just like real people.
- Laurell K Hamilton
You get the part, sign the contract and start to realize millions of people follow this guy and know more about your character than you do.
- Chris Hemsworth
I have women coming up to me and saying: 'I love your character! She's so empowered. She takes control; she gets what she wants.' That's another side of her. And I respect that in Joan. She says and does things that I would never allow myself to do.
- Christina Hendricks
Mike Leigh encourages you to choose a person that you know to base your character on. You write a whole list of people that you know and you go through that list in great depth with him. And then he chooses one of those people from your list.
- Jane Horrocks
Military leaders aren't made. They are born. To be a good leader, you have to have something in your character to cause people to follow you.
- Jimmy Johnson
Believe in your character. Animate (or write) with sincerity.
- Glen Keane
While your character flaws may have created mild problems for other people, they will create major problems for your spouse and your marriage.
- Timothy Keller
Some days being a writer consists of telling yourself you aren't insane, your characters are.
- Nevea Lane
With any actor, if you know your character well enough, you'll know pretty much what he would say under any circumstance, or whatever situation might rear its head.
- Denis Leary
Daughter, we didn't need your note - or a prince's visit - to tell us you'd done nothing wrong. We know the daughter we raised. We fear for your future, but never for your character. You take our love and our trust wherever you wander.
Father.
- Gail Carson Levine
Your character will be what you yourself choose to make it.
- John Lubbock
If you're a writer, you'll know it by the distinct feeling of only being able to breathe properly when alone with your characters. All other times, I'm panting--just pining for the next time I can be with them.
- Karen Luellen
...you can't write well with only the nice parts of your character, and only about nice things. And I don't want even to try anymore. I want to use everything, including hate and envy and lust and fear.
- Alison Lurie
There's always a concern as an actor that you'll be boring unless your character is swinging from a chandelier.
- Matthew Macfadyen
Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habit. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
- Lao Tzu
Your value lies not in status or title, but in the roots of your character and depth of your compassion.
- Mollie Marti
You can never know enough about your characters
- W Somerset Maugham
Your success stops where your character stops. You can never rise above the limitations of your character.
- John C Maxwell
What I've learned in my life, it's a very interesting social study for me, to go back and forth between being the guy at home and being the guy on the road and being the guy in studio and being the guy in the interview. The environment around you has so much to do with your character, and when I'm home, my character really changes quite a bit.
- John Mayer
Develop your characters well enough that they do stupid things on their own.
- Rebecca Mckinsey
Match play really exposes your character and how much of a will to win you have in your heart.
- Johnny Miller
Work on your character and a good life will come to you.
- Donald Miller
I hate the analyzing thing. People say, 'Why do you think your character did that? I don't know. I'm not an analyst, and they're not in psychotherapy. Unless it's a film where they're in therapy.
- Samantha Morton
Basically, I think that there are some characters that you can just allow the truth of your character as a human being in your real life to come through.
- Edward James Olmos
There is a story, always ahead of you. Barely existing. Only gradually do you attach yourself to it and feed it. You discover the carapace that will contain and test your character. You will find in this way the path of your life.
- Michael Ondaatje
You think that you are an iconoclast, but you're not. You just move, or replace what you cannot have. If you fail at something, you retreat into something else. Nothing changes you.... I left you because I knew I could never change you. You would stand in the room so still sometimes, as if the greatest betrayal of yourself would be to reveal one more inch of your character.
- Michael Ondaatje
Character is one of most precious parts of you. You can't get involved in things that will damage your character.
- Rod Paige
You can't think about how people will perceive you or your character. All you can do is focus on your work. The rest is up to the universe. I've been acting for 16 years. I've done 55 movies and, in all seriousness, there's maybe five that are good and the rest are crap.
- Robert Patrick
One of the great things that you should never do that I learned from John Malkovich is to never judge your characters.
- Jeremy Piven
The most important thing is to just be good at what you do. You do a good job playing the character, and people will be taken up with your character, not your clothes.
- Victoria Pratt
Acts of bravery don't always take place on battle fields. They can take place in your heart, when you have the courage to honor your character, your intellect, your inclinations, and yes, your soul by listening to its clean, clear voice of direction instead of following the muddied messages of a timid world.
- Anna Quindlen
Tell the story as if it were only of interest to the small circle of your characters, of which you may be one. There is no other way to put life into the story.
- Horacio Quiroga
My preparation is mainly just knowing the lines and getting in and knowing where your character is, knowing what it's about and having ideas that you can put in on the day.
- Daniel Radcliffe
Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.
- Ayn Rand
That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call 'free will' is your mind's freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.
- Ayn Rand
You should think about your character. Know where you are changing, how you will be changed, what cannot be changed back again.
- Amy Tan
If you focus on the humanity of your stories, your characters, then the horror will be stronger, scarier. Without the humanity, the horror becomes nothing more than a tawdry parlor trick. All flash and no magic, and worst of all, no heart.
- Don Roff
If you treat your characters like people, they'll reward you by being fully developed individuals.
- Don Roff
Work on your character, let life fall into place.
- Sonia Rumzi
In order to appeal to a wider audience on network in order to survive, generally your characters need to be, at a base level, a little bit more likable.
- Shawn Ryan
Any new French female acquaintance would most likely have held herself aloof, eyeing you suspiciously until she had assessed your character and whether or not you posed a threat.
- Catherine Sanderson
Don't worry so much about your self-esteem. Worry more about your character. Integrity is its own reward.
- Laura Schlessinger
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
In writing, as in life, always be true to your character.
- Laurie Faria Stolarz
Your characters have to remain innocent of what your picture is after.
- Douglas Sirk
If you do not know the laws of right conduct, you cannot form your character.
- Swami Sivananda
In the world of your story, your outline is like the Ten Commandments. Unfortunately, your characters are all Atheists.
- Jefferson Smith
And whether you're drawn to gospel music or church music or honky-tonk music, it informs your character and it informs your talent.
- Bruce Springsteen
The time you spend alone with God will transform your character and increase your devotion. Then your integrity and godly behavior in an unbelieving world will make others long to know the Lord.
- Charles Stanley
Start as early as you can. Make tapes of your characters.
- Tara Strong
With all of the qualities of the scene-setting, the dialogue, the place and time and the time and place in which your characters move. And I want to move with the characters, move with them and describe the world in which they are living.
- Gay Talese
By the end, you should be inside your character, actually operating from within somebody else, and knowing him pretty well, as that person knows himself or herself. You're sort of a predator, an invader of people.
- William Trevor
I think I'm drawn to more villain-type characters, because it's so cool to get to say all the things you want to say. In Hollywood, you get to this position where you have to bite your tongue so much. You take all your experiences of not being able to say what you really want to say, and channel that through your character.
- Gabrielle Union
You never have a guarantee of tomorrow. Everyone's thread is held taut, just waiting for that last scissor cut to sever at any given moment. Live your life in the way you should live it, and look at your troubles as tests of faith. They build your character, like gold being tried by the fire; getting rid of all its faults.
- Jennifer Megan Varnadore
You don't know me. Don't ever think you know me. The only things you know about me are the things you made me do, and that illustrates your character, not mine.
- Rachel Vincent
That's what acting is - it's about... having the courage to allow your audience into the private moments of your characters' lives.
- Kerry Washington
Respect your characters, even the -minor ones. In art, as in life, everyone is the hero of their own particular story; it is worth thinking about what your minor characters' stories are, even though they may intersect only slightly with your protagonist's.
- Sarah Waters
- Stella Adler
Money is good, but it is not all about a man. You will have successes and reversals, but remember it is your reaction to each of them that counts for your character.
- Matthew Pearl
You will have many successes and reversals, my boy, but remember it is your reaction to each of them that counts for your character.
- Matthew Pearl
Drugs age you after mental excitement. Lethargy then. Why? Reaction. A lifetime in a night. Gradually changes your character.
- James Joyce
Try to think about more important things,' he said. 'Think about your soul, your character. Think about the freezer. It's a solid block of ice. It needs defrosting. There might a steak in there. Concentrate on things like that. There could be a meal in it.
- Jonathan Ames
The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you choose, what you think and what you do is who you become.
- Heraclitus
The sisters and brothers that you meet give you the materials which your character uses to build itself. It is said that some people are born great, others achieve it, some have it thrust upon them. In truth, the ways in which your character is built have to do with all three of those. Those around you, those you choose, and those who choose you.
- Maya Angelou
Ever hear the expression "write what you know?" My version says "write what you want to know." If you want to know about the history of Spain, write about the history of Spain - fiction or nonfiction. If your fascinated by the old west, maybe your character lives there.
- Amelia Atwater Rhodes
I might as well enquire," replied she, "why with so evident a design of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me against your will, against your reason, and even against your character?
- Jane Austen
May I ask you what these questions tend?'
'Merely to the illustration of your character,' said she, endeavouring to shake off her gravity. 'I am trying to make it out.'
'And what is your success?'
She shook her head. 'I do not get on at all. I hear such different accounts of you as puzzle me exceedingly.
- Jane Austen
The simplicity of your character makes you exquisitely incomprehensible to me.
- Oscar Wilde
Usually, it gets worse and worse as they downsize your character; mine just kept getting better.
- Christine Baranski
Parents look at me like I'm somebody pretty important, and say, We were raised on your characters, and now we're enjoying them all over again with our children.
- Joseph Barbera
Directors are always changing things at the last minute. Actors will do a scene, and the director will say, 'Okay, that was perfect, but this time, Bob, instead of saying "What's for dinner?" you say, "Wait a minute! Benzene is actually a hydrocarbon!" And say it with a Norwegian accent. Also, we think maybe your character should have no arms.
- Dave Barry
No matter how good the walls and the materials are; if the foundations are not strong, the building will not stand. By and by, in some upper room, a crack will appear; and men will say: "There is the crack; but the cause is the foundation." So if, in youth, you lay the foundation of your character wrongly, the penalty will be sure to follow. The crack may be far down in old age, but somewhere it will certainly appear.
- Henry Ward Beecher
If you have a very good concept of your character, you can snap into it.
- Sean Bean
By knowing your character so well you can't go wrong. All of us kind of fell into that.
- Camilla Belle
...I'm sorry, and a little dissatisfied as well. Miss Stacy told me long ago that by the time I was twenty my character would be formed, for good or evil. I don't feel that it's what it should be. It's full of flaws.' 'So's everybody's,' said Aunt Jamesina cheerfully. 'Mine's cracked in a hundred places. Your Miss Stacy likely meant that when you are twenty your character would have got its permanent bent in one direction or 'tother, and would go on developing in that line.
- L M Montgomery
You don't realize how much a part of your character is part of yourself until you are no longer playing that character.
- Julie Benz
Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation, for your character is what you are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
- Dale Carnegie
Never compromise your character's personality just to make a scene more exciting. Stories flow through your character, so never forget who they are.
- Giuseppe Bianco
We all lose our looks eventually. Better develop your character and interest in life.
- Jacqueline Bisset
Money is always on its way somewhere. What you do with it while it is in your keeping and the direction you send it in say much about you. Your treatment of and respect for money, how you make it, and how you spend it, reflect your character.
- Gary Ryan Blair
Things present themselves to you, and it's how you choose to deal with them that reveals who you are. We all say a lot of things, don't we, about who we are and how we think. But in the end it's your actions, how you respond to circumstance that reveals your character.
- Cate Blanchett
I have the embarrassing thing where often if you're watching a film, you kind of go through the emotions and the thought stages that your character went through, but you sort of do it with Tourette's. So I end up often crying when I'm crying, and looking angry when I'm looking angry, so it's pretty ugly.
- Cate Blanchett
The best books come from someplace deep inside.... Become emotionally involved. If you don't care about your characters, your readers won't either.
- Judy Blume
If you're very open to watching the world go by, with people's different tics, you absorb it all without realizing it and find ways to put something into your character. I'm not sure I'm always aware I'm mimicking someone.
- Emily Blunt
Music... will help dissolve your perplexities and purify your character and sensibilities, and in time of care and sorrow, will keep a fountain of joy alive in you.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.
- Ray Bradbury
The way you make an omelet reveals your character.
- Anthony Bourdain
To keep your character intact you cannot stoop to filthy acts. It makes it easier to stoop the next time.
- Katharine Hepburn
Tanner: My dear Tavy, your pious English habit of regarding the world as a moral gymnasium built expressly to strengthen your character in leads you to think about your own confounded principles when you should be thinking about other people's necessities.
- George Bernard Shaw
All your scholarship would be in vain if at the same time you do not build your character and attain mastery over your thoughts and your actions.
- Mahatma Gandhi
Unless you look like Brad Pitt, it's really hard to have full control of your character.
- Vincent Donofrio
In the initial season of a show, you're figuring out your character and their life and their background and you're putting together all the chapters of the book.
- Sophia Bush
Maybe the midnight disease was like that, too. After a while you lost the ability to distinguish between your fictional and actual words; you confused yourself with your characters, and the random happenings of your life with the machinations of a plot.
- Michael Chabon
Any time you get to dig deeper into your character, you welcome it, especially on a TV show.
- Josh Charles
In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations!
(Letter to Alexander Chekhov, May 10, 1886)
- Anton Chekhov
You love all your characters, even the ridiculous ones. You have to on some level; they're your weird creations in some kind of way. I don't even know how you approach the process of conceiving the characters if in a sense you hated them. It's just absurd.
- Joel Coen
Be fearless. Have the courage to take risks. Go where there are no guarantees. Get out of your comfort zone even if it means being uncomfortable. The road less traveled is sometimes fraught with barricades bumps and uncharted terrain. But it is on that road where your character is truly tested And have the courage to accept that you're not perfect nothing is and no one is and that's OK.
- Katie Couric
In real life, people are constantly saying one thing and doing another, but if you write your characters that way, the story becomes too hard to follow.
- Jessica Cutler
When you finish a film, if you believed in your character, you're empty.
- Jean Claude Van Damme
Make your characters want something right away even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.
- Kurt Vonnegut
Well, first of all, you read the script a million times. Because what the script gives you are given circumstances. Given circumstances are all the facts of your character.
- Viola Davis
Not long ago I learned from a certain person in considerable detail about the worthlessness of your character. All the same, it is you who have given me strength, you who have put the rainbow of revolution in my breast. It is you who have given an object to my life.
- Osamu Dazai
There's different ways to be impacted by truth. One is to read the scriptures. Another is to read other works by other people who have read the scriptures, non fiction for example. Another is to do studies. Another is to go to a place of worship. Another thing is to sit and listen to someone who's speaking. There's all kinds of ways. Another way is to write. About the truth. Discover the struggle through your character.
- Ted Dekker
God is more interested in your character than your comfort. God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your life happy.
- Rick Warren
Your reputation is in the hands of others. That's what the reputation is. You can't control that. The only thing you can control is your character.
- Wayne Dyer
Live as you like best, and your character will take care of itself. Most things are good for you; the exceptions are very rare.
- Henry James
I think theatre is by far the most rewarding experience for an actor. You get 4 weeks to rehearse your character and then at 7:30 pm you start acting and nobody stops you, acting with your entire soul.
- Christopher Eccleston
I love performing on stage the most. It's getting that instant reaction from a live audience. There are no boundaries, you can take your character as far as you want to, you can be the craziest person ever.
- Jennifer Ellison
Watch your thoughts for they become words.
Watch your words for they become actions.
Watch your actions for they become habits.
Watch your habits for they become your character.
And watch your character for it becomes your destiny.
What we think, we become.
My father always said that... and I think I am fine.
- Margaret Thatcher
The great thing about films is that you have access to this whole world of experts who teach you the skills your character's supposed to have.
- Joseph Fiennes
So much of movie acting is in the lighting. And in loving your characters. I try to know them, and with that intimacy comes love. And now, I love Voldemort.
- Ralph Fiennes
Yet as a director, I don't feel you have to identify with your characters as a requirement to make a movie.
- David Fincher
Your reputation is what you're perceived to be,
Your character is what you really are
- John Wooden
Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
- John Wooden
I can't imagine how anyone can say: "I'm weak," and then remain so. After all, if you know it, why not fight against it, why not try to train your character? The answer was: "Because it's so much easier not to!
- Anne Frank
You don't build your character by doing what everybody else is doing.
- Carlos Ghosn
When all is said and done the only thing you'll have left is your character.
- Vince Gill
Success is always temporary. When all is said and one, the only thing you'll have left is your character.
- Vince Gill
You play your character and it isn't right to step out of it. You have to stay in that character.
- Robert Goulet
LAW 25
Re-Create Yourself
Do not accept the roles that society foists on you. Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience. Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define if for you. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.
- Robert Greene
Your lyrics lack subtlety! You can't just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!
- Matt Groening
Don't resist the urge to burn down the stronghold, kill off the main love interest or otherwise foul up the lives of your characters.
- Patricia Hamill
Never argue with your characters; they know themselves better than you do.
- Laurell K Hamilton
My characters surprise me constantly. My characters are like my friends - I can give them advice, but they don't have to take it. If your characters are real, then they surprise you, just like real people.
- Laurell K Hamilton
You get the part, sign the contract and start to realize millions of people follow this guy and know more about your character than you do.
- Chris Hemsworth
I have women coming up to me and saying: 'I love your character! She's so empowered. She takes control; she gets what she wants.' That's another side of her. And I respect that in Joan. She says and does things that I would never allow myself to do.
- Christina Hendricks
Mike Leigh encourages you to choose a person that you know to base your character on. You write a whole list of people that you know and you go through that list in great depth with him. And then he chooses one of those people from your list.
- Jane Horrocks
Military leaders aren't made. They are born. To be a good leader, you have to have something in your character to cause people to follow you.
- Jimmy Johnson
Believe in your character. Animate (or write) with sincerity.
- Glen Keane
While your character flaws may have created mild problems for other people, they will create major problems for your spouse and your marriage.
- Timothy Keller
Some days being a writer consists of telling yourself you aren't insane, your characters are.
- Nevea Lane
With any actor, if you know your character well enough, you'll know pretty much what he would say under any circumstance, or whatever situation might rear its head.
- Denis Leary
Daughter, we didn't need your note - or a prince's visit - to tell us you'd done nothing wrong. We know the daughter we raised. We fear for your future, but never for your character. You take our love and our trust wherever you wander.
Father.
- Gail Carson Levine
Your character will be what you yourself choose to make it.
- John Lubbock
If you're a writer, you'll know it by the distinct feeling of only being able to breathe properly when alone with your characters. All other times, I'm panting--just pining for the next time I can be with them.
- Karen Luellen
...you can't write well with only the nice parts of your character, and only about nice things. And I don't want even to try anymore. I want to use everything, including hate and envy and lust and fear.
- Alison Lurie
There's always a concern as an actor that you'll be boring unless your character is swinging from a chandelier.
- Matthew Macfadyen
Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habit. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
- Lao Tzu
Your value lies not in status or title, but in the roots of your character and depth of your compassion.
- Mollie Marti
You can never know enough about your characters
- W Somerset Maugham
Your success stops where your character stops. You can never rise above the limitations of your character.
- John C Maxwell
What I've learned in my life, it's a very interesting social study for me, to go back and forth between being the guy at home and being the guy on the road and being the guy in studio and being the guy in the interview. The environment around you has so much to do with your character, and when I'm home, my character really changes quite a bit.
- John Mayer
Develop your characters well enough that they do stupid things on their own.
- Rebecca Mckinsey
Match play really exposes your character and how much of a will to win you have in your heart.
- Johnny Miller
Work on your character and a good life will come to you.
- Donald Miller
I hate the analyzing thing. People say, 'Why do you think your character did that? I don't know. I'm not an analyst, and they're not in psychotherapy. Unless it's a film where they're in therapy.
- Samantha Morton
Basically, I think that there are some characters that you can just allow the truth of your character as a human being in your real life to come through.
- Edward James Olmos
There is a story, always ahead of you. Barely existing. Only gradually do you attach yourself to it and feed it. You discover the carapace that will contain and test your character. You will find in this way the path of your life.
- Michael Ondaatje
You think that you are an iconoclast, but you're not. You just move, or replace what you cannot have. If you fail at something, you retreat into something else. Nothing changes you.... I left you because I knew I could never change you. You would stand in the room so still sometimes, as if the greatest betrayal of yourself would be to reveal one more inch of your character.
- Michael Ondaatje
Character is one of most precious parts of you. You can't get involved in things that will damage your character.
- Rod Paige
You can't think about how people will perceive you or your character. All you can do is focus on your work. The rest is up to the universe. I've been acting for 16 years. I've done 55 movies and, in all seriousness, there's maybe five that are good and the rest are crap.
- Robert Patrick
One of the great things that you should never do that I learned from John Malkovich is to never judge your characters.
- Jeremy Piven
The most important thing is to just be good at what you do. You do a good job playing the character, and people will be taken up with your character, not your clothes.
- Victoria Pratt
Acts of bravery don't always take place on battle fields. They can take place in your heart, when you have the courage to honor your character, your intellect, your inclinations, and yes, your soul by listening to its clean, clear voice of direction instead of following the muddied messages of a timid world.
- Anna Quindlen
Tell the story as if it were only of interest to the small circle of your characters, of which you may be one. There is no other way to put life into the story.
- Horacio Quiroga
My preparation is mainly just knowing the lines and getting in and knowing where your character is, knowing what it's about and having ideas that you can put in on the day.
- Daniel Radcliffe
Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.
- Ayn Rand
That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call 'free will' is your mind's freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.
- Ayn Rand
You should think about your character. Know where you are changing, how you will be changed, what cannot be changed back again.
- Amy Tan
If you focus on the humanity of your stories, your characters, then the horror will be stronger, scarier. Without the humanity, the horror becomes nothing more than a tawdry parlor trick. All flash and no magic, and worst of all, no heart.
- Don Roff
If you treat your characters like people, they'll reward you by being fully developed individuals.
- Don Roff
Work on your character, let life fall into place.
- Sonia Rumzi
In order to appeal to a wider audience on network in order to survive, generally your characters need to be, at a base level, a little bit more likable.
- Shawn Ryan
Any new French female acquaintance would most likely have held herself aloof, eyeing you suspiciously until she had assessed your character and whether or not you posed a threat.
- Catherine Sanderson
Don't worry so much about your self-esteem. Worry more about your character. Integrity is its own reward.
- Laura Schlessinger
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
In writing, as in life, always be true to your character.
- Laurie Faria Stolarz
Your characters have to remain innocent of what your picture is after.
- Douglas Sirk
If you do not know the laws of right conduct, you cannot form your character.
- Swami Sivananda
In the world of your story, your outline is like the Ten Commandments. Unfortunately, your characters are all Atheists.
- Jefferson Smith
And whether you're drawn to gospel music or church music or honky-tonk music, it informs your character and it informs your talent.
- Bruce Springsteen
The time you spend alone with God will transform your character and increase your devotion. Then your integrity and godly behavior in an unbelieving world will make others long to know the Lord.
- Charles Stanley
Start as early as you can. Make tapes of your characters.
- Tara Strong
With all of the qualities of the scene-setting, the dialogue, the place and time and the time and place in which your characters move. And I want to move with the characters, move with them and describe the world in which they are living.
- Gay Talese
By the end, you should be inside your character, actually operating from within somebody else, and knowing him pretty well, as that person knows himself or herself. You're sort of a predator, an invader of people.
- William Trevor
I think I'm drawn to more villain-type characters, because it's so cool to get to say all the things you want to say. In Hollywood, you get to this position where you have to bite your tongue so much. You take all your experiences of not being able to say what you really want to say, and channel that through your character.
- Gabrielle Union
You never have a guarantee of tomorrow. Everyone's thread is held taut, just waiting for that last scissor cut to sever at any given moment. Live your life in the way you should live it, and look at your troubles as tests of faith. They build your character, like gold being tried by the fire; getting rid of all its faults.
- Jennifer Megan Varnadore
You don't know me. Don't ever think you know me. The only things you know about me are the things you made me do, and that illustrates your character, not mine.
- Rachel Vincent
That's what acting is - it's about... having the courage to allow your audience into the private moments of your characters' lives.
- Kerry Washington
Respect your characters, even the -minor ones. In art, as in life, everyone is the hero of their own particular story; it is worth thinking about what your minor characters' stories are, even though they may intersect only slightly with your protagonist's.
- Sarah Waters
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