Quotes About Characters

I like involved projects. I'm driven by the idea of characters and the song-cycle form is similar to a musical.

What I loved about 'Goodfellas' is that it's a film about bad behavior - but told with great energy and without judgment - but it doesn't actually shy away from the consequences of that behavior in the characters' lives, which I think is similar in 'Keep the Lights On.'

I would say that Pixar is doing for animation what Chaplin did for film, infusing it with heart and characters that you care about and stories that you lose yourself in. They are similar revolutionaries and changing a medium.

I don't really get a buzz from playing characters that are similar to me 'cause that's not acting to me.

Ultimately, if you look at the characters in my films, you'll see a lot of similarities going all the way back to 'Swingers' with Vince Vaughn's character.

I don't try to find similarities with my characters because then it becomes difficult to act.

I wanted to keep the same general attitude we created for the show in that there are some similarities to 'The X-Files,' so some of the realistic atmosphere that we created on 'The X-Files' is the same that we've created for 'Millennium.' It's an atmosphere that helps the audience invest themselves in the characters and believe what they're doing.

A good role is one that moves along with the story, like 'Baazigar' and 'Kareeb' for example. Similarly, I agreed to '36 China Town' and 'Phir Hera Pheri' because my characters in both films have a graph and are significant in moving the story ahead.

In my own work, I don't have favorite characters, but I have characters that I relate to the most. And I relate the most to Simon from 'The Mortal Instruments,' and also Tessa from 'The Infernal Devices.' They're more sort of bookish and shy characters.

I don't usually direct actors in the classic sense of that word. Instead, I try to remind the characters before the shoot what's going on in a very simple way. I then watch them, their inventions as actors, approving or not approving what they're doing.

We were going for simplicity with the Minions and, frankly, I think that's a huge appeal of the characters. They're essentially pills with goggles. A child can draw them quite easily.

My characters have undergone the same process of simplification as the colors. Now that they have been simplified, they appear more human and alive than if they had been represented in all their details.

These characters might not be interesting to anyone else but they're absolutely fascinating to us. They are us. Meaner, smarter, sexier versions of ourselves. It's fun to be with them because they're wrestling with the same issue that has its hooks into us. They're our soul mates, our lovers, our best friends. Even the villains. Especially the villains.

Friends sometimes ask, "Don't you get lonely sitting by yourself all day?" At first it seemed odd to hear myself answer No. Then I realized that I was not alone; I was in the book; I was with the characters. I was with my Self.

Dreams have never been this hot! Pleasures of the Night sizzles as a romance, enthralls as a paranormal, and captivates with a fantastic cast of characters. I didn't want the 'night' to end!

A good reader pays attention to everything. The surface of the prose. The structure of the book. The tense. The point of view. Perhaps to those even before the characters. Then comes the setting. The story can often come last.

When she was very small, her mother used to tell her that books were alive in a special way. Between the covers, characters were living their lives, enacting their dramas, falling in and out of love, finding trouble, working out their problems. Even sitting closed on a shelf, a book had a life of its own. When someone opened the book, that was when the magic happened.

Between the covers, characters were living their lives, enacting their dramas, falling in and out of love, finding trouble, working out their problems. Even sitting closed on a shelf, a book had a life of its own. When someone opened the book, that was when the magic happened.

I was so enthused with literature -- not stuck on literature, but in love with letters -- that I was easily inclined to bring all the conversations round to works I had read or fictitious characters from my readings about whom I loved to talk

I know you've all heard the advice, "Show, don't tell." The best writers don't tell you, and quite frankly they don't just show you -- they make you feel it, live it, taste it, touch it. Storytelling is about being in the moment with the characters.

Narcissism, justly lamented for doing so much damage, especially within the family unit, could also work miracles, as when a fundamentally apathetic collection of illiterates gets wind that they appear as characters in a book and transforms overnight into a bunch of rabbinical scholars.

I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I'm afraid of.

So, why do you write these strong female characters? Because you're still asking me that question." [ Equality Now speech, May 15, 2006]