Quotes About Characters

Old-time tennis fans like to say the 1980s produced the greatest cast of characters and performers in tennis—McEnroe

Characters carrying the playwright's disapproval is a un-Shakespearian burden.

Well, finally, the events I've been through have been tremendously complicated. All kinds of characters have come on the scene, and strange things have happened one after another, to the point where, if I try to think about them in order, I lose track.

I have a thing about losers. Flaws in oneself open you up to others with flaws. Not that Dostoyevsky's characters don't generate phatos, but they're flawed in ways that don't come across as faults. And while I'm on the subject, Tolstoy's characters' faults are so epic and out of scale, they're as static as backdrops.

In writing a series of stories about the same characters, plan the whole series in advance in some detail, to avoid contradictions and inconsistencies.

Just the textures of things are really important to me as I'm writing; I think atmospherics and visuals can have such emotional impact if you can harness the thematic thread between how scenes look and how your characters feel. I like to tug on that thread.

Working on 'Drive', a lot of fun. This is Tim Minear whom I've worked with before on 'Firefly' of course. He called me up and said, 'I've got a part for you that you will love,' and I love Tim's writing. I love his stories. I love his characters, his dialogue. He has a knack for reveals and he has a knack for moments.

Charlotte Bronte was writing about sex. I supposed Jane Austen was, too. Where do you get a hero like Darcy unless you are writing about sex?

I think it's a short story writer's duty, as well as writing well about emotions and characters, to write story.

Making playlists can kill a whole afternoon for me. I like building very specific playlists for new writing projects. In a strange way, choosing certain songs is part of the process of plotting the book out. I pick songs that I think with resonate with characters, their personality quirks, relationship dynamics, action scenes, and so on.

When I'm writing the book I'm laughing at just how overblown the characters seemed. How full of himself he seems. But I didn't get far enough in the series to really drive the joke of it home.

For me, writing is an experience. It's an exercise in which I want to discover myself by taking my characters to the edges of human experience, to the edges of themselves and then, asking certain questions - about love, what does it mean to love? What's beauty? What is true beauty? What does it mean to be insane - crazy?

I really enjoy the writing process because I can do it from my house. I can create these characters and take them in the different directions that I want to take them. You have a lot of freedom as a writer.

My writing process often begins with a question. I write down ideas and let them stew for about a year. Then, when I sit down to write, I make a list of characters and try to see how they fit.

Writers often like to talk about how intuitive the writing process is, but in truth, building a book is a remarkably unintuitive task. Or, to put it more accurately, you need a lot more than intuition. You need plot and characters. You need a setting. You need a theme that is relevant and supported by your text.

It's funny: the reason I did 'Beautiful Creatures' was the same reason I did everything else - even though it was a genre film and existed at a more studio level, the script and the characters were so well written.

I made my living in comedy, but I'm not a silly person. I've got all these sides to me. Even in my movies that I've written myself, the characters sometimes border on great anger or nutsiness or other kinds of behavior. I'm not just doing fart jokes for two hours.

Most country songs, certainly all the stuff I've written, are stories driven by characters.

It was in a stonecutter's house where I went to have a headstone made for Raftery's grave that I found a manuscript book of his poems, written out in the clear beautiful Irish characters.

Theater, at the end of the day, is about ideas. It's about very large ideas. And if the play is beautifully written or smartly written and has incredible characters you follow on the journey, you take home these larger ideas. Whether it's 'Angels in America' or 'Lucky Guy' or 'Normal Heart,' you follow this moment-to-moment journey as an audience.

I had written for the theater and didn't know that I knew how to write for film. Ultimately, I think it's just trusting your voice, trusting your characters, and then telling them in a different medium.

Playing dysfunctional characters or crazy characters is only fun if they're well written. So I have been lucky enough to be asked to play crazy people who are very well written.

In anything I've ever written, all the characters sound like me, which I don't think is a bad thing. It makes sense. But I had always admired filmmakers who made movies that didn't sound like them at all.

None of my characters seem to have had sex yet - I haven't written about that. And I wouldn't want to deal with what's happening in Oregon - the school shootings.