Quotes About Characters

Like a clock of life on which the seconds race, the page number hangs over the characters in a novel. Where is the reader who has not once lifted to it a fleeting, fearful glance?

had the rights to make all the sequels and exploit the characters. "I made a presentation that said, here's the 15% of Pixar that Disney does not already own.

It was a story filled with the most unhappy, mean characters that I've ever seen.

We must remember that there's more than one story and plot in every novel. There are at least as many stories as there are main characters, and each of these stories has to have multiple plots to keep it going – blood and bone, nerve and tissue, forgotten longing and unknown events.

Sir Everard had never been himself a student, and, like his sister Miss Rachael Waverley, held the vulgar doctrine, that idleness is incompatible with reading of any kind, and that the mere tracing the alphabetical characters with the eye, is in itself a useful and meritorious task, without scrupulously considering what ideas or doctrines they may happen to convey. With

In any reading experience there is an implied dialogue among author, narrator, the other characters, and the reader.

We could just as reasonably base our number system on eight (if we were cartoon characters) or four (if we were lobsters) or even two (if we were dolphins).

Perhaps we would all like to love more richly than we do. Many novels are about love—most are, perhaps—and it gives us pleasure to identify with the loving characters. They are free, and we are not. But we may not want to admit this; for to do so might make us feel, consciously, that our own loves are inadequate.

We probably read Shakespeare in the first place for his stories, afterwards for his characters. . . . To become intimate with Shakespeare in this way is a great enrichment of mind and instruction of conscience. Then, by degrees, as we go on reading this world-teacher, lines of insight and beauty take possession of us, and unconsciously mould our judgments of men and things and of the great issues of life.

Plot is the series of events that keep your characters together until issues are resolved at the end of the book.

Garris had pet names for all of them. Mahler was the Mad Doktor. Franz Liszt was Son of Lovecraft. Mendelssohn was Santa Claus Meets the Hell's Angels. Beethoven was the High School Principal.

About John Updike's Rabbit Run] The author fails to convince us that his puppets are interesting in themselves, or that their plight has implications that transcend their narrow world.

Fiction that fails to engage an audience with the emotional intricacies of viable characters will, for many in that audience, simply alienate them with its profound irrelevance at the human level.

No characters in 'Stay Close ' including the leads, are black and white. I want them to be grey. I think that makes for a much more interesting reading experience, something that will stay with you a little bit longer.

What I remember myself from films, and what I love about films, is specific scenes and characters.

I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense. Characters become more fully developed and the meaning of earlier incidents begins to become clear. And when we to the end, there is a satisfying sense of completeness to it.

When people ask me what makes movies great, it's the material.

If you wrote your own characters, they didn't disappoint you like real people did.

I picked up one of the books and flipped through it. Don't get me wrong, I like reading. But some books should come with warning labels: Caution: contains characters and plots guaranteed to induce sleepiness. Do not attempt to operate heavy machinery after ingesting more than one chapter. Has been known to cause blindness, seizures and a terminal loathing of literature. Should only be taken under the supervision of a highly trained English teacher. Preferably one who grades on the curve.

But see, that's the thing about movies. Nothing is left to the imagination. You read a book, and you see a picture of the characters and the scenes in your mind. You don't have that with a movie. It's all either up there on the screen laid out for you, or it isn't there at all.

the history of science cannot be written by pulling scientific 'firsts' out of their historical context, but only by seeing with eyes and minds of our historical characters.

People who are well-known, famous people, I think, make very poor characters for fiction. They make good characters for gossip columns. But not for fiction.

The trip down the Yangtze from Chongqing (formerly Chungking, Chiang Kai-shek's World War II capital in Sichuan) to Yichang at the exit of the gorges took one and a half days. To look up and see, high up on the perpendicular surface of sheer rock, huge Chinese characters carved thousands of years ago to commemorate events and ideas was to be awed.

As a writer I want everybody to get a chance to voice their opinions. If each character thinks that they're telling the truth, then it's valid. Then at the end of the film, I leave it up to the audience to decide who did the right thing.