Quotes About Characterization

I'll tell you where I stand on the issues, and then I'll let the pundits decide how to label me.

The typical socialist... a prim little man with a white-collar job, usually a secret teetotaler and often with vegetarian leanings.

Perhaps the book's greatest weakness is its romantic depiction of President Kennedy as a kind of knight in shining armor.

People in general are used to seeing me as the naughty girl because that's what they've always cast me as.

What I read and what I go to the movies for is not to find a best friend, not to find inspirations, not necessarily for a hero's journey. It's to be involved with characters that are maybe incredibly different from me, that may be incredibly bad but that feel authentic.

I try to write parts for women that are as complicated and interesting as women actually are. --Nora Ephron

The author, John Steinbeck, had been a pussy, too afraid to make anything happen. He'd abandoned his characters to suffer. As had God.

Instead of writing about a character, write from within the character.

I have a distaste for the term "supporting characters." It's not that it's a bad term, exactly, but it does call to mind a jockstrap or a bra—something created only to lift and support something else, that's purely architectural and not alive with that precious spark of life we assume characters should have.

Americans see everything too simply-a good guy, a bad guy, does he have a white hat or a black hat? But it's the wrong question.

In the end you should probably know your characters as well as you know yourself. Not only what they had for breakfast this morning, but what they wanted to have for breakfast.

I dig out beautiful caves behind my characters; I think that gives exactly what I want; humanity, humor, depth. The idea is that the caves shall connect, & each comes to daylight at the present moment.

Physically, he was a sickly bald-headed man resembling a pallid gland. His

People decide what you're like before they even get to know you.

Leila just mentally tagged the three of them with randomly chosen, slightly exotic names – Tim, John and Sarah.

She had shins like fireplugs and hips as wide as an oven door. Her head was stuck directly onto her shoulders with the usual Prussian predilection for omitting the neck, and to watch her turn her head in the direction of Aunt Marvel's yodeling demands for attention was to watch a large and noble owl.

The women are always vixens or monsters. They can't just be normal people in the book.

My films are often characterized by the lack of women present in them, except for this last one [Once Upon a Time in America].

I create women characters by watching the female staff at my studio. Half the staff are women.

You don't want the men to be written in a three-dimensional way and the women, not.

Often the starting point for characters, for me, is finding a little, most minor detail, and I'll go from there.

Is Eight based on a real person? You describe her so intimately. It's like I'm peeking in on something I shouldn't see." "Do you think Eight's real?" "Definitely," she said, nodding. "Then she is." "That's not an answer." "I know." He grinned.

I imagine that my characters have become much more complicated than when I first began, which would be normal.

I want to give my characters nuance.