Character quotes
14.8K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside character — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"When I'm in Los Angeles, it's hard to be creative. For me, New Orleans is one of those places that's like a muse. You can hear music on the streets. There's a certain character the city has that inspires you when you're needing to write lyrics and come up with melodies and come up with rhythm and blues. The city has a pulse and it's an inspiration for me."
"Too often do reviewers remind us of the mob of Astrologers, Chaldeans, and Soothsayers gathered before 'the writing on the wall' and unable to read the characters or make known the interpretation."
"To women who please me only by their faces, I am the very devil when I find out they have neither souls nor hearts — when they open to me a perspective of flatness, triviality, and perhaps imbecility, coarseness, and ill-temper: but to the clear eye and eloquent tongue, to the soul made of fire, and the character that bends but does not break — at once supple and stable, tractable and consistent — I am ever tender and true. (Mr Rochester to Jane)"
"I remember my first commercial. This is really great 'Degrassi' trivia: The character Toby on 'Degrassi,' played by Jake Goldsbie, he and I were in both of our first commercial ever when we were four. It was for Tiger Toys, this old Game Boy-type thing. Both of our lines were, 'Mommy, I can do it!"
"When it was first proposed to establish laboratories at Cambridge, Todhunter, the mathematician, objected that it was unnecessary for students to see experiments performed, since the results could be vouched for by their teachers, all of them of the highest character, and many of them clergymen of the Church of England."
"The first essential character [of civilization], I should say, is forethought. This, indeed, is what mainly distinguishes men from brutes and adults from children."
"Broadly speaking, Protestants like to be good and have invented theology in order to keep themselves so, whereas Catholics like to be bad and have invented theology in order to keep their neighbors good. Hence, the social character of Catholicism and the individual character of Protestantism."
"There's always that key to every character that lets you go to those places you need to go to. No matter how much you might hate the character, it makes you understand it."
"I had a very hard time accepting myself as a character actress, because I wanted to be glamorous and a leading lady like everybody else. I looked in the mirror and thought I looked pretty good, but casting didn't ever see me that way."
"I was so frustrated with my whole life that I walked up this hilltop and screamed at the heavens. It was very dramatic - but then again, I am an actress - and I said, "Fine! I'll be a character actress! Just tell me what you want me to do!" I was so angry at the universe."
"Patrick Swayze had done The Outsiders already - he was certainly the star of our class - and for a big, sexy, horseback-ridin' Texan to come over and tell me that I'm beautiful, and look me right in the eye and make me accept that there's a beauty in the characters I play meant so much to me."
"Patrick Swayze was risk-taking - because he not only did a transvestite, but in Donnie Darko, he played a pedophile! Talk about a risky thing for a movie star, and he jumped right in. We even shot some of those video sequences of his character out on his ranch. I mean, he opened his heart and his ranch to us. He was just an awesome guy."
"The guys that write Once Upon a Time were major writers on Lost, and we had lunch when I started on OUAT and the first thing I said to them was, "I spent five years on Lost, you have to tell me, was my character good or bad?" They looked at me and said, "We have no idea." That's why you have to make your own backstory. I decided Widmore was the evilest of the evil, but in the end, not even the writers knew."
"Besides the mistakes that are pointed out, I love the way readers become involved with the characters. When readers start asking about character motivations instead of concentrating on the special effects, it means you're connecting with them on a personal level."
"It was great for that to be my first movie with such a wonderful cast, and such a huge movie. And now I get to do The Fighting Temptations, which is coming out soon-it wasn't much of a character, it was more of a real person, so I got to show more of my acting range."
"Playing Etta James in the movie 'Cadillac Records' really changed me. It was a darker character, and I realized that if anything is too comfortable, I want to run from it. It's no fun being safe."
"I don't have any complex plans for playing a character. I think all I try to do is not make too many bad guy faces and not ever try to seem too good. I just try to put it in the middle somewhere."
"Truly a legend in our time, John Templeton understands that the real measure of a person's success in life is not financial accomplishment but moral integrity and inner character."
"I never went after character payments. I'm pretty much terrible at naming characters, so I usually name them after people I know."
"I used to search and search for that actor or actress who's exactly what's in my head. But you have to realize you have to cast whoever's super talented and super funny, and then the character has to become at least partially theirs."
