Character quotes

Character

14.8K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.

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Character quotes (page 117 of 739)

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Ang Lee Director, Producer
Character

"When you go for something because you're curious about it, you get psyched up about the chance of getting into it. It's like an actor meets a role, and you slip into that body and see what happens, to experience certain conditions, to adopt a certain character. Even shooting is a study of the character. I think both the character and the actor, and eventually the filmmaker - myself - are finding a way to accept their environment and being accepted and feel comfortable of themselves."

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Anne Lamott Author, Essayist
Character

"My main problem is that over and over again, I try to get all my characters to say stuff that I think is so witty or erudite you know, so that everybody will go."

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Anne Lamott Author, Essayist
Character

"Get to know your characters as well as you can let there be something at stake, and then let the chips fall where they may."

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Anne Lamott Author, Essayist
Character

"Just don't pretend you know more about your characters than they do, because you don't. Stay open to them. It's teatime and all the dolls are at the table. Listen. It's that simple."

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Anne Lamott Author, Essayist
Character

"Plot springs from character... I've always sort of believed that these people inside me- these characters- know who they are and what they're about and what happens, and they need me to help get it down on paper because they don't type."

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Anne Lamott Author, Essayist
Character

"Over and over I feel as if my characters know who they are, and what happens to them, and where they have been and where they will go, and what they are capable of doing, but they need me to write it down for them because their handwriting is so bad."

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Anne Lamott Author, Essayist
Character

"You are going to love some of your characters because they are you or some facet of you, and you are going to hate some of your characters for the same reason."

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Ansel Adams Photographer
Character

"I know the importance of highly trained awareness of the “moment” and the immediate and intuitive response of the photographer. It should be obvious to all that photographers whose images possess character and quality have attained them only by continued practice and total dedication to the medium."

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Anthony Bourdain Chef, Author, Television Personality
Character

"I think there's a great storytelling tradition in the restaurant business that tends to attract people with an oral tradition of bulls - ting and bollocking. Creative people, people for whom the 9-to-5 world is not attractive or impossible. It seems that way. There are a lot of stories in the business, and a lot of characters - and it seems to attract its share of artists and writers and people who hope to do something creative in their lives."

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Arnold Schwarzenegger Actor, Bodybuilder, Politician
Character

"I'm not a person that thinks back in the first place. I think forward. And it's always been less that people didn't get the character, but more people being mad that the movie fell short. Or people would say they are glad the movie went in the toilet. And I totally agree with them. I think there are some movies I made that it was a good thing they went into the toilet, because they weren't good enough. The director f - -ed up, or the production was too small, or I screwed up, whatever the reasons are."

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Arthur Conan Doyle Writer, Physician
Character

"The most serious point in the case is the disposition of the child." What on earth has that to do with it?" I ejaculated. My dear Watson, you as a medical man are continually gaining insight as to the tendencies of a child by the study of the parents. Don't you see that the converse is equally valid. I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children."

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Arthur Schopenhauer Philosopher
Character

"That the outer man is a picture of the inner, and the face an expression and revelation of the whole character, is a presumption likely enough in itself, and therefore a safe one to go on; borne out as it is by the fact that people are always anxious to see anyone who has made himself famous. Photography offers the most complete satisfaction of our curiosity."

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Arthur Schopenhauer Philosopher
Character

"the brut first knows death when it dies, but man draws consciously nearer to it every hour that he lives; and this makes his life at times a questionable good even to him who has not recognised this character of constant anaihilation in the whole of life."

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Arthur Schopenhauer Philosopher
Character

"Poetry is related to philosophy as experience is related to empirical science. Experience makes us acquainted with the phenomenon in the particular and by means of examples, science embraces the whole of phenomena by means of general conceptions. So poetry seeks to make us acquainted with the Platonic Ideas through the particular and by means of examples. Philosophy aims at teaching, as a whole and in general, the inner nature of things which expresses itself in these. One sees even here that poetry bears more the character of youth, philosophy that of old age."

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Aya Cash Actress
Character

"Sometimes the characters that I'm most resistant to are the ones that I find the most satisfying to play, because you have to dig deeper and you have to find different parts of yourself that are not necessarily the first thing you access and that's fun and interesting."

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Ayn Rand Philosopher, Novelist
Character

"An idea is a light turned on in a man's soul. Comic-strip artists are in the habit of representing it by means of a light bulb flashing on, above the head of a character who has suddenly grasped an idea. In simple, primitive terms, this is an appropriate symbol."

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Ayn Rand Philosopher, Novelist
Character

"Are my characters copies of people in real life? ... Don't ever believe the stories about authors putting people into novels. That idea is a kind of joke on both authors and readers. All the readers believe that authors do it. All the authors know that it can't be done."

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