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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"You know, you're not aware of it, but you're following the action of the film through the body of the protagonist, you know? You feel what he feels when he jumps, when he leaps, when he wins, when he loses. And I think I just took it for granted that, you know, we can all do that, but it became obvious to me that men don't live through the female characters."
"I didn't have any confidence in my beauty when I was young. I felt like a character actress, and I still do."
"Get out of the office. Roam the frontline. Be observant. Hold your people accountable for creating the new narrative, a new story, in which your customers are the most important "characters". Because, you know, they really are."
"What's fun is watching actors of that calibre bring them to life. It's incredible. Christian Bale spent a day with the character he plays and after my year of being with him I couldn't have generated the same view of him. They have a different way of looking at people, it's fascinating to watch."
"My characters are actually usually pretty smart and admirable."
"The jokes I used to do on 'Sex and the City' were always comic character things, and they were rarely hard jokes. As soon as you go up in front of people, it demands laughter."
"Every character when born is a stereotype."
"I never base characters on real people - you can get into so much trouble that way!"
"Every story starts with an idea, but it is the characters that move this idea forward."
"Most writers, I'm afraid, live very boring lives sitting in front of a screen. However, having said that: every writer puts a bit of themselves into the characters to bring them alive."
"I am thrilled when I read about fans using my stories as springboards to read about either the historical characters or the myths and legends in the books."
"They [my characters]speak to me all the time! In fact some of them never shut up!"
"I am of the generation of writers who can get instant feedback from readers within hours of publication. The fan forum is extraordinary - readers from all over the world coming together to discuss, argue and debate scenes and characters from a novel. They add a layer to the story that I cannot write and yes, I will participate in that conversation and answer questions. After all, they are the people I'm writing for and their enthusiasm and questions really pushes me to raise the bar."
"Most of our occupations are low comedy.... We must play our part duly, but as the part of a borrowed character. Of the mask and appearance we must not make a real essence, nor of what is foreign what is our very own."
"I never think in terms of alienation; it's the others who do. Alienation means one thing to Hegel, another to Marx and yet another to Freud; so it is not possible to give a single definition, one that will exhaust the subject. It is a question bordering on philosophy, and I'm not a philosopher nor a sociologist. My business is to tell stories, to narrate with images - nothing else. If I do make films about alienation - to use that word that is so ambiguous - they are about characters, not about me."
"I learned a lesson that I keep learning over and over, and that is that the most fun is to watch our main characters interact with each other. The most fun comes from their tight interaction."
"The same way that you are the main character of your story, you are only a secondary character in everybody else’s story."
"Whatever you perceive, you always make a story with yourself as the main character, and that dictates your life. Then when you read 'The Four Agreements', you hear another voice beneath the story, the voice that comes from your integrity, your spirit."
"The only way to change the world is to change the main character of our story - the one we believe that we are. If we change the main character, if we respect ourselves, then just like magic, all the secondary characters will change. We can only give what we have, and if we don't respect ourselves, how can we respect others?"
"The novel is a meditation on existence as seen through the medium of imaginary characters."
