Character quotes

Character

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

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Character quotes (page 163 of 739)

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Milan Kundera Writer

Character

"The characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented. It is that crossed border (the border beyond which my own "I" ends) which attracts me most. For beyond that border begins the secret the novel asks about. This novel is not the author's confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become."

Character Discovery Courage

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Milan Kundera Writer

Character

"What I love in a woman is not what she is in and for herself, but the side of herself she turns towards me, what she is for me. I love her as character in our common love story. what wuld Hamlet be without the castle at Elsinore, without Ophelia, without all the concrete situations he goes through, what would he be without the text of his part? What would be left but an empty, dumb, illusory essence?"

Character Essence Dumb

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Milan Kundera Writer

Character

"All novels . . . are concerned with the enigma of the self. As soon as you create an imaginary being, a character, you are automatically confronted by the question: what is the self? How can it be grasped?"

Character Self Empathy

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Molly Parker Actress

Character

"I'm probably an actor that tends to, instead of putting things on, think about it more in terms of taking away what's not in the character, until I'm left with what is. If that makes sense. That's probably a particularly American way of working, but maybe not. The end of any movie is a readjustment."

Thinking Character Actors

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Morgan Freeman Actor, Narrator

Character

"Part of acting is having the security to turn yourself loose and let yourself go in order to reach whatever depths a character has. If your guts aren't hanging out there, you don't offer anything."

Character Order Acting

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Morgan Freeman Actor, Narrator

Character

"Costume is always an asset. Normal costume you have a lot to say about - if you're wearing suits or ties, and what color you want, and how it's going to be cut, and stuff like that, and whether or not you're going to wear a hat, and blah, blah, blah. But, when you're wearing a special costume, and of course, costume is probably the second ingredient in character, script being first, I always find that the costume does a lot to cement your character, to put it firmly in mind."

Character Cutting Ties

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Morgan Freeman Actor, Narrator

Character

"I've just never been the kind of actor that things have stayed with. I've never needed to carry a character off stage."

Character Kind Actors

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Morgan Freeman Actor, Narrator

Character

"I always wanted to be a fireman, a cop, an Indian chief, a doctor, a lawyer. I always wanted to be all these things, so I am drawn to these kinds of characters."

Character Doctors Lawyer

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Morgan Freeman Actor, Narrator

Character

"I don't have to do anything. The character is shaped on the page."

Character Pages

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Morgan Freeman Actor, Narrator

Character

"I find that if I hold your hand, it transfers an energy first. I have a sense of how you feel. That's important to me trying to become another person. I have a lot pressure to bring a character to life in any kind of real sense."

Real Character Hands

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Moon Bloodgood Actress

Character

"Every actor, I don't care what they say, their roles are a lot more interesting than we are, and at the end of the day, it's still entertainment or fantasy. I think we can learn a lot from the characters we play and I find that the characters are even more noble than myself."

Thinking Character Interesting

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Michelangelo Antonioni Film Director, Screenwriter

Character

"When you work on a character, you form in your mind an image of what he ought to look like. Then you go and find one who resembles him."

Mind Character Looks

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Matthew Lewis Actor, Author

Character

"In fact, my favorite Beatles song is "In My Life." And from that, you can gauge that my friends mean so much to me. I love John Lennon, so it's kind of like moody... There's a lot you can gauge from that. As insignificant as it seems, as an actor, it's an interesting way to approach a character."

Mean Character Song

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Matthew Lewis Actor, Author

Character

"At that age, filming Harry Potter, I never contemplated. I just went in there and did my acting. I never thought, "What's the character actually feeling here? What's he trying to get across?" And never looked at it from that classically trained actor's point of view. And so when Jason Isaacs started throwing up these ideas, I thought, "Whoa. What an interesting way to look at acting." Which is why, again, I would do theater."

Character Feelings Interesting

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Matthew Lewis Actor, Author

Character

"Obviously, when you're in theater, you have to be in character. You have to prepare for the unexpected. You have to be able to react to things that don't necessarily happen every night, or aren't supposed to happen every night. And you have to react to it in character. In six months, 192 shows, those things did happen. And the experience of that, the ability to stay in character, I feel like I've learned a great deal."

Character Night Unexpected

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Matthew Lewis Actor, Author

Character

"Rupert Grint is exactly like his character Ron, in that they are both incredibly funny, friendly, and loyal."

Character Friendly Loyal

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Matthew Lewis Actor, Author

Character

"You couple that with how I looked when I was younger, and growing up... The voice is not quite breaking. It's awful. No, I don't enjoy that at all. But that's one of the things people love and find so endearing about the Harry Potter series, and why they've lasted so long. Because people have grown up with us, and they care about the characters. They're not just some characters in the film, they're people you can relate to, and you care about, and you grew up with, and when they die in this film, people feel it!"

Character Growing Up Couple

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Matthew Lewis Actor, Author

Character

"Approaching a comedy character is fun because you get to sit down with the director and ask, "What makes you laugh?" Then you end up bouncing ideas off each other."

Ideas Character Fun

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Matthew Lewis Actor, Author

Character

"I never contemplated. I just went in there and did my acting. I never thought, "What's the character actually feeling here? What's he trying to get across?" And never looked at it from that classically trained actor's point of view."

Character Feelings Views

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Lisa Gardner Author

Character

"What I loved about romances was the character, and I think I still bring that to my novels. What romance taught me was that the 'who' will always matter more than the 'what.' It's fun to come up with plots, but I want to make sure the reader cares about who it's happening to."

Thinking Character Fun

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