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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"It was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psychological than gout, rum, and purser's stores."
"Oliver Twist has asked for more!"
"A tender young cork, however, would have had no more chance against a pair of corkscrews, or a tender young tooth against a pair of dentists, or a little shuttlecock against two battledores, than I had against Uriah and Mrs. Heep. They did just what they liked with me; and wormed things out of me that I had no desire to tell, with a certainty I blush to think of."
"He had a sense of his dignity, which was of the most exquisite nature. He could detect a design upon it when nobody else had any perception of the fact. His life was made an agony by the number of fine scalpels that he felt to be incessantly engaged in dissecting his dignity."
"If mutual fund directors are independent, then I'm the lead character in the Bolshoi Ballet."
"We live in a sea of general ideas, so that's not a novel, since there are so many general ideas. But the moment a particular idea is linked to a character, it's like an engine moves it. Then you have a novel underway."
"Once a novel gets going and I know it is viable, I don't then worry about plot or themes. These things will come in almost automatically because the characters are now pulling the story."
"I don't play long parts. They must be short parts, but they've got to be parts that mean something, that matter, where people will notice when I'm on the screen, and people will remember the character after they've seen the film."
"You are always hoping that movie audiences are interested in characters and interested in story values rather than just mindless special effects. But you never know."
"I always like to try different things, different genres; stories that have a dramatic element and can generate conflict which I find appealing; where the characters have to overcome obstacles. That kind of thing is challenging."
"You are the spokesman for your character, you put on his case. Are you going to win or lose? There'll be no drama if you look like a loser at the outset."
"A person of character takes as much trouble to discover what is right as the lesser men take to discover what will pay."
"Sincerity is that whereby self-completion is effected, and its way is that by which man must direct himself."
"The audience has to understand that if the film is going to have any meaning for them. If they are going to empathize with the characters, they have to visualize the process of concentration involved in making every move."
"There is no organizations and institutions that are worthwhile in terms of fighting for and dying for unless there is some individual integrity and character and virtue that is at work within various individuals in those institutions especially their leaders."
"Self-respect will keep a man from being abject when he is in the power of enemies, and will enable him to feel that he may be in the right when the world is against him."
"That queen, of error, whom we call fancy and opinion, is the more deceitful because she does not always deceive. She would be the infallible rule of truth if she were the infallible rule of falsehood; but being only most frequently in error, she gives no evidence of her real quality, for she marks with the same character both that which is true and that which is false."
"Some people tell me they would be afraid of my characters, but I tell those people [that] they meet these characters all the time. They just don't care about them when they meet them, at the gas station, the car wash, the post office even."
"Beware 'good' main characters who have a limited repertory of culturally acceptable feelings, while your evil bastards have a full range of vivid, passionate feelings."
"In that daily effort in which intelligence and passion mingle and delight each other, the absurd man discovers a discipline that will make up the greatest of his strengths. The required diligence and doggedness and lucidity thus resemble the conqueror's attitude. To create is likewise to give a shape to one's fate. For all these characters, their work defines them at least as much as it is defined by them. The actor taught us this: There is no frontier between being and appearing."
