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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"Hollywood didn't know if I was an actor or a nut or if I was this crazy character I was playing. I had developed an image of being a little bit unusual, different and wild."
"The best characters are the ones that somehow manage to be both attractive and repulsive at the same time. If you do that, you're at the center of the universe - if you can find characters who are more ambiguous and can raise more questions than answers."
"The best part of the fiction in many novels is the notice that the characters are purely imaginary."
"I try to make the readers feel they've lived the events of the book. Just as you grieve if a friend is killed, you should grieve if a fictional character is killed. You should care. If somebody dies and you just go get more popcorn, it's a superficial experience isn't it?"
"There’s an old writing rule that says ‘Don’t have two character names start with the same letter’, but I knew at the beginning that I was going to have more than 26 characters, so I was in trouble there. Ultimately it comes down to what sounds right. And I struggle with that, finding the right name for a character. If I can’t find the right name I don’t know who the character is and I can’t proceed."
"No compact among men... can be pronounced everlasting and inviolable, and if I may so express myself, that no Wall of words, that no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other."
"'Tis folly in one Nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its Independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that by such acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favours and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate upon real favours from Nation to Nation. 'Tis an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard."
"It gives me real concern to observe ... that you should think it necessary to distinguish between my personal and public character, and confine your esteem to the former."
"An ambassador has no need of spies; his character is always sacred."
"It is to be lamented that great characters are seldom without a blot."
"The insular arrogance of the English character is a commonplace joke."
"He loved a book because it was a book; he loved its odor, its form, its title. What he loved in a manuscript was its old illegible date, the bizarre and strange Gothic characters, the heavy gilding which loaded its drawings. It was its pages covered with dust — dust of which he breathed the sweet and tender perfume with delight."
"Your character that you create in your writing not only represents who you are, but also represents a number of people who you've met along the way."
"My problem is, whether it's for emotion or for the talents that a character has to have in a role, I find it very difficult to not take on a challenge. I need to say, "Okay, enough, take the easy road." But the easy road for me is not - it might just come out coincidentally. I wouldn't ever choose a movie because it's easy. I might choose a movie because I feel like being funny, or I feel like being able to do something that is perhaps dramatic, but to a lesser degree. Because I like switching it up, basically, not because I would take the easier road."
"There are very deep and restrictive principles that determine the nature of human language and are rooted in the specific character of the human mind"
"It's easy to put [serious threats] aside, and the media don't talk about them. Other things are more important. How am I going to put food on the table tomorrow? That's what I've got to worry about, and so on. It's very serious, but it's hard to bring out the enormity of these issues, when they do not have the dramatic character of something you can show in the movies, with a nuclear weapons falling and everything disappears."
"Don't think for a moment that I'm really like any of the characters I've played. I'm not. That's why it's called 'acting'."
"These types of films that are psychologically sort of dark at times, I find extremely exciting to do because there's always something to think about. There's nothing more boring than to show up on set and say a line and know that your character means exactly what they say. It's interesting to have an unreliable narrator in a film and that's what both of those films have been."
"Yes, I can play younger than my age. But I can play characters older than I am, too. I'm not an actor who can just play the kid."
"To put a lot of hard work and effort into a project or character and for it to be recognised, how can it not be nice?"
