Characters Quotes

Writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz. Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary.

My characters are always on the outside; the spotlight's not on them. But they do get somewhere.

With drama, especially, it seems like the bigger the budgets and the edgier the characters, the more interesting they are. We're very lucky because 'Modern Family' wouldn't fit on cable: they'd want us to push it more and be edgier and turn it into something that it's not.

I admire directors so much, I find them incredible: they manage such a huge number of people of different characters, think of the money involved.

All the people in Star Trek will always be known as those characters. And what characters to have attached to your name in life! The show is such a phenomenon all over the world.

There are a lot of films where I play characters that are about the windows to the interior person rather than the exterior.

I have too much respect for the characters I play to make them anything but as real as they can possibly be. I have a great deal of respect for all of them, otherwise I wouldn't do them. And I don't want to screw them by not portraying them honestly.

People say that to me and I think what unites all my characters is that they are hurt; it's most accurate to say I play characters that are hurt but are responding to their environment.

I put a lot of time and energy and thought behind what I do and the characters that I create, and I don't want to do anything peripheral that is going to make an audience see me up there on the screen rather than who I'm playing.

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

Actually, I find it great fun to develop family series with lots of characters.

Whatever your relationship is to your sacred tradition in the West, you have some relationship to the Bible if only through the names of the characters.

Always when I directed the play, I was always trying to cast people not who were necessarily like the characters, but people who I felt had the essential component that the character had, some kind of soul for it.

I know there are only so many characters I'll be able to play.

I try to play characters who are different from myself, so I feel like this character is someone who is really different. I actually think that if I did what he did in this movie, I would get a restraining order put against me.

Because I just loved to spend two years of my life in the company of Andy Kaufman and other characters.

I think I relate to all the characters in one way or another. I'm a chameleon like that.

Since it's based on my parents, it's more emotionally close to me than some of my more surreal plays. And then I like the balance of the comic and the sad. It should play as funny, but you should care about the characters and feel sad for them.

I always figure hey, look, I'm not a rock star, I'm an actor. I'm somebody who's meant to be other people and I'm not meant to be here representing myself. I'm happier when I'm presenting myself as other characters.

But I always wanted my characters to be more than cyphers for the failings of their world. And I never had to look too hard to find a part of myself in them.

You treat characters like people you meet in life-friends or mentors.

I look for an interesting and often times, fresh character. Something different that what is done all the time or than I've done recently. I look at who is directing. Those two variables as well as a third, which is the content and the quality of the screenplay. I look at the arcs of the scenes and characters and relationships.

There are all kinds of ways that people present their films, but that's kind of a good feeling, if you can make it seem like the characters are really there.

It's the emotional trigger points that are important to me because I know if I could believe in the characters and try and imagine how they felt then I'd be able to do something quite honest.

The more you understand me, the less characters I can play.

I think that the episodes are like mini horror films really; the characters make bad decisions early on and these things just snowball for them and get worse and worse. And that's what I find funny.

The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.

I find interesting characters or lessons that resonate with people and sometimes I write about them in the sports pages, sometimes I write them in a column, sometimes in a novel, sometimes a play or sometimes in nonfiction. But at the core I always say to myself, 'Is there a story here? Is this something people want to read?'

I like them all - I don't always approve. I see myself as a sort of benevolent uncle to these characters, and I can see why they do what they do; sometimes they make some mistakes, but at heart I think they're decent.

Fiction is about intimacy with characters, events, places.