Character Quotes - Page 315

Some authors, when starting a novel, imagine a place first. Others, a character starts taking shape in their head. I start with a hook, a situation, a 'what if.

Each religion is a brave guess at the authorship of Hamlet. Yet, as far as the play goes, does it make any difference whether Shakespeare or Bacon wrote it? Would it make any difference to the actors if their parts happened out of nothingness, if they found themselves acting on the stage because of some gross and unpardonable accident? Would it make any difference if the playwright gave them the lines or whether they composed them themselves, so long as the lines were properly spoken? Would it make any difference to the characters if 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' was really a dream?

Never open your story with a character thinking, I advise my students. As a further precaution, don’t put a character in a room alone – create a friend, a bystander, a genie, for God’s sake, any sentient creature with whom your main character can converse, perhaps argue or, better yet, engage in some action. If a person is out and doing, it’s more likely that something interesting might happen to her or him. Shut up in a room with only his thoughts for company well, that way lies fictional disaster.

A real sacrifice involves a radical change in the character of a game which cannot be effected without foresight, fantasy, and the willingness to risk.

When I can't immediately define the character, and there's an element of mystery to it and still a lot to be explored, that's when I say yes.

My stories usually begin with the characters and some elements of how power (personal, political, magical) functions in the world. The rest develops as I write, and research helps a great deal with that. If you're going to write about an agrarian economy, research agrarian economies. If your main character is starving, then you should know what it means for a malnourished body to break down.

Intensely vivid characters, terrible crimes, and a brutal deep-frozen landscape all prove beyond a reasonable doubt that cold nurtures good and evil as readily as heat ... and that Giles Blunt is a really tremendous crime novelist.

When forced to survive in an apocalyptic world, there are some characters that embrace their higher selves with some emerging as natural born leaders, and others succumb to their more base and primal selves and basically transform into savages.

There is no one who can move and mime and clown like Bill [Irwin].And Aubrey Plaza, she gets to embody all these different characters. That's what's exciting about this show [X-men], is the unusual casting.

Over and over in the play my character says, "I'm thirty-two years old," as if that should explain everything that's wrong in her life. I don't know what it's like to be thirty-two, but I can imagine. I imagine she means she's stuck in an in-between time, she's at an age that isn't a milestone but more of a no-man's-land, an age where she's feeling like her hopes are fading.

Remember, the essence of storytelling demands that we place our main characters on a path. A quest with something at stake, with something to do, to achieve, to learn, and to change.

Prepare for the difficult while it is still easy. Deal with the big while it is still small. Difficult undertakings have always started with what easy. Great undertakings always started with what is small. Therefore the sage never strives for the great,And thereby the great is achieved.

On 'Swingtown,' I think that's when I was able to blend the character-slash-leading lady roles, and that's what I'm doing on 'Once Upon a Time' as well. She's a leading lady, but she's also this character.

Through the history of my records, from when I started controlling the visual, I always used lower case letters for everything, I can't even explain why that is. The character is actually me, and I think once you see the film for the record, or see the video or really get in to the record, that will all sort of reveal itself to you.

One of the things that I learned in television, and one of the beauties of television, is that, if you have a strong writing staff, they rely on you just as much as you rely on them. They look to me or the other actors to help inspire them to take the character in interesting directions.

What really matters is not how well a character fits a definition, but how strongly he or she resonates. Characters with strong, resonant ideas at their core will have more of an impact on the cultural consciousness than a character who's just an empty collection of attributes.

I love Vince McMahon. He came up with the character. He ran with it, and then I was able to run with it. I thank him for the opportunity he gave me. Vince McMahon was one of my best friends, period.

Cliché openings in fantasy can include an opening scene set in a battle (and my peeve is that I don’t know any of the characters yet so why should I care about this battle) or with a pastoral scene where the protagonist is gathering herbs (I didn’t realize how common this is).

The librarian, the warrior, the free spirit... archetypes are a great jumping off point to help clarify where we want to go with a character.

Put your hand on your heart to keep it from flying off to the lovely magical literary island Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows have created in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. This novel is a delightful mix of fine writing, powerful emotions, glorious settings and amazing characters who deal with life in a way that will have readers falling in love on every single page.

I dont really like simple characters too much; its too easy. I like a challenge, and I like characters you connect with on screen.

With the quality of films it seems animation can do almost anything these days. It’s amazing what goes on. But for us it’s always about trying to tell a good story, with great characters. And that will probably always be the philosophy as far as Disney and Pixar is concerned.

I am singing in an operatic voice for the public, to bring something more to Rock and Roll. Because in a Rock and Roll performance, the singer talks to the public whereas in Opera the singer only talks to a character, inside a story. The public sees this as a picture, I want to transport this picture into the room where the public is.

I'm not a personality actress. I never have been. I have been a character actress.

A lot of characters now on TV have moved into being anti-heroes, but I wanted to be the hero.