Character Quotes - Page 572

I tried to find a character and how I would be an American actress in the 30s. But if this was a talking movie [The Artist], I'm sure she would be exactly the same for me.

A character is never entirely white or black, there's never entirely right or wrong. You have to realize sometimes you face something, and then you change your mind, or then you realize you were wrong.

Most people are middle class. Most people do wish their lives were better than they are. And I think by making my main characters ordinary, average guys, it helps readers identify with their problems. It also helps ground the supernatural events that follow in a recognizable reality and perhaps gives some of my wilder scenarios a little verisimilitude.

Religion may become a fashion as well as anything else; and, when it does become so, it has as little to do, in those who thus hold it, with the heart and the character as any other fashion.

I have a scenario but almost always it's entwined with at least one person to begin with. Then I sort of expand from there and I'm thinking about books novels. I've got these scrolls of paper that I hang up in my office and this is my idea room, my nightmare factory, and I have a big title at the top of the scroll and on the left hand side I have these character sketches on the characters, and then once I figure out who they are I can figure out what they want and once I figure out what they want I'm able to put obstacles in the way of that desire, and that's where plot springs from.

I think my leap into TV and movies and comics is in a way natural because I'm a visual storyteller. If you look at any one of my short stories or novels, they sort of unscroll cinematically. Every scene is concrete in my mind. I can walk around the room and pick things up. I can describe at length every feature on the character, though I might only supply a glimpse of this on the page. So if I'm writing color into that I'm also writing texture, I'm pushing the image more than anything else.

As in the case of many of the stories that I've written I'm not trying to editorialize. I don't want there to be a message at the end of anything I write. Otherwise you wouldn't trust the characters. They'd feel less organic and more like puppets that are sharing the author's opinion.

Nothing is more important for the public wealth than to form and train youth in wisdom and virtue. Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.

When you have a lot of fake selves, most of the time it's because you haven't had parents around so you try to build characters to protect yourself.

Of course, no religious test for the presidency - every faith adds to our national character.

I wasn't terribly aware of Catwoman. She was a DC comics character and as a kid, I wasn't terribly fond of the DC comics characters. I was a Marvel boy.

It's a complex thing when you're writing a novel, because so much of it is conscious and planned and deliberate, and so much of it is not, and it has to be a dance between the conscious and the unconscious. I bring my best instincts to my work. For instance - and I come by this naturally, or I think I do - I am a very good judge of character.

I do that with all of my characters. They have one of the flaws I have, and I zero in on that flaw.

I always get self-conscious about what I look like in a film, but less so if I'm a character very far removed from who I am. Then I just worry about the performance, and that's equally an odd experience.

I've gone up two suit sizes. The character I'm playing, he's strong, I can say that much. I've changed my physique a bit, so that requires eating like a foie gras goose, well beyond your appetite. Providing I don't feel too ill, I then work out two hours a day with a phenomenal trainer. It's the L.A. way.

I think the characters are supposed to be an open book, blank canvas.

[Role of Dr.Strange] gives me an excuse as an actor to be learning with my character, which is something you can do authentically - I'm not a martial arts expert, I'm certainly no sorcerer, so all these things, the movement of the body, the physicality, the changes he goes through mentally and physically, obviously we're not shooting in sequence, but it's a great part.

[Doctor Strange] is a really rich character. It's an easy thing to have a good old meal every day. It's great. Yeah, I'm excited.

I had to imagine myself into certain aspects of [Julian Assange] character for our version of events. That involved extrapolating based on clues in his biography, his public persona, photographs, and other accounts of him by people who encountered him during that extraordinary period from 2007 to 2010 that we charted in the film [The Fifth Estate]. So, it involved a lot of research but, sadly, no contact with the man himself.

Why this character [Doctor Strange] is being introduced, to open up the next chapter. A

One of the first roles I had on stage was with a brilliant director in a brilliant play with a brilliant cast, but I just couldn't find my way into the heart of the character. I found myself straining a lot. When it started. I felt lost. That was the Eugène Ionesco play Rhinoceros. I don't think I was prepared for that. I don't think I had the full tool kit to do it justice. It's a very difficult play, it's an extraordinarily difficult part, and I never felt I really got it right. Far from it. To a degree, Hamlet was the same.

Those are more universal things than some of the characters I play, who are slightly sociopathic. I keep reminding people I can do ordinary.

I don't wear a mask, I don't have a suit. It's not some CG double or a stunt double. The suffering the character [Doctor Strange ] goes through is immense!

It's an interesting arc. You start with a character [Doctor Strange] who's likeable and charming but very arrogant and distant. He's funny but you can see there are massive holes in his life. It's a very painful transition and all that he becomes is tested so quickly and violently.

I'm sad in a way that the character [Doctor Strange ] leaves [neurosurgery] behind. It's an amazing discipline.