Quotes on Character

The sense of smell, like a faithful counsellor, foretells its character.

I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I'm afraid of.

There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.

A language is an exact reflection of the character and growth of its speakers.

Her beauty satisfied [his] artistic eye, her peculiarities piqued his curiosity, her vivacity lightened his ennui, and her character interested him by the unconscious hints it gave of power, pride and passion. So entirely natural and unconventional was she that he soon found himself on a familiar footing, asking all manner of unusual questions, and receiving rather piquant replies.

A good way to rid one's self of a sense of discomfort is to do something. That uneasy, dissatisfied feeling is actual force vibrating out of order; it may be turned to practical account by giving proper expression to its creative character.

Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

If you have never wept bitter tears because a wonderful story has come to an end and you must take your leave of the characters with whom you have shared so many adventures, whom you have loved and admired, for whom you have hoped and feared, and without whose company life seems empty and meaningless. If such things have not been part of your own experience, you probably won't understand what Bastian did next.

I regard it in fact as the great advantage of the mathematical technique that it allows us to describe, by means of algebraic equations, the general character of a pattern even where we are ignorant of the numerical values which will determine its particular manifestation.

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

If you feel that there's the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People have a habit of identifying the author with the narrator, and you can't, obviously, be all of the narrators in all of your books, or else you'd be a very strange person indeed.

Ideas are, in truth, forces. Infinite, too, is the power of personality. A union of the two always makes history.

There was something appealing in thinking of a character with a secret life that her author knew nothing about. Slipping off while the author's back was turned, to find love in her own way. Showing up just in time to deliver the next bit of dialogue with an innocent face.

Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education.

If a man has character, he has also his typical experience, which always recurs.

I wanted to invent myself as a fictional character. And I did, and it has caused a great deal of confusion.

Even if a story has nothing to do with my life, if I can recognise something of myself in the character and think, 'Oh yeah, that's what I'd do...' yeah, that's what I look for.

Larger-than-life characters make up about .01 percent of the world's population.

It is easy to be nice, even to an enemy - from lack of character.

Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one's own character to himself.

To me, there are things you're good at and things you're not so good at. For some reason, I'm good at darker characters. It has to do with how you look.