Quotes on Character

I try to build a full personality for each of our cartoon characters - to make them personalities.

The art of the novel is to arrive at that artless point where your characters become more real than yourself.

Obsession led me to write. It's been that way with every book I've ever written. I become completely consumed by a theme, by characters, by a desire to meet a challenge.

The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary.

Weaknesses of character are normally shown in a game of chess.

Great occasions rouse even the lowest of human beings to some kind of greatness, but he alone is the really great man whose character is great always, the same wherever he be.

Much of the character of everyman may be read in his house.

And whatever our faith - whatever our faith, one belief should bind us all: The measure of our character is our willingness to give of ourselves for others and for our country.

Marriage is the best state for man in general, and every man is a worst man in proportion to the level he is unfit for marriage.

There never will exist anything permanently noble and excellent in the character which is a stranger to resolute self-denial.

As a writer you're holding a dog. You let the dog run about. But you finally can pull him back. Finally, I'm in control. But the great excitement is to see what happens if you let the whole thing go. And the dog or the character really runs about, bites everyone in sight, jumps up trees, falls into lakes, gets wet, and you let that happen. That's the excitement of writing plays-to allow the thing to be free but still hold the final leash.

Don't write stage directions. If it is not apparent what the character is trying to accomplish by saying the line, tell us how the character said it or whether or not she moved to the couch isn't going to aid the case.

Preparing a character is the opposite of building-it is a demolishing, removing brick by brick everything in the actor's muscles, ideas and inhibitions that stands between him and the part, until one day, with a great rush of air, the character invades his every pore.

Whatever the mind of man creates, should be controlled by man's character.

There are a couple of strategies for writing about an absence or writing about a loss. One can create the person that was lost, develop the character of the fiancee. There's another strategy that one can employ, maybe riskier... Make the reader suffer the loss of the character in a more literal way.

If you act, you show character; if you sit still, you show it; if you sleep you show it.

To understand is hard. Once one understands, action is easy.

I seem to have to make my characters family before I can access their hearts in any way that matters.

Kitchens are hard environments and they form incredibly strong characters.

My characters aren't losers. They're rebels. They win by their refusal to play by everyone else's rules.

Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.