Character Quotes

When you are developing a character you have to bring so much of yourself to the role.

Man looks in the abyss, there's nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss.

Nobody's really unsympathetic, I think. People do good and bad things. If a character's totally unsympathetic, they're not real and I'm not interested. Even the real monsters have to have a spark of something you can relate to.

Whoever has the luck to be born a character can laugh even at death. Because a character will never die! A man will die, a writer, the instrument of creation: but what he has created will never die!

There were time when I was into method acting that I did have moments of residual character emotions, because the method bases your emotional responses as a character on emotional experiences from your real life.

Well, I think probably when I first got in the business, I wasn't thinking of being strictly a character actor. But I knew I wanted to be a working actor, and as the years have gone on, I just naturally evolved into that. Because, y'know, I'm not a leading guy. Never was.

I have the embarrassing thing where often if you're watching a film, you kind of go through the emotions and the thought stages that your character went through, but you sort of do it with Tourette's. So I end up often crying when I'm crying, and looking angry when I'm looking angry, so it's pretty ugly.

The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife.

Martial arts is not about fighting; it's about building character.

From blood banking to the modern subway, from jazz to social justice, the contributions of African Americans have shaped and molded and influenced our national culture and our national character.

A toothache, or a violent passion, is not necessarily diminished by our knowledge of its causes, its character, its importance or insignificance.

I spent lunchtime in a grave during the filming of 'Bloody Mama.' When you're younger, you feel that's what you need to do to help you stay in character. When you get older, you become more confident and less intense about it - and you can achieve the same effect.

A clown's makeup and character, that's all he has to sell. He loves and believes in that character.

An individual step in character training is to put responsibility on the individual.

Winning takes talent, to repeat takes character.

A person's character is but half formed till after wedlock.

I have this dream life where I get to be a celebrity but I get to navigate the world fairly easily because I'm always in character.

Character, I am sure, lies in the genes.

So the laughs had to come from the character, not because we had balloons in our shirts or were speaking in high voices. That was very important to us.

I probably spent the first 20 years of my life wanting to be as American as possible. Through my 20s, and into my 30s, I began to become aware of how so much of my art and architecture has a decidedly Eastern character.

What I loved about playing the corpse is that obviously somebody else got to do the physical part. It appeals to the part of me that likes playing character parts and getting the chance to get away from my own physicality.

A lot of the jokes had some build-up to some nasty stuff. But most of it was all character situations leading to what the ultimate payoff would be for that character.

To me that's part of my working day, and I would never refuse a job where I'm under several hours of makeup, because as an actor, I enjoy performing. It's about the creation of the character and the art to me, not about being comfortable and how long it all takes.

Hardly a name in profane history is more august than his. Hardly another character in the world's record has made so little of its opportunities. His discovery was a blunder; his blunder was a new world; the New World is his monument.

In terms of the frustration of my character, I suppose any teenager has probably gone through that, in terms of telling their parents, I want to do one thing, and their parent says no. I think parents sometimes forget that they were children.

The magnitude of the atomic weight determines the character of the element, just as the magnitude of the molecule determines the character of a compound body.

In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, impeached one and hounded another out of office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate their character.

You don't become the character.

I think specifically because of the character that I played, people are very connected to her. I used to get letters from young gay and lesbian and trans-gendered kids saying, 'I didn't kill myself because of Buffy'.

Those with dementia are still people and they still have stories and they still have character and they're all individuals and they're all unique. And they just need to be interacted with on a human level.