Characters Quotes

I consciously try to end my novels at a point where I won't have to wonder about my characters ever again.

I like to try to make the characters I play be as human as possible.

I just have my characters say my controversial opinions and then hide behind them.

I try to trace the connection between the characters and that way a story or plot emerges.

So I never spend a lot of time analyzing why people respond to my work. But I think that it's just the joy, a passion for life, that I think has always been in my characters. Beyond that, I'm just grateful for it.

I've been trying to take this journey over the last four years of getting away from playing manipulative and villainous characters and playing characters that are affected by what happens to them as opposed to unaffected.

The first script I got was Narc and I really responded to it; it reminded me of a '70s type movie, I really liked the characters, I didn't anticipate the ending.

Once I've got the first draft down on paper then I do five or six more drafts, the last two of which will be polishing drafts. The ones in between will flesh out the characters and maybe I'll check my research.

I've sold 11 of my books to Hollywood. There are all kinds of my books on shelves in Hollywood because the scripts didn't capture the characters.

I have, in some ways, saved characters that have been marginalized by society by playing them - and having them still have dignity and still survive, still get through it.

And well historically it's never been a good thing to compare yourself to biblical characters.

You know what I would like to do: make a film with actors standing in empty space so that the spectator would have to imagine the background of the characters.

In a way, the characters often do take over.

Somebody like Mailer brings to that role everything that he stands for. The types of characters that I gravitate towards, the types of icons, tend to have a heavy physicality in that way.

I don't see my old films, but I think of the characters I played as friends, like the women I meet in my life who made strong impressions on me. I remember them and they are part of me.

Science fiction writers put characters into a world with arbitrary rules and work out what happens.

Dr. Cox mentors the rookie doctors with a spoonful of dirt and then a cup of sugar. I see him as an archetypal descendent of two of my favorite curmudgeonly characters: Lou Grant and Louie De Palma.

The puppet characters were combinations of people I had known and to some degree aspects of my own personality. Weird was based on someone I knew in Chicago. Dirty Dragon was based on a good friend I had in Indianapolis.

I mean I tried to transform myself through characters throughout my career.

I did private study for about a month, five days a week, six hours a day. I came to understand the character in ways that I never would've previous to that. I was so innocent in respect to ways of creating characters.

No novel is a clone of any preceding one, though with a background cast of characters and things that has grown to thousands, there are many familiar aspects.

Changes have taken place since year one. When Caruso left, that was a big change. We've been able to adapt nicely. It's given us new opportunities for different characters and story lines.

I love it when talented actors can bring characters to life. Anybody who wears their feelings on their sleeve and has a harder, crusty shell - like I do - is definitely protecting an inner sensitivity.

I don't like to think that maybe I'm just getting old. I'm not too excited about watching a huge explosion. I'm more interested in people and characters.

It can certainly happen that characters in more sophisticated stories can "take over" as they develop and change the author's original ideas. Well, it certainly happens to me at times.

Interestingly that some of the characters did not turn out the way Jim and Allen had envisioned them.

All the great writers root their characters in true human behaviour.

I feel like I'm the most well-adjusted character on the show, even though I'm sure the other actors would tell you the same thing about their characters.

The characters I write about are very internal.

And I'm so excited to remind people and even gain new fans who find out about Dharma - a new generation who could find out about Dharma and enjoy her and all the characters on the show.