Writers are in many ways like demi-gods. With one stroke of a pen they can give life to a character, or strike them from existence, with nary a twinge of grief at their passing.

For me, screenwriting is all about setting characters in motion and as a writer just chasing them. They should tell you what they’ll do in any scene you put them in.

Don’t bother to ring a bell in the ear that doesn’t listen. Move to another ear, and if he doesn’t listen to your bell, sit back and listen to his nemesis.

I like having a plot; I like characters with a reason to get up in the morning.

I was afraid of anyone in a costume. A trip to see Santa might as well have been a trip to sit on Hitler’s lap for all the trauma it would cause me. Once, when...

The more gifted and talkative one’s characters are, the greater the chances of their resembling the author in tone or tint of mind.

I get very involved in my characters. Sometimes I have a very hard time separating my characters from my life.

I love creating characters and becoming someone else entirely.

When I write fiction, I never try to deliver a message; I just want to tell a story. But I admit that I want the story to be memorable and the characters to touch the...

In a weird way, I live vicariously through the characters I play as an actor.

Motionless we traverse countries we fancy we see, and your thought, blending with the fiction, playing with the details, follows the outline of the adventures. It mingles with the characters, and it seems as if...

This isn’t the road home. This is a road littered with questions that will inevitably lead to an answer.

‘Lord of the Rings’ was a set of books in which the world had been conceived before the characters were placed within that context.

The flimsy little protestations that mark the front gate of every novel, the solemn statements that any resemblance to real persons living or dead is entirely coincidental, are fraudulent every time. A writer has no...

We have all been fooled into believing in people who are entirely imaginary–made-up prisoners in a hypothetical panopticon. But the point isn’t whether or not you believe in imaginary people; it’s whether or not you...

A story is built on characters and reasons.

None of the characters I’ve played are really like me. That would be boring. That wouldn’t be acting.

Most people carry their demons around with them, buried down deep inside. Writers wrestle their demons to the surface, fling them onto the page, then call them characters.

I look at actors like Johnny Depp, Sean Penn, and Benicio Del Toro, and they play all these different characters. I’m hoping that, in my lifetime, I’ll be able to look back and say, ‘You...

The physical journey in my films is indicative of the internal journey that my characters take.

I love the tradition of Dickens, where even the most minor walk-on characters are twitching and particular and alive.

If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves.

It feels like I’m starting to come into my own in terms of where I want to go artistically, toward more complicated, interesting characters.

…you mean you don’t fit characters into a plot? excatly…

If I’d lived like my characters, I would have been dead before I’d made 16 films.

I didn’t ‘decide’ to write YA, per se. But every time I thought of a story, it featured characters 15, 16, 17.

If a person finds the negative people in his network, then he needs to mind or mend his own nature than others for his basic grounding decides only the level of acidic or toxic surrounding.

But — my dear, my heart is BROKEN! I have seen the perfect Peter Wimsey. Height, voice, charm, smile, manner, outline of features, everything — and he is — THE CHAPLAIN OF BALLIOL!! What is...

I’m much nicer then all my characters, let’s just put it that way.

I have closed my study door on the world and shut myself away with people of my imagination. For nearly sixty years I have eavesdropped with impunity on the lives of people who do not...

Dialogue is the place that books are most alive and forge the most direct connection with readers. It is also where we as writers discover our characters and allow them to become real.

French Louis Seymour of the West Canada Creek, who knew how to survive all alone in a treacherous wilderness, and Mr. Alfred G. Vanderbilt of New York City and Raquette Lake, who was richer than...

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.

Sometimes I scare myself at how easily I slip inside my mind and live vicariously through these characters.

No author has created with less emphasis such pathetic characters as Chekhov has.

I think I relate to all the characters in one way or another. I’m a chameleon like that.

I am one of the new characters in the brand new series of ‘Postman Pat.’ It has been a joy to do.

European films were what it was about for me – the sensations I needed, the depth, the storytelling, the characters, the directors, and the freedom that you can’t really find in American films.

I’ve been very lucky enough to do all kinds of movies. All the movies that I’ve done have been very different, and all the characters I’ve done have been very different. I feel very lucky...

I don’t know where people got the idea that characters in books are supposed to be likable. Books are not in the business of creating merely likeable characters with whom you can have some simple...

I don’t exactly set out to only play creepy characters, it’s just that a lot of those roles come my way.

I miss the days when I was alone with my characters and no one else knew them except me.

The driver, a black silhouette upon his box, whipped up his bony horses. Icy silence in the coach. Marius, motionless, his body braced in the corner of the carriage, his head dropping down upon his...

I came across awful characters when I got some kind of status and came to Hollywood. Then you have directors trying to sleep with you, assuming that you will do things because of the way...

Be sure not to discuss your hero’s state of mind. Make it clear from his actions.”(Letter to Alexander Chekhov, May 10, 1886)

We never end up with the book we began writing. Characters twist it and turn it until they get the life that is perfect for them. A good writer won’t waste their time arguing with...

I’ve had some marvelous parts, but I’m also asked to play characters who are kind of superficial people.

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

Characters have to be seen and felt when written, not told about. Writers are merely vessels of their manifestations.

You’re the girl that I have been wanting. You’re the girl that I could see myself with forever. And most importantly, you’re the girl that I’ve fallen in love with.