I guess, what I’m saying is that when I’ve been this surprised by my own characters and world, all bets are off.

Every actor will tell you it’s so much more fun to play the bad guy because usually those characters are more complex and more broad and more interesting, and have more sides to them.

The funny thing is that I feel close to all my characters. Deep, deep inside them all.

. . . clumsiness is often mated with a love of solitude.

I would say that a lot of the characters I’ve been attracted to are very vulnerable and they expose themselves emotionally. Not so much in ‘The Fighter,’ not so much in ‘The Master’ – I...

A mistake is the name we give to any action in which we perceive a difference between what we intended and what has occurred. Intention fuels every dramatic action, including the writing of dramatic stories,...

One of the ways I think I gain fodder for characters is by watching people.

Just me, my music, and the voices in my head.

As an author you hope your characters have sparks but truly in the end they have minds of their own!

Characters are just extensions of my madness.

A Dickens character to me is a theatrical projection of a character. Not that it isn’t real. It’s real, but in that removed sense. But Sherlock Holmes is simply there. I would be astonished if...

Sow a thought, and you reap an act;Sow an act, and you reap a habit;Sow a habit, and you reap a character;Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.

Over the years I have forged intimate familial ties with these characters, who are reflections of a portion of myself. Consequently, even a character who appeared only once in a short story waits now in...

One likes to think that there is some fantastic limbo for the children of imagination, some strange, impossible place where the beaux of Fielding may still make love to the belles of Richardson, where Scott’s...

All of my characters are less than perfect.

Dialogue between two characters, each of them different forms of karate, might be a bit choppy.

I think you can do science fiction, but you have to ground it in some realism. People need to identify with the characters, with their plights and their issues.

Like, in general I think people have very complicated reasons for wanting things, and we often have no idea whether we’re actually motivated by altruism or a desire to hook up or a search for...

The characters in my novels are my own unrealised possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have...

That’s what novels are: They’re amalgams of archetypes, collections of random traits one observes in other people through life, blended into fresh characters.

You don’t buy evil characters lattes. That’s not normal behavior.

There are so few shows that are willing to take risks with their characters in the way that ‘Homeland’ does. And yet, the audience still comes back and loves those characters.

The best plot twists are the ones you didn’t expect.

I think you can always find interesting, complex and fascinating characters to play in different kinds of movies. It’s in your hands.

I just love playing characters that are a long way away from me.

Real-life people are often the hardest to play, people that you recreate who have actually lived, because you have to live up to people’s knowledge of those characters.

I won’t sacrifice my characters morals/intentions/motives for the sake of what I believe is right or wrong. If the action fits the character it will be written. That’s that.

A novel must show how the world truly is, how characters genuinely think, how events actually occur. A novel should somehow reveal the true source of our actions.

My characters surprise me constantly. My characters are like my friends – I can give them advice, but they don’t have to take it. If your characters are real, then they surprise you, just like...

I guess the characters I play may be at the more destructive edge of the spectrum, more damaged or whatever, but I find a lot of female roles uninteresting.

For some reason, all my characters come to me with their names attached to them. I never have to search for the names.

I never draw blood on a first date.

What I look for these days is that I don’t have long speeches, the characters gets to sit down a lot, I don’t have to learn any foreign languages, and it doesn’t shoot in Minneapolis...

The best part of the fiction in many novels is the notice that the characters are imaginary.

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.

I seem finally to have stopped worrying about Elinor, and age. She seems now to be perfectly normal — about twenty-five, a witty control freak. I like her but I can see how she would...

When I started ‘Case Histories,’ the characters were all going to Antarctica on a cruise. The first part was called ‘Embarkation.’ It was supposed to be about everyone preparing to embark on the cruise, but...

Heavy is the head that holds the pen of creation. We construct these characters from nothing, molding them from our imaginations. We give them hopes and dreams and unique personalities until they feel so real...

Good story’ means something worth telling that the world wants to hear. Finding this is your lonely task…But the love of a good story, of terrific characters and a world driven by your passion, courage,...

I always think it’s really hard if you are Asian or Chinese to be really in Hollywood. There are not so many really great characters for you.

All the characters I’ve ever played have really had nothing to do with looks. There’s a lot of things that are a lot more interesting to me to play than that.

My comedy does not come from a place of deep cynicism, and I tend to play characters who are naive in some way.

When writing fiction, you learn to only put things and characters in, that are going to progress your story. There is something to be learned about that approach in real life

But some characters in books are really real–Jane Austen’s are; and I know those five Bennets at the opening of Pride and Prejudice, simply waiting to raven the young men at Netherfield Park, are not...

We are starting off with our own different characters and our own laws and everything, looking at Bruce Wayne and how he came to be the person that he was and how he comes to...

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

When two characters or two actresses are together for a while there is bound to be chemistry developing.

I always enjoy impersonating my characters in the first-person singular.

Delicious days ahead for solitude and writing and, oh yes, the holiday meal with family. Live with my characters until term starts in 2012!

It’s not a romance, it’s a love story.