Best 14098 quotes in «character quotes» category

Now, there are a very large number of bodily movements, having their source in our nervous system, that do not possess the character of conscious actions.

Now we really like to put people in boxes. As men, we do it because we don't understand characters that aren't ourselves and we aren't willing to put ourselves in the skin of those characters and women, I think, terrify us. We tend not to write women as human beings. It's cartoons we're making now. And that's a shame.

Now we're living in a nuclear age, and the science that was supposed to be automatically for human welfare has become a nuclear - a science that gives us nuclear weapons. This is the ironic character of human history, and of human existence, which I can only explain, if I say so, in Biblical terms. Now I don't mean by this reason that I will accept every interpretation of Christianity that's derived from the Bible as many people wouldn't accept my interpretation. But that's what it means for me.

Now what's important is that they have an attitude. Everybody has a look, but not everybody has cultivated what their stage persona is. And so when you're dealing with actors, it just makes it more difficult, because you have to help them come up with one. You know, Johnny Depp has no Johnny Depp character when he's onstage. You haven't seen An Evening With Johnny Depp at Carnegie Hall.

Number one, it is important that we fix the legal immigration system, because right now we've got a backlog that means years for people to apply legally. And what's worse is, we keep on increasing the fees, so that if you've got a hard working immigrant family, they've got to hire a lawyer; they've got to pay thousands of dollars in fees. They just can't afford it. And it's discriminatory against people who have good character, we should want in this country, but don't have the money. So we've got to fix that.

Nudes are the greatest to paint. Everything you can find in a landscape or a still life or anything else is there: darkness and light, character dimension, texture. I painted heads too, of course.

Number one rule for fiction: Coincidence can be used to worsen a characters predicament, but never to solve his problems.

Obama is a very good actor. He knows how to play it. And he is very adept at creating this ''Obama'' - this character who is there whenever the world needs something.

Obi-Wan understands that the best thing he can do is contribute something positive to the world around him and then to leave. And if he does that, he will in some ways live forever because the good influence of what he did will be felt. It may sound corny but that's kind of the way I feel about contributing to Star Wars characters. It isn't about me. It's about the story. It's about the mythology of Star Wars and the moral implications of that mythology.

Obama is a man of first-class intellect and first-class temperament. But his character remains highly suspect.

Oblivion is the dark page, whereon Memory writes her light-beam characters, and makes them legible; were it all light, nothing could be read there, any more than if it were all darkness.

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.

Obviously I'm grayer, a few more wrinkles. One of the things I'm proud about is that I think my basic character and outlook actually have not changed much. And people who are closest to me will tell you that the guy who came here is the same guy who's leaving.

Obviously making Peter Parker suddenly bisexual or gay wouldn't really make logical or dramatic sense. It was a hypothetical kind of question about the nature of these comic book characters and the nature of this particular character, and whether sexuality, race, any of those things makes any difference to the character of Peter Parker.

Obviously, ["Fences"] is a character-driven piece in every sense of the word, and Denzel [Washington] knows the actor. He gave us two weeks of rehearsal. He is a truth teller, and he is a truth seer. So he knows when something is not going in the right direction, and he will call you on it. But, he knows the word to use to unlock whatever is blocking you. So I think he's fabulous and he's a teacher.

Obviously, for me, that person has got to have a beauty to them - and it's not always physical beauty. It's important that I love someone's character and that I click with it.

Obviously, I'm a fan of satire. I'd debate anyone, but it would have to be the actual person. That would be my only hesitation about debating Stephen Colbert. If he were playing a character, it wouldn't really work.

Occasionally a single anecdote opens a character; biography has its comparative anatomy, and a saying or a sentiment enables the skilful hand to construct the skeleton.

Occasional war is one of the rigorous instruments in the hands of Providence to give tone to the character of nations.

Obviously, when you're in theater, you have to be in character. You have to prepare for the unexpected. You have to be able to react to things that don't necessarily happen every night, or aren't supposed to happen every night. And you have to react to it in character. In six months, 192 shows, those things did happen. And the experience of that, the ability to stay in character, I feel like I've learned a great deal.

Obviously you have to have talent in order to play so you can't overlook that, but we won't overlook the character issue when it comes to talent because if they have talent and they don't have character, it's going to be very difficult to coach that person.

Occasionally, very occasionally, say at four o’clock in the afternoon on a wet Sunday, she feels panic-stricken and almost breathless with loneliness. Once or twice she has been known to pick up the phone to check that it isn’t broken. Sometimes she thinks how nice it would be to be woken by a call in the night: ‘get in a taxi now’ or ‘I need to see you, we need to talk’. But at the best of times she feels like a character in a Muriel Spark novel – independent, bookish, sharp-minded, secretly romantic.

OCD, we discovered is a lot of different things-it's not just washing your hands, it's whatever you're obsessed with. It can be just the way you hold a pen, and you always have to have it a certain way or you have to eat your food, it depends. It's something that, as a character I thought was really interesting because sometimes it's used in a film where it is OCD and sometimes it's strategic.

Of all ennobling sentiments, patriotism may be the most easily manipulated. On the one hand, it gives powerful expression to what is best in a nation's character: a commitment to principle, a willingness to sacrifice, a devotion to the community by the choice of the individual. But among its toxic fruits are intolerance, belligerence and blind obedience, perhaps because it blooms most luxuriantly during times of war.

Of all the endless variety of phenomena which nature presents to our senses, there is none that fills our minds with greater wonder than that inconceivably complex movement which, in its entirety, we designate as human life; Its mysterious origin is veiled in the forever impenetrable mist of the past, its character is rendered incomprehensible by its infinite intricacy, and its destination is hidden in the unfathomable depths of the future... .

Of all the properties which belong to honorable men, not one is so highly prized as that of character.

Of all people, children are the ones that really understand when there's a truth there for them - an emotional truth. The characters really have to work. Children, as an audience, are very inspirational for me.

Of all the stars whom I worked with, I think Steve knew better what worked for him on the screen than any other. He had such a sense of what he could register, and that helped a lot in terms of shaping the character and the script.

Of course, even if the directors like my ideas or the designs I do, they may end up changing the story so much, that those characters have to change, or get cut out altogether, and that's just the way it is. Sometimes the directors are designers themselves, or they want to work with a character designer who will do things in their own distinct way - sometimes the most important thing I do is figure out what they don't want to do, by experimenting. Either way, whether they use my ideas or not, I get paid, so it's all good.

Of all the things that man has made, no is so full of interest and charm, none possesses so distinct a life and character of its own, as a ship.

Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.

Of all virtues, magnanimity is the rarest. There are a hundred persons of merit for one who willingly acknowledges it in another.

Of course, every actor has their box and you have to respect and play for it, but I do love challenging myself. I love every role to be new, and I always like to bring a freshness to every character I play.

Of Cooking. This is an art of various forms, the object of which is to give ordinary observations the appearance and character of those of the highest degree of accuracy. One of its numerous processes is to make multitudes of observations, and out of these to select only those which agree, or very nearly agree. If a hundred observations are made, the cook must be very unhappy if he cannot pick out fifteen or twenty which will do for serving up.

Of course I know that the twins are only words on a page, and I'm certainly not the sort of writer who talks to his characters or harbours any illusions about the creative process. But at the same time, I think it's juvenile and arrogant when literary writers compulsively remind their readers that the characters aren't real. People know that already. The challenge is to make an intelligent reader suspend disbelief, to seduce them into the reality of a narrative.

Of course, there are hundreds of novels and authors that have influenced me. But to choose three, they are: Stephen King/The Stand (and really most of his books); Anne Rice/The Witching Hour; and Pat Conroy/The Prince of Tides. These authors write my favorite kind of book - epic feel, gorgeous prose, unique characters, and a pace that keeps you turning the pages. From them, I learned a lot about characterization, pacing, prose, voice, and originality.

Of course, no religious test for the presidency - every faith adds to our national character.

Of course, people will call you an old artist or young artist, which is just a character of you. But personally, I don't think my work and my understanding of art is so much related to being Chinese, but the character of that. Maybe it's beyond my own consciousness.

Of course it's a lot easier for me if I think of myself as a character to say certain things; it gives me a kind of liberty to say things that I otherwise wouldn't. It's always my hope that it will come across as me and not me at the same time.

Of course, the character of my garden is also determined by things beyond any human decision, mine or anyone else's.

Of means of persuading by speaking there are three species: some consist in the character of the speaker; others in the disposing the hearer a certain way; others in the thing itself which is said, by reason of its proving, or appearing to prove the point.

Of course there are big differences in length and character and vocabulary, but each level has its particular pleasures when it comes to the words one can use and the way one uses them.

Of ill-temper there are three kinds: irascibility, bitterness, sullenness. It belongs to the ill-tempered man to be unable to bear either small slights or defeats but to be given to retaliation and revenge, and easily moved to anger by any chance deed or word. Ill-temper is accompanied by excitability of character, instability, bitter speech, and liability to take offence at trifles and to feel these feelings quickly and on slight occasions.

Oftentimes, in fact I think this is to my fault, I look at usually scripts as a whole. I should probably pay more attention to the character that I'm going to play and what they do.

Office of itself does much to equalize politicians. It by no means brings all characters to a level; but it does bring high characters down and low characters up towards a common standard.

Often I'll find clues to where the story might go by figuring out where the characters would rather not go.

Oftentimes what happens is that the writer understands one character, but they don't understand the other one, and the other one ends up not being written as well.

Often, as a young actress, you find yourself being the only girl in a room full of men... and one of the reasons why I like 'Grey's Anatomy' is because they have such strong female characters and the women really drive this show.

Often, when I want to read something that is satisfying to me as theology, what I actually read is string theory, or something like that - popularizations, inevitably, of scientific cosmologies - because their description of the scale of things and the intrinsic, astonishing character of reality coincides very beautifully with the most ambitious theology. It is thinking at that scale, and it is thinking that is invested with meaning in a humanly evocative form. That's theology.

Often my characters have some kind of idealism or grand belief that they're pursuing.