Characterization Quotes - Page 3

• The 250-page outline for American Tabloid. The books are so dense. They're so complex, you cannot write like I write off the top of your head. It's the combination of that meticulousness and the power of the prose and, I think, the depth of the characterizations and the risks that I've taken with language that give the books their clout. And that's where I get pissed off at a lot of my younger readers.

  James Ellroy

  Book, Taken, Writing

  "The Onion talks to crime-fiction kingpin James Ellroy". Interview by John Krewson, www.avclub.com. November 20, 1996.

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• 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.

  Megan Chance

  Kings, Book, Character

  Source: www.omnivoracious.com

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• I reject totally the characterization of a transwoman as a mutilated man. First, that formulation presumes that men born into that sex assignment are not mutilated. Second, it once again sets up the feminist as the prosecutor of trans people. If there is any mutilation going on in this scene, it is being done by the feminist police force who rejects the lived embodiment of transwomen. That very accusation is a form of "mutilation" as is all transphobic discourse such as these.

  Judith Butler

  Sex, Men, People

  Source: transadvocate.com

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• Steve [King] has been incredibly supportive. He's also really good about getting back to me when I have questions about plot or characterization.

  Robin Furth

  Kings, Supportive, Plot

  Source: www.graphicnovelreporter.com

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• I think I made a mistake with [Jane] Austen by reading all six in a row. There are similarities to the plots so by the time I got to the last one I could anticipate what was happening too easily. But her characterizations are amazing.

  Stephen Dobyns

  Mistake, Reading, Thinking

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

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• I think I've learned a lot about how to make movies, and particularly about how to edit movies by thinking about how similar problems are resolved in other forms. The issues in all forms are the same in an abstract sense, aren't they? Characterization, abstraction, metaphor, passage of time... Whether it's a movie, a novel, a play, or a poem, those issues exist. And each person resolves them differently.

  Frederick Wiseman

  Thinking, Play, Issues

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• When I'm writing, especially when I'm writing in first person, I don't think about the characterization, or how they are going to express themselves, I just express my own approach to these things. I think most writers can never divorce themselves from their private lives and personas; they are the ones that are writing. And the more they remove themselves from their own persona, the more, perhaps, mechanical the work becomes.

  Richard Matheson

  Divorce, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.rodserling.com

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• Psychoanalytic categories such as "neurosis", "psychosis", "mania", and "fixation" have become part of our everyday psychological vocabulary and we now routinely interpret states of anxiety, excitement, or depression in terms of physiological factors involving levels of serotonin, adrenalin, or blood sugar. To say that the characterization of thinking has a normative function that is irreducible to neurophysiological processing is not to say that our extant classification of the forms of thinking is incorrigible.

  Ray Brassier

  Thinking, Anxiety, Everyday

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I get letters from adults saying that they love the books because they are more in-depth with characterization than the comics. The luxury of writing a whole novel is you can really explore who the characters are.

  Lisa Yee

  Book, Writing, Character

  Source: www.hbook.com

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• Shamefulness is always a huge part of my characterizations. I like protagonists that reveal, either through "honesty" in their various thought processes or via their actions, perhaps telling us things they're not so keen on disclosing through their interactions with the outside world. Probably both during the duration of a novel.

  Joshua Mohr

  Honesty, World, Duration

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• Even in cerebral roles that are seemingly intelligent and nothing else, I think it's so important to wrap your characterization in a physical form as well.

  Benedict Cumberbatch

  Intelligent, Thinking, Important

  "Benedict Cumberbatch - "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug". Interview with Kam Williams, www.eurweb.com. December, 2013.

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• I don't really enjoy working in TV, to be completely honest, even though it's incredibly lucrative, I'm just terrified of not being satiated in a myriad of different ways. It's amazing that I get to create every day, as an actor, or a director, or a writer, and I get to do it in a variety of different genres and worlds and characterizations. I think that's the great privilege of what we do, we get to make believe. I get to go to so many different places, try on different occupations, take on different points of view. That's what's always been sort of alluring.

  Lake Bell

  Believe, Thinking, Trying

  Source: www.marieclaire.com

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• Characterization in a play is like a blank check which the dramatist accords to the actor for him to fill in.

  Thornton Wilder

  Play, Actors, Checks

  Thornton Wilder (2014). “The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder, Volume T”, p.266, Theatre Communications Group

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• I write about life as it exists within houses and on the streets. And there's nothing, hopefully, in any of my characterizations or in any of my plottings or in any of my valuations that doesn't ring true to life. I'm a novelist. I'm not a theoretician.

  Richard Grossman

  Writing, House, True Life

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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• I'm trying to make the case that the church can indeed, from within its own resources, move out of a false, and often a hateful, characterization of and set of attitudes toward gay and lesbian people.

  James Alison

  Attitude, Moving, Gay

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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• The second draft is on yellow paper, that's when I work on characterizations. The third is pink, I work on story motivations. Then blue, that's where I cut, cut, cut.

  Jacqueline Susann

  Motivation, Cutting, Blue

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• I think my wife would take objection to any characterization of me as perfect.

  Peter Blair Henry

  Thinking, Perfect, Wife

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• And yet because of my attempt at sincerity I have been condemned, hooted at, reviled; filthy rumors have been circulated about me, not about my characterizations but about me personally, my private self.

  Erich von Stroheim

  Self, Rumor, Sincerity

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• I will never forget the pleasure and instruction I derived from working with a true master of his art, such as Edward G. Robinson was - and is. Surely his record for versatility, studied characterization - ranging from modern colloquial to the classics - and artistic integrity is unsurpassed.

  Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.

  Art, Integrity, Records

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• Usually when I put my focus on the pacing, the plot, the specific characterizations, - it's ironic - but then I actually increase my chances of writing something that moves people because I haven't become too self-conscious of the goal.

  Christopher Rice

  Moving, Writing, Self

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• The only thing that surprises me is the characterization of teachers as lazy and greedy. Only someone with very little understanding of what teaching requires would say such a thing.

  Taylor Mali

  Teacher, Teaching, Understanding

  Taylor Mali (2012). “What Teachers Make: In Praise of the Greatest Job in the World”, p.76, Penguin

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• Instead of saying, ah, I don't have the money, just embrace it and do what we can do. And the scenes that we film and the characterizations in the scenes can come out interesting. And I really feel good about that, going into it.

  George Tillman, Jr.

  Interesting, Feel Good, Film

  Source: collider.com

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• It is no accident that Hitler, Lenin, Pol Pot and other butchers of note took special pains early in their despotic careers to suppress religion and undermine the traditional family. Theophobes would find such a characterization truly horrifying, but it's true. This explains why theophobia - while popular in faculty lounges, journalism seminars and Hollywood bacchanals - has not and probably never will attract a public following of any appreciable influence or size.

  Tony Snow

  Pain, Careers, Special

  "Now, the Theophobes", www.foxnews.com. December 8, 2004.

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• I'm very disturbed at the picture that was painted by Senator Ted Kennedy that Samuel Alito is not a man of his word, that he is dishonest. The implication that he is not reliable I don't think is a fair characterization of what I've read.

  Tom Coburn

  Men, Thinking, Ted Kennedy

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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