Famous Quotes & Sayings

J. Michael Straczynski

I keep waiting for a paradigm shift to happen that will let network and studio execs see that sci-fi is the same as any other genre in terms of how you approach it - logically, character-based, with challenging ideas and forward thinking - but I worry that it might never happen in my lifetime.

J. Michael Straczynski

When the Seinfeld show said it was going to be a show about nothing, everybody said it couldn't - wouldn't work. It did. Thor is about something, about that character finding his destiny, but it's not doing what was expected... and yet it's doing very well.

J. Michael Straczynski

The whole point of having great characters is the opportunity to explore them more deeply with time, re-interpreting them for each new age.

J. Michael Straczynski

All you can do is focus on telling the best story you can with compelling characters. If you do it right, it will endure. If you do it wrong, it won't.

J. Michael Straczynski

Coming from TV and film, rule number one is that you always service the main character first and foremost. If that's not working, you've got nothing.

J. K. Rowling

If there is a connection between Harry Potter and my new novel, it's my interest in characters.

J. K. Rowling

I imagine them very clearly and then attempt to describe what I can see. Sometimes I draw them for my own amusement! (talking about her characters and scenes)

J. K. Rowling

You can have a very intense relationship with fictional characters because they are in your own head.

Ivan Reitman

I've always believed in populating my films with characters who we like, who we have some warmth for, who have warmth for each other, who we would like to hang out with, who we emulate in one way or another.

H. L. Mencken

We have had more brilliant Presidents than Cleveland, and one or two who were considerably more profound, but we have never had one, at least since Washington, whose fundamental character was solider and more admirable.

H. L. Mencken

Here is one of the fundamental defects of American fiction--perhaps the one character that sets it off sharply from all other known kinds of contemporary fiction. It habitually exhibits, not a man of delicate organization in revolt against the inexplicable tragedy of existence, but a man of low sensibilities and elemental desires yielding himself gladly to his environment, and so achieving what, under a third-rate civilization, passes for success. To get on: this is the aim. To weigh and reflect, to doubt and rebel: this is the thing to be avoided.

H. L. Mencken

The older I grow the less I esteem mere ideas. In politics, particularly, they are transient and unimportant. . . . There are only men who have character and men who lack it.

H. L. Mencken

All the political seers and sorcerers seem to be agreed that the coming Presidential campaign will be full of bitterness, and that most of it will be caused by religion. I count Prohibition as a part of religion, for it has surely become so in the United States. The Prohibitionists, seeing all their other arguments destroyed by the logic of events, have fallen back upon the mystical doctrine that God is somehow on their side, and that opposing them thus takes on the character of blasphemy.

H. L. Mencken

There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character.

Gunnar Myrdal

All sudden and violent changes, whatever their causes or character, must tend to decrease the respect for status quo as a natural order of things.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw

I think there are parts of myself in every character I play.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw

I try to put myself into whatever character I play.

Guillermo Cabrera Infante

The relationship between reader and characters is very difficult. It is even more peculiar than the relationship between the writer and his characters.

Guillermo Cabrera Infante

That is what I define as a novel: something that has a beginning, a middle and an end, with characters and a plot that sustain interest from the first sentence to the last. But that is not what I do at all.

Guillermo del Toro

I really wanted the house to be a character. And I knew, I said, I'll produce that one, but if I direct it, I need to build a house.

Greg Kinnear

I like complicated characters.

Greg Kinnear

The tragic element of a character is always intriguing I think.

H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

If you were to sell your character, would you get full retail or would it go for a bargain-basement price?

H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Your religion is what you do when the sermon is over.

Grant Bowler

I pretty much always choose characters. That's what I do. That's what I look for. I look for dynamics in a script and potential.

Grant Bowler

A character, their ability or inability to laugh at themselves should always be a very, very conscious choice. It's a very big key to the nature of a human being.

Grant Morrison

The only time I ever met a character that I wrote was when I met Ian McKellan, when he was playing Magneto in the 'X-Men' movies.

Grant Morrison

I love 'Batman.' I love the Adam West 'Batman.' I love the animated 'Batman.' The character of Batman can encompass any interpretation, which is what makes that character so brilliant and why it's survived so many different media.

Grant Morrison

I think any writer coming on to 'Batman' should at least attempt to do their own definitive version. What it means to them. Whatever they think that symbol or character can say.

Grant Morrison

Your character that you create in your writing not only represents who you are, but also represents a number of people who you've met along the way.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

There is something in the character of every man which cannot be broken in--the skeleton of his character; and to try to alter this is like training a sheep for draught purposes.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Nothing reveals a man's character better than the kind of joke at which he takes offense.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.