Famous Quotes & Sayings

Alexander McCall Smith

Some of my characters are a mixture of various aspects of people I have met. others are pure invention.

Alexander McCall Smith

As a writer, you have to realize that people want to like the characters, so you have to be careful to keep them involved.

Alexander McCall Smith

Any author of fiction will tell you that characters don't need to be told what to do.

Alexander McCall Smith

I'm interested in character and dialogue and exchange of ideas.

Alexander Pope

That character in conversation which commonly passes for agreeable is made up of civility and falsehood.

Alexander Pope

Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust, Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.

Alexander Pope

It often happens that those are the best people whose characters have been most injured by slanderers: as we usually find that to be the sweetest fruit which the birds have been picking at.

Alexander Pope

Good-humor only teaches charms to last, Still makes new conquests and maintains the past.

Alexander Pope

The character of covetousness, is what a man generally acquires more through some niggardliness or ill grace in little and inconsiderable things, than in expenses of any consequence.

Alexander Pope

What then remains, but well our power to use, And keep good-humor still whate'er we lose? And trust me, dear, good-humor can prevail, When airs, and flights, and screams, and scolding fail.

Alexa Chung

I would say probably Paris [Hilton]. Because to me that's her in character and she kind was always sort of winking at the camera. There was satire I think involved in what she was doing. I like to think there was.

Alex Graves

And one of the things that's interesting about how they're doing the show is that the audience almost knows more than the characters do in some of these scenes, and the extent of that is unique. So it's grown into a different show in a way. It's sort of grown into a different experience watching it.

Alex Graves

Because if you remember - and people forget this - the first two years of Game of Thrones everybody was going, "I don't know what's going on, but I really like it." And you really didn't know what to make of a lot of people, and now it's changed and people aren't really talking about that. Now it's like you're watching West Wing or Friends, you know the characters and you're like, "What in the world is going to happen?"

Alex Karpovsky

What I like in comedies are really two things: stories that are character-driven and stories that are rooted in authenticity.

Alex Kingston

I don't think my looks are modern. I always imagined I'd end up doing Chekhov, Ibsen and Shakespeare all my life and never play a contemporary character.

Alex Kapranos

There's a character that I play onstage, and I can't let him loose in the supermarket when I'm buying my beans on toast.

Alex Kapranos

Traditionally, lots of vagrants and unemployable characters wind up working in kitchens.

Albert Schweitzer

The great secret of success is to go through life as a person who never gets used up. That is possible for those who never argue and strive with people and facts, but in all experience retires upon themselves, and look for the ultimate cause of things in themselves.

Debi Mazar

Doing makeup was a way to create characters, only I got tired of doing it for other people.

Debby Ryan

I love people like Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, people who create and write their own stuff - especially when there's just not enough cool, interesting characters out there.

E. O. Wilson

I've found that good dialogue tells you not only what people are saying or how they're communicating but it tells you a great deal - by dialect and tone, content and circumstance - about the quality of the character.

E. O. Wilson

True character arises from a deeper well than religion.

E. M. Forster

Chess is a forcing house where the fruits of character can ripen more fully than in life

E. M. Forster

Italy is such a delightful place to live in if you happen to be a man. There one may enjoy that exquisite luxury of Socialism--that true Socialism which is based not on equality of income or character, but on the equality of manners. In the democracy of the caffè or the street the great question of our life has been solved, and the brotherhood of man is a reality. But it is accomplished at the expense of the sisterhood of women.

E. M. Forster

It is devilish difficult to criticise society & also create human beings.

E. M. Forster

We may divide characters into flat and round.

E. M. Forster

But I have seen my obstacles: trivialities, learning and poetry. This last needs explaining: the old artist's readiness to dissolve characters into a haze. Characters cannot come alive and fight and guide the world unless the novelist wants them to remain characters.

E. M. Forster

The test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way. If it never surprises it is flat. Flat characters ... in their purest form ... are constructed round a single idea or quality; when there is more than one factor to them, we get the beginning of the curve toward the round. The really flat character can be experessed in one sentence such as, "I will never desert Mr Micawber." There is Mrs Micawber - she says she won't desert Mr Micawber; she doesn't, and there she is.

E. M. Forster

For our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even for the better.

E. M. Forster

Axiom : Novel must have either one living character or a perfect pattern: fails otherwise.

Drea De Matteo

First of all, I would shoot myself if I ever had to play straight-forward characters that really don't have much of a past. Maybe it's just that I'm not a good enough actor to have to embellish, but I like having these really, really rich roles to play.

Dree Hemingway

I think the only reason I wanted to do modeling, really, was because I knew I wasn't ready to act; I knew I didn't have enough life experience, and I knew that doing photo shoots was a way of acting. Playing a character each shoot and being able to just emerge yourself in these awkward experiences - it was amazing.

Drew Barrymore

The low points I had all helped make up my character, so I probably wouldn't want to do away with them because I like being flawed and I like having them help me grow and change and become better and stronger.