Character Quotes - Page 34

• A king is a man strong of character and conviction who leads by example and truly cares for the suffering of his people,not a brute who rules simply because he is the strongest.

  R. A. Salvatore

  Strong, Kings, Men

  R.A. Salvatore (2009). “The Crystal Shard: The Legend of Drizzt”, p.118, Wizards of the Coast

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Recognizing power in another does not diminish your own.

  Joss Whedon

  Power, Doe, Recognizing

  9 Copy quote

• ...it is how a person goes about quenching his desires or living with them unrequited that the readers get a glimpse of his true character.

  Michael Connelly

  Desire, Glimpse, Reader

  6 Copy quote

• Your reputation is what you're perceived to be, Your character is what you really are

  John Wooden

  Inspirational, Reputation

  4 Copy quote

• Pity can purge us of hostility and arouse feelings of identification with the characters, but it can also be a consoling reassurance which leads us to believe that we have understood, and that, in pitying, we have even done something to right a wrong.

  Richard Wright

  Believe, Feelings, Done

  Richard Wright (1957). “Native Son”, p.393, McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The ear participates, and helps arrange marriages; the eye has already made love with what it sees. The eye knows pleasure, delights in the body's shape: the ear hears words that talk about all this. When hearing takes place, character areas change; but when you see, inner areas change. If all you know about fire is what you have heard see if the fire will agree to cook you! Certain energies come only when you burn. If you long for belief, sit down in the fire! When the ear receives subtly; it turns into an eye. But if words do not reach the ear in the chest, nothing happens.

  Rumi

  Eye, Fire, Long

  Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (Maulana), Jelaluddin Rumi, Kabir Helminski, Andrew Harvey (2005). “The Rumi Collection: An Anthology of Translations of Mevlâna Jalâluddin Rumi”, p.46, Shambhala Publications

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Writing is hard work, and if anything's true about the process, it's that fact that a good story is hard to find and even trickier to get on paper. What's less romantic than staring alone at a blank screen? And edgy? I've changed the cat little because I didn't know what my characters were going to say next.

  Adam Johnson

  Hard Work, Writing, Cat

  11 Copy quote

• I am the suburb of a non-existent town, the prolix commentary on a book never written. I am nobody, nobody. I am a character in a novel which remains to be written, and I float, aerial, scattered without ever having been, among the dreams of a creature who did not know how to finish me off.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Dream, Book, Towns

  Fernando Pessoa, Iain Watson (1991). “The book of disquiet: a selection”, Quartet Encounters

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The simplicity of your character makes you exquisitely incomprehensible to me.

  Oscar Wilde

  Simplicity

  Oscar Wilde (2000). “The Plays of Oscar Wilde”, p.380, Wordsworth Editions

  29 Copy quote

  Show source

• Don't equate activity with efficiency. You are paying your key people to see the big picture. Don't let them get bogged down in a lot of meaningless meetings and paper shuffling. Announce a Friday afternoon off once in a while. Cancel a Monday morning meeting or two. Tell the cast of characters you'd like them to spend the amount of time normally spent preparing for attending the meeting at their desks, simply thinking about an original idea.

  Harvey Mackay

  Friday, Monday, Morning

  Harvey Mackay (1996). “Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive: Outsell, Outmanage, Outmotivate, & Outnegotiate Your Competition”, Ballantine Books

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Rebellion is necessary for development of character.

  Cynthia Voigt

  Development, Rebellion

  9 Copy quote

• A novel is not an allegory.... It is the sensual experience of another world. If you don't enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won't be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience. So start breathing.

  Azar Nafisi

  Heart, Destiny, Breathing

  Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.111, Random House

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Character is doing what you don't want to do but know you should do.

  Joyce Meyer

  Want, Should, Knows

  8 Copy quote

• I'd like to find whoever taught the Stump that extra work builds character and push him down the stairs," Neal told Kel at lunch.

  Tamora Pierce

  Lunch, Taught, Stumps

  Tamora Pierce (2014). “Protector of the Small Quartet”, p.81, Random House Books for Young Readers

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• You say often you wish a library; here I gif you one; for between these two lids (he meant covers) is many books in one. Read him well, and he will help you much; for the study of character in this book will help you to read it in the world, and paint it with your pen.

  Louisa May Alcott

  Book, Two, Library

  Louisa May Alcott (2005). “Little Women ; Little Men ; Jo's Boys”, p.365, Library of America

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• But in a country where you hang your dead up on walls and pride whether or not a man bears a javelin more than his character, how am I to persuade you out of a war? It would be suicide for Kildenree to war on Bayern and butchery for Bayern to attack Kildenree. If you don't believe me, then send me back. Or if you don't trust me to leave, I'll return to my little room on the west wall and tend your geese, and you can be sure that on my watch no thieves will touch my flock.

  Shannon Hale

  Suicide, Country, Wall

  Shannon Hale (2010). “The Goose Girl”, p.374, A&C Black

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I love this quote uttered by the character Widget in The Night Circus. He credits it to Herr Thiessen but knows it is a literary quote by the another author. "Wine is bottled poetry

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Wine, Night, Credit

  4 Copy quote

• That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call 'free will' is your mind's freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.

  Ayn Rand

  Thinking, Choices, Soul

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.192, Penguin

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I can't help but think that it's an unfortunate custom to name children after people who come to sticky ends. Even if they are fictional characters, it doesn't bode well for the poor things. There are too many Judes and Tesses and Clarissas and Cordelias around. If we must name our children after literary figures then we should search out happy ones, although it's true they are much harder to find.

  Kate Atkinson

  Children, Thinking, Names

  Kate Atkinson (2013). “Emotionally Weird: A Novel”, p.102, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A sum of money is a leading character in this tale about people, just as a sum of honey might properly be a leading character in a tale about bees.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  People, Might, Honey

  "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater". Book by Kurt Vonnegut. Opening line, 1965.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• the depth of a person's character is not measured by his or her physical strength, but by the depth of his or her nobility.

  Frank Peretti

  Depth, Physical Strength, Nobility

  Frank E. Peretti (2001). “No More Victims”, Thomas Nelson Incorporated

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's rather disconcerting to sit around a table in a critique of someone else's work, only to realize that the antagonist in the story is none other than yourself, and no one present thinks you're a very likable character.

  Michelle Richmond

  Thinking, Stories, Tables

  4 Copy quote

• I start with a tingle, a kind of feeling of the story I will write. Then come the characters, and they take over, they make the story.

  Isak Dinesen

  Writing, Feelings, Stories

  6 Copy quote

• The most serious point in the case is the disposition of the child." What on earth has that to do with it?" I ejaculated. My dear Watson, you as a medical man are continually gaining insight as to the tendencies of a child by the study of the parents. Don't you see that the converse is equally valid. I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Children, Real, Men

  Arthur Conan Doyle (2012). “The Complete Sherlock Holmes: with an introduction from Robert Ryan”, p.844, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Character is plot, plot is character.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Writing, Plot

  4 Copy quote