Characterization Quotes

• Characterization is an accident that flows out of action and dialogue.

  Jack Woodford

  Writing, Flow, Action

  Jack Woodford (2012). “Trial and Error”, p.177, askmar publishing

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  You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.

  Harper Lee

  Powerful, Positivity, Sunshine

  Harold Bloom, Harper Lee (2010). “Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird”, p.81, Infobase Publishing

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• Characterization requires a constant back-and-forth between the exterior events of the story and the inner life of the character.

  David Corbett

  Character, Events, Stories

  David Corbett (2013). “The Art of Character: Creating Memorable Characters for Fiction, Film, and TV”, p.41, Penguin

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• Characterization is not divorced from plot, not a coat of paint you slap on after the structure of events is already built. Rather characterization is inseparable from plot.

  Nancy Kress

  Events, Plot, Coats

  Nancy Kress (2004). “Dynamic Characters”, p.4, Writer's Digest Books

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• There are technical tricks that may help you create more effective characters. My approach to characterization is not at all technical. I can't really analyze how I do it, but I am sure of one thing. To write convincing characters, you must possess the ability to think yourself into someone else's skin.

  Juliet Marillier

  Writing, Character, Thinking

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• I'm not interested in plots. I'm interested only in the characterization of people and what they do.

  Erskine Caldwell

  People, Plot, Not Interested

  Erskine Caldwell (1988). “Conversations with Erskine Caldwell”, p.182, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Characterization is integral to the theatrical experience.

  Robert Ludlum

  Theatrical

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• My theory of characterization is basically this: Put some dirt on a hero, and put some sunshine on the villain, one brush stroke of beauty on the villain.

  Justin Cronin

  Hero, Sunshine, Dirt

  "Justin Cronin, author of The Passage, on book two of his vampire trilogy". Interview with Todd VanDerWerff, www.avclub.com. November 1, 2012.

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• An attempt to write nothing but characterization will soon bog down; I for one don't want to have somebody tell me about someone else.

  Daniel Keys Moran

  Writing, Want, Bogs

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• The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Plato, Philosophical, Knowledge

  Process and Reality pt. 2, ch. 1 (1929)

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• It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.

  Harper Lee

  Dad, War, Father

  Harper Lee (1960). “TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD”

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• This time we aren't fighting the Yankees, we're fighting our friends. But remember this, no matter how bitter things get, they're still our friends and this is still our home.

  Harper Lee

  Home, Fighting, Yankees

  Harper Lee (1960). “TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD”

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• By definition it uses and plays and delights in time. It delights in the interlacing of chronologies and the consequences of that interlacing. And those have personal and psychological expressions in a character. Aside from other issues of writing, psychological characterization is what narrative can do best.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Writing, Character, Expression

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Philosophy is the product of wonder. The effort after the general characterization of the world around us is the romance of human thought.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Philosophy, Effort, Romance

  Alfred North Whitehead (2012). “Nature and Life”, p.9, Cambridge University Press

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• I would say plotting is the most difficult thing for me. Characterization is only hard because sometimes I feel I get so interested in it that I want to talk too much about the characters and that slows the story down. So I say, "Hey, people want to find out what's going to happen next, they don't want to listen to you spout off about this or that person." But I think even the bad guy deserves to tell his side of the story.

  Stephen King

  Character, Writing, Thinking

  Stephen King, Tim Underwood, Chuck Miller (1988). “Bare bones: conversations on terror with Stephen King”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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• The only time that I've adopted characterization again since that point, for my own albums, has been an album called "Outside" that I did with Brian Eno.

  David Bowie

  Albums, Brian, Adopted

  "David Bowie On The Ziggy Stardust Years: We Were Creating The 21st Century In 1971". Interview with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. January 11, 2016.

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• It is not unusual to hear a religious leader, a philosopher, or a poet refer to man as having a divine spark within him. Such characterizations infer that man possesses great abilities and potentials. We are frequently admonished to develop our capabilities, reach out, and set high goals for ourselves.

  Ezra Taft Benson

  Religious, Men, Generosity

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• One thing about beginning writers is that they don't really always know their own strengths and weaknesses - you might think you're bad at characterization, but that might really be because of some issue you're having with another element, which is making it hard for you to express character in a convincing way.

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Character, Thinking, Issues

  Source: www.barnesandnoble.com

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• With Batman&Robin, the fourth entry in the recent Batman movie series, the profitable franchise appears poised to take a nosedive. This film, which places yet another actor in the batsuit, has all the necessary hallmarks of a sorry sequel - pointless, plodding plotting; asinine action; clueless, comatose characterization; and dumb dialogue. Batman&Robin moves at a dizzying pace, yet goes absolutely nowhere.

  James Berardinelli

  Sorry, Moving, Clueless

  "Batman and Robin (United States, 1997)". Movie Review, www.reelviews.net.

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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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• 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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• Acting is characterization, the process of two entities merging-the actor and the role.

  George C. Scott

  Two, Acting, Roles

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• 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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• 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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• 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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