Famous Quotes & Sayings

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.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

One must judge men not by their opinions, but by what their opinions have made of them.

Gene Luen Yang

One of the ways [racism] pops up is when they turn a comic into a live-action movie and there's this temptation to make Asian characters white.

Gene Hackman

I do not like assassins, or men of low character.

Gary Gygax

There is no winning or losing, but rather the value is in the experience of imagining yourself as a character in whatever genre you're involved in, whether it's a fantasy game, the Wild West, secret agenst or whatever else. You get to sort of vicariously experience those things.

Friedrich Nietzsche

He who recites dramatic works makes discoveries about his own character.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Thus strength is afforded by good and thorough customs, thus is learnt the subjection of the individual, and strenuousness of character becomes a birth gift and afterwards is fostered as a habit.

Friedrich Nietzsche

What someone is, begins to be revealed when his talent abates, when he stops showing us what he can do.