I like to write first-person because I like to become the character I'm writing.

When I was a kid, I was surrounded by girls: older sisters, older girl cousins just down the street... except for an older boy named Vito who threw rocks. Each year I would wish for a baby brother. It never happened.

Accept what people offer. Drink their milkshakes. Take their love.

I love the most the students with troubled lives.

As my early drawings warned me, where humans go, lions and tidal waves follow.

However far fiction writers stray from their own lives and experiences - and I stray pretty far from mine - I think, ultimately, that we may be writing what we need to write in some way, albeit unconsciously.

I wanted to connect a modern story with a myth that I had read.

I think I write fiction for the opportunity to get beyond the limits of my own life.

Love stories are probably all I've ever been able to write or want to write.

Human behavior in the midst of hardship caught my attention very early on, and my first stories were all pictures, no words.

The roundness of life's design may be a sign that there is a presence beyond ourselves.

When I was a kid... I needed to belong.

I like to write first-person because I like to become the character I'm writing.

I like to be surprised. The best writing is when it defies me, when it starts going a different way than I had planned.

Love comes in far more shapes and sizes than what the family-values crowd condones, of course.

I think the secret is to just settle for the shape of your life takes. Instead of you know, always waiting and wishing for what might make you happy.

In this watering-place I acted an heroic character, badly studied; and being a novice on such a stage, I forgot my part before a pair of lovely blue eyes.

I do like to embed a fictional character firmly in an occupation.

But even with a character like Cary who is relatively outlandish, at the end of the movie he's in a place where I wouldn't have expected him to be - taking on the responsibility of a woman who is pregnant and who used to be his best friend's wife.

Always, your work is the same: You have to tell a story, you have to make a character. It doesn't matter if there are thousands of dollars, millions behind it, or if there is nothing.

Each of us is meant to have a character all our own, to be what no other can exactly be, and do what no other can exactly do.

I liked Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, and that is the kind of character that I would like to have played. That would have been more in tune with who I really was.

It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character.

In a lot of ways, the make-up was the character.

The more we study the Indian's character the more we appreciate the marked distinction between the civilized being and the real savage.

So many people have said that to me, that what they really like about Alex is what she brings out in Marissa, and what this situation brings out in her, a hint of happiness and another side to her character.

I've been on the show for six years and I don't even know what her history is. I sort of make things up in my mind, but I think it's hard for an audience to follow and invest in a character when they don't have the details.

It is not true that drink changes a man's character. It may reveal it more clearly.

Because I killed a guy in real life, and because my character kills a guy onstage, they said I could never do anything this great again. I resented that.

Well, I go to the theater today, and its curtain - there is no curtain in this play; the lights go down and go up - and we start. And I live this character for two hours. There are only two of us in the play. And It's a complete experience.

I just kind of understood it, and I threw my love for others and love for life into the character, and was having a blast. I loved playing Dharma. I loved it!

I think if you play a character that is fearless, then it's boring. I think that's what was so incredible about Harrison Ford, is that he always seemed like he was never going to survive it, he's always scared, and yet he always does survive it somehow.

If you look to lead, invest at least 40% of your time managing yourself - your ethics, character, principles, purpose, motivation, and conduct. Invest at least 30% managing those with authority over you, and 15% managing your peers.

Every character I play has to be the hero of his own story, the way we're all heroes of our own lives.

To be a character who feels a deep emotion, one must go into the memory's vault and mix in a sad memory from one's own life.

Character is power; it makes friends, draws patronage and support and opens the way to wealth, honor and happiness.

You have to understand the tone of the movie, because if it's supposed to be funny, it can be funny violent like the Home Alone stuff, but you have to really understand the tone of what you're doing and make the action work for that and for the character.

In Shakespearean tragedy the main source of the convulsion which produces suffering and death is never good: good contributes to this convulsion only from its tragic implication with its opposite in one and the same character.

I feel like I'm the most well-adjusted character on the show, even though I'm sure the other actors would tell you the same thing about their characters.

And what's interesting about him as a comic character is that the custard pie hardly ever ends up on his face.

I worked on my voice for Sweet Dreams, but only to match my speaking voice to Patsy's actual singing voice. That was my way into that character.

I didn't want to be greedy. It's a mark of bad character and I always believed that pigs go the slaughterhouse.

The analysis of character is the highest human entertainment.

Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.

To have an opportunity to make a movie like Cabin Fever, you have to get stuff thrown on you or you have to fall into a pit of water. It brings you that much closer to your mindset as a character.

I would certainly choose my jobs depending on the actions of the character. I won't do anything that has to do with child abuse or women's abuse.

I like good stories. Quality products and character are what's important. Even if the script isn't that strong, if I challenge myself with a great character, I'll go for it.

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.

This friend of mine said he was surprised to find that - I don't think it's quite a majority - a bigger percentage of actors are introverts than extroverts. It was a big surprise to him. Now, I know me, and I'll do anything if I'm playing a character. Or anything that's true to the character, anyway. But in real life I'm a little more withdrawn.