Character Analysis Quotes

Neurosis can be understood best as the battle between tendencies within an individual; deep character analysis leads, if successful, to the progressive solution. ~ Erich Fromm

Not much to say except to warn you not to get too serious about all this, if you want to become a writer of fiction in the future. If you intend to become a critic, that is a Whale of another color ... Playing around with symbols, even as a critic, can be a kind of kiddish parlor game. A little of it goes a long way. There are other things of greater value in any novel or story ... humanity, character analysis, truth on other levels ... Good symbolism should be as natural as breathing ... and as unobtrusive. ~ Ray Bradbury

In all tests of character, when two viewpoints are pitted against one another, in the final analysis the thing that will strike you the most, is not who was right or wrong, strong or weak, wise or foolish ... but who would go to the greatest lengths in considering the other's perspective. ~ Mike Dooley

Gossip, or, as we gossips like to say, character analysis. ~ Elizabeth Hardwick

I can start by telling you you're stubborn and impulsive and prideful. And generous and protective and passionate. In public, you ride like the devil and fill out a pair of buckskin breeches like pure liquid sin, but in private, you behave as though you've joined a monastic order. You're kind to ugly dogs, and you're patient with awkward sisters. Your kisses are sweet. And your life is worth something." She fought back the emotion rising in her throat. "I'll tell you who you are, Rafe. Anytime you find yourself in doubt. And I won't even leave you bleeding. ~ Tessa Dare

The analysis of character is the highest human entertainment. ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer

Okay." I crossed my arms over my chest. "My type has a romantic soul. He'll make my brain and my heart fight over who gets him first. He does what's right, even when it's not easy - actually, especially when it's not easy. He knows the value of discipline, education, honor, and restraint. And his strength of character is the only thing that outweighs the strength of his love for me." Drew's ~ Penny Reid

True leadership is often the mantle of the meek, who are rarely are prepared for such responsibility; which builds character in those who embrace it. ~ M.J. Stoddard

Self-preservation is the fundamental motive of the passions, according to Spinoza; but self-preservation alters its character when we realize that what is real and positive in us is what unites us to the whole, and not what preserves the appearance of separateness. ~ Anonymous

She drinks pints of coffee and writes little observations and ideas for stories with her best fountain pen on the linen-white pages of expensive notebooks. Sometimes, when it's going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationery. ~ David Nicholls

I recently spoke at a university where a student told me it was such a shame that Nigerian men were physical abusers like the father character in my novel. I told him that I had recently read a novel called American Psycho,and that it was a shame that young Americans were serial murderers. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Maybe you have to live under cover for a while before you can find your true character. ~ Hugo Hamilton

The initial small step is simple: Rather than making a sweeping determination to tackle the Great Books (all of them), decide to begin on one of the reading lists in Part II. As you read each book, you'll follow the pattern of the trivium. First you'll try to understand the book's basic structure and argument; next, you'll evaluate the book's assertions; finally, you'll form an opinion about the book's ideas. You'll have to exercise these three skills of reading - understanding, analysis, and evaluation - differently for each kind of book. ~ Susan Wise Bauer

When everything seems to be lacking integrity, you find it in yourself. ~ Madam Secretary

I have so much character that adding beauty to the mix would be greedy. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Their story begins on ground level, with footsteps. They are myriad, but do not compose a series. They cannot be counted because each unit has a qualitative character: a style of tactile apprehension and kinesthetic appropriation. Their swarming mass is an innumerable collection of singularities. Their intertwined paths give their shape to spaces. They weave places together. In that respect, pedestrian movements form one of these 'real systems whose existence in fact makes up the city.' They are not localized; it is rather they that spatialize. They are no more inserted within a container than those Chinese character speakers sketch out on their hands with their fingertips. ~ Michel De Certeau

In recent weeks it has come to my attention that many caravans have met with disaster; they have not gotten through."
I grunted wisely. "Probably ran out of water. That's the thing about deserts. Dry."
"Indeed. A fascinating analysis. But survivors reaching Hebron report differently: monsters fell upon them in the wastes."
"What, fell upon them in a squashed-them kind of way?"
"More the leaped-out-and-slew-them kind. ( ... ) ~ Jonathan Stroud

[W]hen trying to understand the character of the modern mind, it is impossible to separate the effects of genes and the developmental environment. ~ Steven Mithen

It is difficult to return to the places of one's early happiness. The young girls in the flower of their youth
still laugh and chatter on the seashore, but he who watches them gradually loses his right to love them,
just as those he has loved lose the power to be loved. This melancholy is the melancholy of Proust. It was
powerful enough in him to cause a violent rejection of all existence. But his passion for faces and for the
light attached him at the same time to life. He never admitted that the happy days of his youth were lost
forever. He undertook the task of re-creating them and of demonstrating, in the face of death, that the past
could be regained at the end of time in the form of an imperishable present, both truer and richer than it
was at the beginning. The psychological analysis of Remembrance of Things Past is nothing but a potent
means to an end. The real greatness of Proust lies in having written Time Regained, which resembles the
world of dispersion and which gives it a meaning on the very level of integration. His difficult victory, on
the eve of his death, is to have been able to extract from the incessant flight of forms, by means of
memory and intelligence alone, the tentative trembling symbols of human unity. The most definite
challenge that a work of this kind can give to creation is to present itself as an entirety, as a closed and
unified world. This defines an unrepentant work of art. ~ Albert Camus

My first name was inspired by the character of Aslan, the lion in C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. ~ Aselin Debison

The crown and glory of life is character. It is the noblest possession of a man, constituting a rank in itself, and an estate in the general good-will; dignifying every station, and exalting every position in society. It exercises a greater power than wealth, and secures all the honor without the jealousies of fame. It carries with it an influence which always tell; for it is the result of proved honor, rectitude, and consistency-qualities which, perhaps more than any other, command the general confidence and respect of mankind. ~ Samuel Smiles

For my wrap present, Colin Farrell gave me a first edition book. I got so involved with this character and I was so sad when the movie was over that when I got home and I tried to read the book I got really emotional and I started crying. ~ Salma Hayek

I've been getting a lot of science fiction scripts which contained variations on my 'Star Trek' character and I've been turning them down. I strongly feel that the next role I do, I should not be wearing spandex. ~ Marina Sirtis

No matter what you set out to do and how you set out to do it, you ultimately have to be who you are, and who you are as that character. So, I paid as much homage as I could to what Michael Clarke did, and had to rely on my own gifts to guide me through it. ~ Dennis Haysbert

Yeah, and if I have to choose between being eaten by the Endarkened and telling my Da I'm a Wildmage, I'm not sure which I'd pick. ~ Mercedes Lackey

As for the liberty of the press, like every other privilege, it must be restrained within certain bounds; for if it is carried to a breach of law, religion, and charity, it becomes one of the greatest evils that ever annoyed the community. If the lowest ruffian may stab your good-name with impunity in England, will you be so uncandid as to exclaim against Italy for the practice of common assassination? To what purpose is our property secured, if our moral character is left defenceless? People ~ Tobias Smollett

The most interesting characters are those you're drawn to, then repelled by, and then come to understand. All that tension - I live that. But I don't plan the tension. It's just something that should happen. ~ Rachel Weisz

I think bringing depth to characters means really needing to find out who this girl is, what is she passionate about, what makes her tick, what gets her going in life. So I did a lot of backstory for who she was and sometimes it comes across screen and sometimes it doesn't. You never know, because you're not the director, but you can only do your work and hope that it somehow subtly is infiltrated in that. But I think the characters I've played for the most part have depth, just not in the way that you think they do. ~ Amy Smart

The human race is a scummy thing, and so is Earth, and so are you. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

I'm lookin' at these Disney characters, these young girls coming out looking like, little whores. ~ Sharon Jones

[T]he habit of scientific analysis ... exhausts the material offered to it ... ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

Generally speaking, an author's style is a faithful copy of his mind. If you would write a lucid style, let there first be light in your own mind; and if you would write a grand style, you ought to have a grand character. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The sole purpose of universal justice is to keep man's character in balance ~ Judy Azar LeBlanc

I can never kind of fathom a character's journey beyond the moment when you go to black, any more than when people ask me what Jason Patric did with the tape recorder at the end of 'Narc,' you know what I mean? Even in 'Blood, Guts,' like, what happens down the road with these characters? ~ Joe Carnahan

Within the factory capitalist domination is seen to be virtually complete. Although workers might legitimately struggle to keep wages from being depressed in periods of crisis, such "economistic" struggles are ultimately confined within the dynamic of capitalist growth and cannot pose any real threat to its existence. The inevitable conclusion of this kind of analysis is to place all hope for effective struggle in the "political" sphere, which usually implies support for some form of party organization. ~ Harry Cleaver

For, when men shall meet as they ought, each a benefactor, a shower of stars, clothed with thoughts, with deeds, with accomplishments, it should be the festival of nature which all things announce. Of such friendship, love in the sexes is the first symbol, as all other things are symbols of love. Those relations to the best men, which, at one time, we reckoned the romances of youth, become, in the progress of character, the most solid enjoyment. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Psychiatric diagnoses are considered to be technical and bounded; you are either in or out. In contrast, a biblical perspective puts many interpersonal differences on a continuum: people may have more or less of something. This is relevant to sins, spiritual gifts, weaknesses, and character qualities. ~ Edward T. Welch

I wish I had more of your staunch American character,
Strong, bold, and unflinching, like the desert or a New York skyscraper.
But I am more like the English weather
Unpredictable and ever changing,
Prone to downpours.
Battered by sudden winds - thin skinned, eye-bagged and always cold,
Proud and leaking. ~ Florence Welch

With more insight into the English character, I poured out a stiff whisky and soda and placed it in front of the gloomy inspector. ~ Agatha Christie

There was a saying that a man's true character was revealed in defeat. I thought it was also revealed in victory. ~ Alison Goodman

Politics is too often regarded as a poor relation, inherently dependent and subsidiary; it is rarely praised as something with a life and character of its own. ~ Bernard Crick

Scillara was not cruel; she was simply not interested and he did not hold this against her. It seemed to him that frankly most people by temperament and character should not be thrust into the role of parents. She was simply uncharacteristic in admitting it. He ~ Ian C. Esslemont

I really fall in love with my characters, even the bad ones. I love getting together with them. They tell me what to do; they take me on a wild and wonderful trip. ~ Jackie Collins

When Pat gave her 'criminal-hero' Tom Ripley a charmed and parentless life, a wealthy, socially poised Alter Ego (Dickie Greenleaf), and a guilt-free modus operandi (after he kills Dickie, Tom murders only when necessary), she was doing just what her fellow comic book artists were doing with their Superheroes: allowing her fictional character to finesse situations she herself could only approach in wish fulfillment. And when she reimagined her own psychological split in Ripley's character - endowing him with both her weakest traits (paralyzing self-consciousness and hero-worship) and her wildest dreams (murder and money) - she was turning the material of the 'comic book' upside down and making it into something very like a 'tragic book.' 'It is always so easy for me to see the world upside down,' Pat wrote in her diary– and everywhere else. ~ Joan Schenkar

The thing that makes vivid writing is when the reader is in the body of the story, the body of the character. Things smell like something; there's weather, there's texture, there's light. ~ Janet Fitch

The present life is only the introductory part of our existence. It is that however which stamps a character on all that follows. ~ Joshua C. Breland

We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters. ~ Peter Thiel

IF" - I lie I am going to add the best features... the peoplea around = features will be taken to build the best character, then I am going to stick on the lie. This is the thingy which helps us to get out of... ~ Deyth Banger

We've got very few bodies right now so we were tired, but we've also got a lot of character and we want to win. ~ Steve Nash

"Ecod, you may say what you like of my father, then, and so I give you leave," said Jonas. "I think it's liquid aggravation that circulates through his veins, and not regular blood ... " ~ Charles Dickens

efforts and character of institutions like these can grow into a way of life when the people involved in them put them at the center of their cultural existence and identity and, as it were, fall into orbit around their rich moral core. ~ Yuval Levin

To me, feminism in literature deals with the female characters being in some way central to the thematic concerns of the book, or that they are agents of change to some degree. In other words, the lens is focused deeply and intensely on the female characters and doesn't waver, which allows for a glimpse into the rich inner lives of the characters. ~ Laurie Foos

At the beginning of 'The Hills,' I couldn't watch myself because I'm very critical and would pick myself to pieces. But with movies I feel like it's different because you're playing a character. So it's like watching yourself but not watching yourself. ~ Audrina Patridge

As the prospect gradually revealed itself and disclosed the scene over which the wind had wandered in the dark, like my memory over my life, I had a pleasure in discovering the unknown objects that had been around me in my sleep. At first they were faintly discernible in the mist, and above them the later stars still glimmered. That pale interval over, the picture began to enlarge and fill up so fast that at every new peep I could have found enough to look at for an hour. Imperceptibly my candles became the only incongruous part of the morning, the dark places in my room all melted away, and the day shone bright upon a cheerful landscape, prominent in which the old Abbey Church, with its massive tower, threw a softer train of shadow on the view than seemed compatible with its rugged character. ~ Charles Dickens