Character Description Quotes

Remember "the unmoored boat floats about. ~ Murasaki Shikibu

It was Miss Murdstone who was arrived, and a gloomy-looking lady she was; dark, like her brother, whom she greatly resembled in face and voice; and with very heavy eyebrows, nearly meeting over her large nose, as if, being disabled by the wrongs of her sex from wearing whiskers, she had carried them to that account. She brought with her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initials on the lids in hard brass nails. When she paid the coachman she took her money out of a hard steel purse, and she kept the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite. I had never, at that time, seen such a metallic lady altogether as Miss Murdstone was. ~ Charles Dickens

Jane sobbed even harder, not noticing the sounds of footsteps coming up behind her. A cold wind blew, and she shivered in it. As her eyes hung between tears, she looked out and saw a shape where the car had been. It was a figure, slim and wrapped in a gray shroud. Almost the whole body was covered, save for a single blue eye that stared at her intently. Jane stared back until she felt a warm hand touch her shoulder and a cold voice whisper in her ear.
"You are never alone. ~ Eric Nierstedt

You made an offering of a battle of gods and demons," Joshua said. "That kind of offer does not go unnoticed. You awoke the souls of your kinsmen inside the mortals they have become. ~ Eric Nierstedt

If you go for an audition, you have a character description, and for the women, it's always about being beautiful, sexy. And for the men it's more about the character than how he appears physically. That annoys me. ~ Birgitte Hjort Sorensen

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

That is the voice of a place like this, where dead voices echo. They attract men and women of all kinds.
But only certain gods visit here… ~ Eric Nierstedt

He had a ponytail. But this was not a regular ponytail from the Sixties, not a ponytail for show or for fashion. It was more. It was a personal ponytail, something more defining and lasting. A personal thing is different, and all the books and all the magazines in the world can't tell you what that is. ~ Alberto Alvaro Rios

Its almost as if he was raised by wolves, but wolves who knew the value of a decent education. ~ David Nicholls

[H]e looked like a real bruiser as he stepped from his car, his big sunglasses giving the impression that a large bug had evolved to the point that it could wear a suit. ~ John Connolly

The kind of person took milk in his tea on one day and decided against it on the next. ~ Anne Enright

Max always mumbles; not in a shy way, but rather as if he's telling you what it will cost to take out your worst enemy, or how much you'd have to pay to rig a horse race. ~ Scarlett Thomas

Peter was a gentle, red-haired bear of a man. Standing at six-four in his socks, he moved everywhere with a slight and nautical sway, but even though he was broad across the chest there was something centered and reassuring about him, like an old ship's mast cut from a single timber. ~ Graham Joyce

She's like a reverse M&M, all sweet and smooth on the outside with a tough shell inside. ~ Rachel Spangler

If ever a man was too clever for his own good, it was the learned Daor Ranald. A middle-aged scholar with silver-rimmed spectacles and a curly brown mop of hair that refused any efforts at taming, he was always moving, talking, or reading. Often all at once. ~ L.H. Leonard

I took 'em because nobody else had found 'em yet. I brought 'em here ta be protected from mortals that didn't know the kinda power they once had, that might try ta unlock it again. ~ Eric Nierstedt

The only talents he possessed were delusions of adequacy. ~ Jodi Taylor

A haggard man used one of the huts as a home. He lay on a sagging mattress, his head on his pack, surrounded by rubbish - paper, porcelain shards, food remains and unidentifiable debris. His hand was over his eyes. He looked like a failed soldier. Dirt seemed so worked into him that the lines of his face were like writing. ~ China Mieville

She was delicately morbid in all her gestures, sensitive, arrogant, vulnerable to flattery. She veered between extravagant outbursts of opinion and sudden, uncertain halts, during which she seemed to look to him for approval. She was in love with the idea of intelligence, and she overestimated her own. Her sense of the world, though she presented it aggressively, could be, he sensed, snatched out from under her with little or no trouble. She said, I hope you are a savage. ~ Mary Gaitskill

Trouble was her default setting. ~ C.J. Daugherty

...Ruby is fiercely protective and possesses the strong will and resilience needed to make impossible choices. I liked that. Very poetic."
–Clancy ~ Alexandra Bracken

Simon Sparks was an oozing slug of a man poured neatly into a three-piece suit. ~ C. Robert Cargill

The door flew open, revealing a wrinkled, forward-thrusting face wreathed with a nimbus of wispy white hair, a face resembling nothing so much as a mole emerging from its burrow. Her spectacles were so dirty that I could hardly see the use of them. She peered at us as if at two scabrous street dogs and tightened her grasp on her cane.
"What do you want? I don't let rooms, and if you've business with my sons or my husband, they work for a living. ~ Lyndsay Faye

He had his head in hand hands, and his tie looked like it had been put on by an enemy, and was strangling him. ~ Caitlin Moran

He was in his mid-thirties, tall and pale and thin, with long, sandy hair and rimless glasses, dressed in brown polyester pants, cheap brown shoes, and a light tan shirt. He looked like someone had put a wig on a giraffe and run it through the local Target. ~ John Connolly

Standing at the original Victorian counter was a man in a long black leather coat. His hair had been grown to counteract its unequivocal retreat from the top of his head, and was fashioned into a mean, frail ponytail that hung limply down his back. Blooms of acne highlighted his vampire-white skin. ~ Julia Stuart

Brother Row you could trust to make a long shot with a short bow. You could trust him to come out of a knife fight with somebody else's blood on his shirt. You could trust him to lie, to cheat, to steal, and to watch your back. You couldn't trust his eyes though. He had kind eyes, and you couldn't trust them. ~ Mark Lawrence

If one abandons their principles when tested by struggle, they were never true principles but advertisements for character they never possessed. ~ Tiffany Madison

Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too inferior to excite feeling. Pardon the seeming paradox; I mean what I say. She was very showy, but she was not genuine; she had a fine person, many brilliant attainments, but her mind was poor, her heart barren by nature; nothing bloomed spontaneously on that soil; no unforced natural fruit delighted by its freshness. She was not good; she was not original; she used to repeat sounding phrases from books; she never offered, nor had, an opinion of her own. She advocated a high tone of sentiment, but she did not know the sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were not in her ~ Charlotte Bronte

She was a spoiler, a needler, an underminer, a diminisher, simply by instinct. ~ Iris Murdoch

If you're not who you want to be, at least act like who you want it be. - Bud ~ Charles Frazier

She turned back to the spot where Kamala had been, and where the bow she'd held still was. Andrea walked over to it and picked it up. She ran her hands over it gently, feeling the intricate designs carved into it, the elegance of the metal guard. Andrea held it out before her and pulled the string back. It came easily, though with all the tensions of a thousand taut muscles. She relaxed the string and looked at the bow with a sad familiarity, as she uttered one word.
"Sister. ~ Eric Nierstedt

I love playing characters, so I'm always telling my agents, 'Don't worry if the character description is something you think I'm not. Let me try to be that person.' ~ Vanessa Lengies

A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Beauty without a character is a waste. ~ Luffina Lourduraj

Of average size for a plow horse, but conspicuously large for a man, the Buchanan shouldered between his companions with the apologetic restraint of one accustomed to fitting his bulk into an undersized world and wishing it wouldn't cower like that. ~ L.H. Leonard

He ... boasted an unassuming mustache, which was perched atop his upper lip cautiously, as though it were slightly embarrassed to be there and would like to slide away and become a sideburn or something more fashionable. ~ Gail Carriger

Her flesh was powdery and voluptuously weary, as if tenderized by all the different beds and arms in which she had lain. Her face was as soft as the pulpy flash of an overripe banana, her breasts like two tiny bunches of grapes. She exuded a certain seedy charm, a poetry of premature corruption and decay. She breathed the air as if it burned her palate, baking her small, hot, whorish mouth. It was as if she were sucking a sweet or slurping champagne. ~ Dezso Kosztolanyi

Superman and Spiderman don't wear your costume and character, they have their own costume and character ~ 'SON Of GOD' P.S.Jagadeesh Kumar

Nature forgot to shade him off, I think ... A little too boisterous
like the sea. A little too
vehement
like a bull who has made up his mind to consider every
colour scarlet. But I grant a sledge-hammering sort of merit in him! ~ Charles Dickens

I don't remember her. But she feels special. There's this hole in my heart every time I draw her; you know, a sick sort of feeling. Like she's someone I lost. ~ C. Robert Cargill

Her face was not young, but it was simple; it was not fresh, but it was mild. She had large eyes which were not bright, and a great deal of hair which was not 'dressed,' and long fine hands which were
possibly
not clean. ~ Henry James

A precocious mistress of the long look, the sustained smile, the private voice and the delicate touch, devices of generations ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

She had a thick aura of battle around her, and her face was almost doll-like, it was so pleasant to look at. Vacant blue eyes, blond hair tinged dark gray. ~ Carlo Zen

Captain Dave is a salt-and-pepper guy who looks older than forty-six. He doesn't have kids of his own. Some people are born to be uncles and Captain Dave is that kind of people. He's also a recovering alcoholic who's obsessed with what everyone else is drinking at all times. Life is hard for some people. ~ Caroline Kepnes

Character is what we do when no one else is watching"

~R. Alan Woods [2012] ~ R. Alan Woods

His crimped hair was subtly frosted, making him look like a preacher in some California church - the kind with acoustic guitars and headset microphones and not much use for the actual Bible. ~ John Wray

They were handy to have around, Nate's little gang. They were that wonderful combination of talented and noble. The former was useful, while the latter made it so incredibly easy to poke them with a metaphorical stick. ~ Keith R.A. DeCandido

The latter. She had a good run, Sook said, doing a little shrug. It was his usual response to death at Mapleshade, and it was a safe bet that he felt that way about himself. Like most twice-widowed, Korea-vet, nature-loving, gun-enthusiast, bilingual, weed-connoisseur great grandfathers of five, he'd lived a full life. ~ Lisa Lutz

She is beautiful in the way only a haunted person can be, like a glimmer of light falling over fragments of shattered glass - dangerous if not treaded around with wary feet. ~ M.R. Pilot

It was a compound of self-reliance, hard knocks, heart hunger, unceasing work, and generosity. There was no form of suffering with which the girl could not sympathize, no work she was afraid to attempt, no subject she had investigated she did not understand. These things combined to produce a breadth and depth of character altogether unusual. ~ Gene Stratton-Porter

What we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do. There are people we trust because we know their character. Whether they're eloquent or not, whether they have human-relations techniques or not, we trust them and work with them. ~ Stephen Covey

Yes, it hurts to fall
ache, tenderness
- but each scar is a sign your system is working. ~ Kelli Russell Agodon

And if you insist on continuing to make assumptions about my character, I'll advise you only this: assume you will always be wrong. ~ Tahereh Mafi

Karate aims to build character, improve human behavior, and cultivate modesty; it does not, however, guarantee it. ~ Yasuhiro Konishi

Capt. Sobers' character strengths separated him from the other leaders within as well as outside the section. The most important of these for me was that he cared for his subordinates. Let me emphasize: he TRULY cared for his subordinates. From a militaristically accepted leadership perspective, that was a rarity. ~ Robert A. Trivino

I prefer to work with grey characters rather than black and white. ~ George R R Martin

Betty White's Sue Ann Nivens was classic ... She had done so much with that man-crazy character! Betty made every moment count. She still does. I've declared her an American treasure, because she is just that. ~ Gavin MacLeod

I have to set an example, now more than ever. Facing death is the ultimate test of character. – Cmdr. William Riker ~ Star Trek The Next Generation

People reveal their true character when they're off center. ~ Ted Dekker

I think I would much rather push the boundaries of the degradation that the characters face. ~ Dave Rowntree

If there is a trait which does characterize leaders it is opportunism. Successful people are very often those who steadfastly refuse to be daunted by disadvantage and have the ability to turn disadvantage to good effect. They are people who seize opportunity and take risks. Leadership then seems to be a matter of personality and character. ~ John Viney

With an obscure hesitation one steps into the day and its frame and its costume. Between the puzzlement and its summary abandonment, between the folds of waking consciousness and their subsequent limitation, is a possible city. Solitude, hotels, aging, love, hormones, alcohol, illness – these drifting experiences open it a little. Sometimes prolonged reading holds it ajar. Another's style of consciousness inflects one's own; an odd syntactic manner, a texture of embellishment, pause. A new mode of rest. I can feel physiologically haunted by a style. It's why I read ideally, for the structured liberation from the personal, yet the impersonal inflection can persist outside the text, beyond the passion of readerly empathy, a most satisfying transgression that arrives only inadvertently, never by force of intention. As if seized by a fateful kinship, against all the odds of sociology, the reader psychically assumes the cadence of the text. She sheds herself. This description tends towards a psychological interpretation of linguistics, but the experience is also spatial. I used to drive home from my lover's apartment at 2 a.m., 3 a.m. This was Vancouver in 1995. A zone of light-industrial neglect separated our two neighbourhoods. Between them the stretched-out city felt abandoned. My residual excitement and relaxation would extend outwards from my body and the speeding car, towards the dilapidated warehouses, the shut storefronts, the distant container yards, the dark exercise stu ~ Lisa Robertson

Friendship admits of difference of character, as love does that of sex. ~ Philibert Joseph Roux

If thinking is like perceiving, it must be either a process in which the soul is acted upon by what is capable of being thought, or a process different from but analogous to that. The thinking part of the soul must therefore be, while impassable, capable of receiving the form of an object; that is, must be potentially identical in character with its object without being the object. Mind must be related to what is thinkable, as sense is to what is sensible. ~ Aristotle.

I'm not a writer, inherently. Most of the writers I've met have stories they need to tell. I don't have that. I'm an interpreter. I like getting a script, seeing a character and thinking, "Oh, wow, I know what I can do with that." ~ Mark Strong

Whatever a man wants badly and persistently enough will determine the man's character. ~ Aiden Wilson Tozer

It was the momentary yielding of a nature that had been disappointed from the dawn of its perceptions, but had not quite given up all its hopeful yearnings yet. ~ Charles Dickens

By the age of three, the child has already laid down the foundations of his personality as a human being, and only then does he need the help of special scholastic influences. So great are the conquests he has made that one may well say: the child who goes to school at three is already a little man. ~ Maria Montessori

I feel the other element of a western is the land, which is very important in this movie. I mean the land is another character in the piece, actually. ~ Tom Selleck

Biographer diagnoses reaction to restriction as a tell of true character. Some use even prison as a time of reflection and planning. Others, like Churchill, quickly chafe at missing interaction and opportunity. ~ William Manchester

The skin of my character in 'The Man Who Fell to Earth' was some concoction, a spermatozoon of an alien nature that was obscene and weird-looking. ~ David Bowie

What can possibly be the common factor in a Kim Jee-woon film? I think what really ties a lot of my projects together is that there is always a character that believes his life is not exactly the way he wishes it to be. ~ Kim Ji-woon

We are the rare species we howl and moan at the same Time. ~ Nancy Omar

I have been reading the press more regularly than others over 50 years and it seems to me that there are things that have changed in the press that have changed its character. ~ John Major

I was watching the last season of 'Mad Men,' and they're now so in their characters and they're so comfortable in their characters, and they're doing such good work. That can only happen from doing it over and over, and developing a character over seven years. ~ James Frain

We should come home from far, from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day, with new experience and character. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Two classics stuck with them. Ender's Game delighted them all; here were soldiers who were just like them, except smaller. The main character was even bred to fight alien species like they were. The next day the members of the 8th greeted each other with the salutation ::Ho, Ender,:: until Brahe told them to knock it off and pay attention. ~ John Scalzi

When Suzie introduced Helen, she told the audience that one of the best things about books is that they are an interactive art form: that while the author may describe in some detail how a character looks, it is the reader's imagination that completes the image, making it his or her own. "That's why we so often don't like movies made from books, right?" Suzie said. "We don't like someone else's interpretation of what we see so clearly." She talked, too, about how books educate and inspire, and how they soothe the soul-"like comfort food without the calories," she said. She talked about the tactile joys of reading, the feel of a page beneath one's fingers; the elegance of typeface on a page. She talked about how people complain that they don't have time to read, and reminded them that if they gave up half an hour of television a day in favor of reading, they could finish twenty-five books a year. "Books don't take time away from us," she said. "They give it back. In this age of abstraction, of multitasking, of speed for speed's sake, they reintroduce us to the elegance-and the relief!-of real, tick-tock time. ~ Elizabeth Berg

The purpose of education should be character-building. ~ Abhijit Naskar

In the original novel [ Anthem], the story unfolds in the mind of a single character. Maybe that's why Ayn Rand called the work a poem. ~ Jeff Britting

You learn by playing a great team, and I'm talking about character things, not hockey technique. ~ Paul Coffey