Fictional Character Quotes

The fictional character with whom I most profoundly identified was Yossarian in Catch-22. Always did, still do. ~ Neil Cross

Someone once told there's nothing wrong with fairy tales everyone ends up happily ever after in the end. ~ Peyton Sawyer

Friendship is just love that has yet to sprout wings and take flight. ~ Kristen Reed

Thanks to the fictional character named Fraser, in a well-loved Scottish novel, Alexander's existence on the grounds of Culloden had become its own bit of Hell. ~ L.L. Muir

I am Captain James Hook! I am no victim; I create them! I do not have bad dreams; I inspire them! ~ Heidi Schulz

When you're playing a fictional character reacting to the real world, it's incredibly difficult and confusing and kind of messes with your values a bit. ~ Ed Helms

You put a spell on the dog," I said as we left the house.
"Just a small one," said Nightingale.
"So magic is real," I said. "Which makes you a ... what?"
"A wizard."
"Like Harry Potter?"
Nightingale sighed. "No," he said. "Not like Harry Potter."
"In what way?"
"I'm not a fictional character," said Nightingale. ~ Ben Aaronovitch

In How Fiction Works, James Wood says,

A great deal of nonsense is written every day about characters in fiction - from the side of those who believe too much in character and from the side of those who believe too little. Those who believe too much have an iron set of prejudices about what characters are: we should get to "know" them; . . . they should "grow" and "develop"; and they should be nice. So they should be pretty much like us.
Wood is correct, in part, but the ongoing question of character likability leaves the impression that what we're looking for in fiction is an ideal world where people behave in ideal ways. The question suggests that characters should be reflections not of us, but of our better selves.
Wood also says, "There is nothing harder than the creation of fictional character." I can attest to this difficulty, though with perhaps less hyperbole. I have, indeed, found several other tasks harder over the years. Regardless, characters are hard to create because we need to develop people who are interesting enough to hold a reader's attention. We need to ensure that they are some measure of credible. We need to make them distinct from ourselves (and, in the best of all words, from those in our lives, unless of course there is a need to settle scores). Somehow they need to be well developed enough to carry a plot, or carry a narrative without a plot, or endure the tribulations we writers tend to throw at them with alacrity. It's no wonde ~ Roxane Gay

Living in that castle was like being condemned to Hell before I'd even had the opportunity to sin. ~ Kristen Reed

I was half asleep but I smiled. In spite of all his irritating qualities, I couldn't help liking a man who despised a fictional character with such passion. ~ David Benioff

I quote fictional characters, because I'm a fictional character myself! ~ Carrie Fisher

If you could invite any fictional character to a picnic who would it be?" I instantly smile. Noah's random questions are definatley great ice-breakers. "Augustus Waters from The Fault In Our Stars." I say, "So i could bring him back to life." "Great Answer", Noah says "I'd bring that sappy guy from Twilight- So i could kill him. ~ Zoe Sugg

The characters tell their story - I am merely the tool used to record it ~ Marti Melville

But I assure you, a government that is willing to put their own children in danger, their own future, just to see their potential, is twisted. We do not grab babies, newborns, and throw them out of windows just to see if they sprout wings. ~ S. Elizabeth Dover

I have a tendency to break rules and shake things up. I would say that with me people never know what is real and what is fiction. And I like that because reality is relative. ~ Nuno Roque

He's a real nowhere man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his nowhere plans
for nobody.
Doesn't have a point of view,
Knows not where he's going to,
Isn't he a bit like you and me? ~ The Beatles

Life is too short to hide who you really are. Whether you're a fictional character or a real person, you will not survive if you let other people control you. ~ Hayley Guertin

Does talking to yourself in the voice of your fictional character count as being social? ~ Michelle M. Pillow

It was so easy to get excited about someone I didn't know, so easy to play "crush" from afar, just like with a fictional character. As long as I never talked to Cute Boy, he was going to be perfect, a good reason to wake up tomorrow. ~ Gaia B. Amman

Every fictional character is real, they just inherit a different world. ~ Daniel Schwabauer

Mr Bott sits down and gestures gracefully to the board. "As you are clearly both fascinated by this text, would you like to explain the significance of Laertes in Hamlet?" He looks at Alexa. "Please go first, Miss Roberts."
"Well ... " Alexa says hesitantly. "He's Ophelia's brother, right?"
"I didn't ask for his family tree, Alexa. I want to know his literary significance as a fictional character."
Alexa looks uncomfortable. "Well then, his literary significance is in being Ophelia's brother, isn't it? So she has someone to hang out with."
"How very kind of Shakespeare to give fictional Ophelia a fictional playmate so that she doesn't get fictionally bored. Your analytical skills astound me, Alexa. Perhaps I should send you to Set Seven with Mrs White and you can spend the rest of the lesson studying Thomas the Tank Engine. I believe he has lots of buddies too. ~ Holly Smale

The best boyfriends are the ones in books. ~ Leah Blundell

Stanley forced a smile to his lips at the memory of the onesided romance; it was silly, after all, a stupid childhood crush. Who'd fall in love with a fictional character? That was the kind of thing you laughed about as an adult. Or at least Harriet had thought so. He couldn't quite do it, though. Couldn't quite see it as a joke. It had felt too real, too raw and wild and fierce, for him to
dismiss it even now. It was love, of a sort, stunted and unformed as it was. For a time, it had kept him sane. ~ Amelia Mangan

In every film, whether it's a fictional character or not, you create an idea of the character and for me I always do a bad impersonation to start with. ~ Joaquin Phoenix

Exquisitely embroidered tapestries lined the walls of Medb's bedroom, but their impact was somewhat reduced by the room's ambience. A musky odor with pungent accents of stale piss. ~ David H. Millar

How does one go about getting an introduction to a fictional character? ~ Richard Bruce Nugent

You should grieve if a fictional character is killed. You should care. ~ George R R Martin

I love playing real people. It's a huge challenge and responsibility which I take on board and which I relish. It also scares me to death. Give me a totally fictional character and I don't have the same sort of responsibility. If, though, I play Sigmund Freud or Robert Maxwell or whoever then there is a responsibility. ~ David Suchet

I'd said to them that when we read fiction, we pour our own paricular store of emotions - say, the sense of loss we feel for those disappeared from our lives - into the characters set before us. We take the few words with which the writer sketches these characters, the thing he said, the pain she felt, where they were, and our own emotional stockpile magically creates people. As the human eye fleshes out the pixilated image. Fictional characters are highly sophiticated Rorschach blots, and we, along with their author, are their authors. When you read a fictional character, you too are creating her. ~ Chandler Burr

We referenced fictional characters as if they were people to learn from. As if real-life people were too nebulous, too private and unreal for us to understand. ~ Miguel Syjuco

Seriously, a thirty-something woman shouldn't be daydreaming about a fictional character in a two-hundred-year-old world to the point where it interfered with her very real and much more important life and relationships. Of course she shouldn't. ~ Shannon Hale

The day when you shed a tear for the death of a fictional character, you know they have become more than a character. ~ Ryan J. Alls

You can have a very intense relationship with fictional characters because they are in your own head. ~ J.K. Rowling

Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off. ~ John Banville

If you're playing a fictional character, you can create a character, you can sort of take certain liberties. And when you're playing a real person who's actually standing there watching you, you know, it's - you do feel a weight. You know, you feel an obligation to not only be - to give the best performance that you can, but to make sure that you represent this person. ~ Donnie Wahlberg

We are living in a post-fictional era. Fictional governments are accepted without comment, and we can sit in a mosque and have a debate about the fictional port a fictional character consumes in a video game, with every gravity we would accord something quite real. ~ G. Willow Wilson

No matter how much restitution she paid with every word and deed, her blood-stained hands could never really be clean, even if no one else knew they were dirty. ~ Stacy Hawkins Adams

...because she wasn't some fucking fictional character destined to do whatever some goddamn hack wanted her to do. ~ John Scalzi

It's more difficult playing a real-life person than a fictional character - you can go easy on yourself with a fictional character. ~ Christian McKay

I populated 'The Bourne Identity' with real characters from American history, specifically characters from the Iran-Contra affair, which my father ran the investigation of. But at the heart of it was a fictional character. ~ Doug Liman

What good would learning be if we concentrated on what we already knew? It is only by learning those things that come to us with difficulty that we truly gain wisdom. ~ Kate Klimo

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

I don't think there is a fictional character who resembles me because fictional characters are not real! ~ Ruth Rendell

When you play a real person, you feel a sense of responsibility that obviously you don't feel when you're playing a fictional character. ~ Natalie Dormer

There is no cure for fictional character love, but the plus side is that it is an entirely benign disease with no bad side effects. ~ Cassandra Clare

She was returning home to be the wife of, mother of, First Lady of, but what did that really mean? ~ Stacy Hawkins Adams

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

I've never dated a fictional character before. The closest I ever came was an Italian. ~ Woody Allen

Pure, perfect sorrow is as impossible as pure and perfect joy. ~ Leo Tolstoy

The ideology of liberal humanism found expression in the earliest reviews of Hardy's writing and remained a dominant force until the explosion of literary theory in the 1980s. It is a broad and still influential category. It endorses the moral value of the individual, and the strength of the human spirit. It prefers the integrity of an organic rural society to the anonymity and materialism of an urbanised and technological world. Applied to fiction, this ideology involves the naturalisation of the novel's world and its values, and the recognition of fictional character as presenting a unified subject. ~ Geoffrey Harvey

Fictional characters exist in only two places, neither of which is on the printed page. They exist, first, in the mind of the writer and, second, in the mind of the reader. ~ Maren Elwood

Just because we're fictional characters doesn't mean you can pick us up and move us anywhere you want.
the people of Lake Woebegon ~ Garrison Keillor

The world tends toward chaos, you know, Cassidy said. You could too. Just write down a made up name, or even a fictional character. And the next person who finds this geocache, it's as though things really hapened that way. You have to at least allow for the possibility of it. ~ Robyn Schneider

Now that I no longer feel lonely, and now that my own past feels resolved in a whole new and very deep way, I am excited to write about the real world, to stay in it. Fiction is an escape, a parallel life, and it was a powerful source of comfort for me when my own life was raw and uncomfortable. I don't feel the burning need to disappear into a fictional character these days. ~ Kate Christensen

It is only after knowing him for some time that you begin to realize you are, to him, an essentially fictional character, one he has invested with nearly limitless capacities for tragedy and comedy not because that is your true nature but because he, Richard, needs to live in a world peopled by extreme and commanding figures. ~ Michael Cunningham

It's impressive when you're such a mysterious fictional character that even avid enthusiasts are debating your existence within the mythos. ~ Ben Thompson

Clearly, in an infinite universe every possibility must exist, including Balzac's. Imagining Cousin Bette called her into beaing, although only potentially. The universe is merely a quantity of information; imagining a fictional character does not add to that quantity
it cannot do so by definition
but does reorganize it slightly. The Bette-ish universe has not material existence, but the initial idea in Balzac's brandy-soaked brain then spreads outwards: not only to those who read his books, but also, by implication, backwards and forwards. Imagining Cousin Bette also creates, in potential, her ancestors and descendants, friends, enemies, acquaintances, her thoughts and actions and those of everybody else in her universe. ~ Iain Pears

I don't know your story or your dreams or the things that steal your sleep, but I know they matter. I hope you story is rich with characters, rich with friends and conversation. I hope you know some people who carry you, and I hope you have the honor of carrying them. I hope that there's beauty in your memories, and I hope it doesn't haunt you. And if it does, then I hope there is someone who will walk you through the night and remind you of the promise of the sunrise, that beauty keeps coming, that there are futures worth waiting and fighting for, and that you were made to dream. ~ Jamie Tworkowski

Characters can become boring. That's what's tricky about television. It goes on and on - you're playing this same character for five seasons and it gets easy to fall into just walking on the set and assuming you know how to play a scene. ~ John Slattery

That character in conversation which commonly passes for agreeable is made up of civility and falsehood. ~ Alexander Pope

Reality is as thin as paper, and betrays with all its cracks its imitative character. ~ Bruno Schulz

In fact it might be said that the main reason why modern science never arose in China or Islam is precisely because of the presence of metaphysical doctrine and a traditional religious structure which refused to make a profane thing of nature. Neither the 'Oriental bureaucratism' of Needham nor any other social and economic explanation suffices to explain why the scientific revolution as seen in the West did not develop elsewhere. The most basic reason is that neither in Islam, nor India nor the Far East was the substance and stuff of nature so depleted of a sacramental and spiritual character, nor was the intellectual dimension of these traditions so enfeebled as to enable a purely secular science of nature and a secular philosophy to develop outside the matrix of the traditional intellectual orthodoxy. Islam, which resembles Christianity in so many ways, is a perfect example of this truth, and the tact that modern science did not develop in its bosom is not the sign of decadence as some have claimed but of the refusal of Islam to consider any form of knowledge as purely secular and divorced from what it considers as the ultimate goal of human existence. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr

It can be frustrating and even frightening to observe the success which sometimes comes to outlaws and rogues who seem to refute notions of universal justice. Every time we see a villain enjoying the fruits of dishonorable acts we find ourselves doubting the value of character and the validity of the virtues we have been taught. Thus, it takes character to believe in character, but that belief is always rewarded, often by material success, but always by the esteem it earns from those who matter. ~ Michael Josephson

Remember "the unmoored boat floats about. ~ Murasaki Shikibu

Try to imagine a character like Batman whose whole life has been about fighting crime, whose whole existence and identity is his war against criminals, and he wakes up one morning to discover there are no criminals. What happens to him? ~ Marc Guggenheim

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

I look at leading men because that's ultimately what I'm aspiring to do. But I also look at character actors and people that I'm just in awe by, just because I can relate to it. ~ Shemar Moore

In some ways, a novel isn't as structurally rigorous as a screenplay or a TV show, which have finite real estate. In a novel, you can more deeply illuminate a character's interior and get away with digressions. ~ Howard Gordon

It doesn't matter if it's the real world or fictional," I insisted. "Crushes are the best part of liking someone, and they are completely safe. You get all the benefits of fantasising about someone, but none of the he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not drama. It's all the good parts with none of the parts that make you lie awake at night all angsty. ~ Liz Czukas

If one's different, one's bound to be lonely. ~ Aldous Huxley

He could have told George a writer creates a character as a way to reveal consciousness, increase the flow of meaning. This is how we reply to power and beat back our fear. By extending the pitch of consciousness and human possibility. This poet you've snatched. His detention drains the world of one more thimble of meaning. He should have said these things to that son of a bitch, although actually he liked George, but he'd never considered the matter in quite this way before and George would have said that terrorists do not have power and anyway Bill knew he'd forget the whole thing before much time went by. ~ Don DeLillo

Storytelling is ultimately a creative act of pattern recognition. Through characters, plot and setting, a writer creates places where previously invisible truths become visible. Or the storyteller posits a series of dots that the reader can connect. ~ Douglas Coupland

You need both those approaches to shape your character: being supported and being challenged. ~ Zayn Malik

I'm very much a believer in the character always heading for something or after something. But that doesn't always have to be a selfish thing - it could be an altruistic thing as well. You can't play good; you can't play evil. But you have to think: what does this person want to happen in this situation? ~ Monica Dolan

Each director is different. Clint Eastwood and Chris Nolan are completely different, and I need to adjust to the story and character and the director and just my duty as an actor. ~ Ken Watanabe

She did not care for children's books in which the children grew up, as what "growing up" entailed (in life as in books) was a swift and inexplicable dwindling of character; out of a clear blue sky the heroes and heroines abandoned their adventures for some dull sweetheart, got married and had families, and generally started acting like a bunch of cows. ~ Donna Tartt

The dysfunction was not the character of one person, it was the split of family by divorce, with the ripples felt for eternity by bloodline. ~ Amber Garibay

Books. It's always easier to tell people that a character is funny rather than attempt to hit the punchline of a joke that character would've said. But if we all simply told, books would cease to exist. And so would empathy. And feeling. ~ Joyce Rachelle

The characters I have the least in common with are the ones I have the greatest success with. The further a role is from my own experience, the more I try to deepen it. ~ Paul Newman

I believe that all novels, ... deal with character, and that it is to express character – not to preach doctrines, sing songs, or celebrate the glories of the British Empire, that the form of the novel, so clumsy, verbose, and undramatic, so rich, elastic, and alive, has been evolved ... The great novelists have brought us to see whatever they wish us to see through some character. Otherwise they would not be novelists, but poet, historians, or pamphleteers. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Studying philosophy instills modesty and straightforwardness in your character. ~ Marcus Aurelius

The universe was once conceived as the passive stage upon which the dramatic conflict of human wills was enacted and resolved. Today man has discovered that that which seemed simple and stable is, instead, complex and volatile; his own inventions have put into motion new forces, toward which he has yet to invent a new relationship. Unlike Ulysses, he can no longer travel over a universe stable in space and time to find adventures; nor can he solve intimate antagonisms with an adversary sportingly suitable in stature. Rather, each individual is the center of a personal vortex; and the aggressive variety and enormity of the adventures which swirl about and confront him are unified only by his personal identity.... The integrity of the individual identity is counterpointed to the volatile character of a relativistic universe. ~ Maya Deren

I think the ultimate thing in some ways for any writer is to work on a character who's going to have a life for a long time. ~ Peter Gould

I start with a character and a situation, but I don't know what's going to happen until I write it. Sometimes things happen that surprise me. ~ Louis L'Amour

May I ask you what these questions tend?'
'Merely to the illustration of your character,' said she, endeavouring to shake off her gravity. 'I am trying to make it out.'
'And what is your success?'
She shook her head. 'I do not get on at all. I hear such different accounts of you as puzzle me exceedingly. ~ Jane Austen

Perfection, then, is not a change in the essential character but the completion of a course. This is precisely what Jesus must have meant when he admonished his disciples and us to 'be perfect,' as our Heavenly Father is perfect. ~ Ravi Zacharias

I love auditioning. Since 'The Notebook' and 'Wedding Crashers,' I don't have to audition anymore, and I miss it. You get to show your interpretation of the character. I get nervous when I don't audition. What if they hate what I want to do? ~ Rachel McAdams

The best way to detect the destructive element in someone is to watch closely their behavioural pattern when given authority over poverty. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

We have to be bold in our national ambitions. First, we must win the fight against poverty within the next decade. Second, we must improve moral standards in government and society to provide a strong foundation for good governance. Third, we must change the character of our politics to promote fertile ground for reforms. ~ Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

I'm always aware that there's a trick to television to prevent an actor from becoming too lazy. Once you become too familiar with a character, it can stifle the adrenalin from flowing through in the performance. ~ Julianna Margulies

Music has a power of forming the character, and should therefore be introduced into the education of the young. ~ Aristotle.

Addiction of Narcotics and Addiction of flirt are same,person cant give up Narcotics Addiction neither Flirting Addiction,Doesn't matter,its destroyed self character or all relations.For this Both Addiction person can left all anything,but impossible to leave it. But mind it.Flirting Addiction is more dangerous then narcotics because Narcotics Kills Self and Flirting Addiction Kills Another someone. ~ Mohamemd Zaki Ansari

I try to do as many of my own stunts as possible. If you keep on taking yourself out of the role you play, you lose the thread of the character. ~ Willem Dafoe

Because it's probably not Ministry of Magic–approved,' said Hermione. 'And also,' she added, as Harry and Ron rolled their eyes, 'because I'm starting to think this Prince character was a bit dodgy. ~ J.K. Rowling

Revelation addresses many issues that have not changed because human nature and God's character have remained constant. It ~ Craig S. Keener

It's so fun to play a character that has so many layers that people won't even know, until the next season. ~ Ben Schwartz

Wolf Boy is absolutely beguiling. Evan Kuhlman has boundless empathy for all his characters, and his wonderful protagonist Stephen is, in turn, boundlessly inventive ... This is an auspicious debut. ~ Valerie Sayers

At first, I didn't realize it was gonna be a character. I just thought I was gonna be doing me. ~ Larry David