Male Characters Quotes

As male characters level up and become more powerful, their bodies become better protected and covered. In contrast, as female characters level up and become more powerful, their bodies are uncovered and made more vulnerable. Thus, as women gain power, they are disempowered in another way. ~ Nick Yee

Yes, I've killed! I've killed as indiscriminately as God! And yes, I will kill again. I must. ~ N.B. Roberts

I really wanted our male characters to be a lot stronger. We gave them careers, lives. ~ Catherine Hardwicke

Oddly, I think if you look at comic books, you look at the shelves in the store, it's predominantly male characters, historically. But if you look outside the window it's 52-percent female, and something odd is going on there. So I do think it's your responsibility as a writer, really, to create stuff that little girls can get into too. I want my daughters to have role models that are female. ~ Mark Millar

1. "Mistress Jamieson" tells Mary when they meet: "My mother likes to say some people choose the path of danger on their own, for it is how the Lord did make them, and they never will be changed." Do you agree? Was it more true in the past than today? Did Mary purposely choose a path of danger? Who else? 2. The author has people in her own life with Asperger's syndrome who helped her with Sara's character. What was it like to be in the point of view of a person with Asperger's syndrome? Did you have any preconceived ideas about Asperger's? Did they change? 3. Journeys (physical and otherwise) are a prevalent theme in many of Susanna Kearsley's books. What journeys can you identify in this book, past and present? How do they differ for female and male characters? 4. Mary takes "Mistress Jamieson" as a role model. "She ~ Susanna Kearsley

Tonight, I want to curl up with a good book and visit my fictional boyfriends. Now let me tell you, my list is long. I am the equivalent to Hugh Hefner, but instead of bunnies I have this ever-growing list of male characters that have stolen my heart. I ~ Kat T. Masen

In 2015 a sixth-grade girl named Madeline Messer analyzed the fifty most popular 'endless runner game' apps and found that 98 percent came with built-in boy characters, compared with only 46 percent that offered girl characters. The real kicker, however, was that in 90 percent of the games, the male characters were free, whereas 85 percent of the games charged extra for the ability to select a female character. This is a simple but telling example of the ways children learn to think that masculine = normal; male = standard; boys = human; and girls = have to pay. ~ Soraya Chemaly

There is no masculine psychology in my cinema. There is only the resentments and desires of women. A man should not attempt to recognize himself in my male characters. On the other hand, he can find [in the films] a better understanding of women. And knowledge of the other is the highest goal. ~ Catherine Breillat

But I want you to know," Cleo continued, "that there is hope. And that I am living proof of that hope. Because, even though I was forced into this marriage against my will, I have come to know Prince Magnus Lukas Damora very well these last months. And one thing I've learned is that Prince Magnus is nothing like his father. Prince Magnus is brave and compassionate, and he truly wants what's just and best for this kingdom. Kindness is what makes a good king who will put the needs and rights of his people before his own desires. ~ Morgan Rhodes

When I wrote my first book, 'The Tennis Party', my overriding concern was that I didn't write the autobiographical first novel. I was so, so determined not to write about a 24-year-old journalist. It was going to have male characters, and middle-aged people, so I could say, 'Look, I'm not just writing about my life, I'm a real author.' ~ Sophie Kinsella

How can so many (white, male) writers narratively justify restricting the agency of their female characters on the grounds of sexism = authenticity while simultaneously writing male characters with conveniently modern values?

The habit of authors writing Sexism Without Sexists in genre novels is seemingly pathological. Women are stuffed in the fridge under cover of "authenticity" by secondary characters and villains because too many authors flinch from the "authenticity" of sexist male protagonists. Which means the yardstick for "authenticity" in such novels almost always ends up being "how much do the women suffer", instead of - as might also be the case - "how sexist are the heroes".

And this bugs me; because if authors can stretch their imaginations far enough to envisage the presence of modern-minded men in the fake Middle Ages, then why can't they stretch them that little bit further to put in modern-minded women, or modern-minded social values? It strikes me as being extremely convenient that the one universally permitted exception to this species of "authenticity" is one that makes the male heroes look noble while still mandating that the women be downtrodden and in need of rescuing.

-Comment at Staffer's Book Review 4/18/2012 to "Michael J. Sullivan on Character Agency ~ Foz Meadows

None of the male characters are as powerful or as interesting as the four central female characters. The men work best as representations of the current stage of a particular female's psyche. The men function as catalysts, and are certainly important to the development of the story, but the relationships are not the goal. I do not see romance as being what's central to the success of PRETTY LITTLE LIARS. ~ Norman Buckley

I don't think male characters are as one-dimensional as female characters. ~ Geena Davis

It used to be that you had to make female TV characters perfect so no one would be offended by your 'portrayal' of women. Even when I started out on 'The Office' eight years ago, we could write our male characters funny and flawed, but not the women. And now, thankfully, it's completely different. ~ Mindy Kaling

It's difficult to make a movie about a complicated, non-traditional female character. We see a lot more movies with male characters who are at that point in their lives, but not that many about females. ~ Megan Griffiths

Because I had some roles that resonated with women, I immediately noticed that there were far more male characters than female characters in what we're showing little kids in the 21st century, which was stunning to me. But I couldn't find anybody else who noticed. ~ Geena Davis

Should men and women be equal in all things? Absolutely. But I'm old-fashioned in that I like the differences between the sexes. My male characters are neither Neanderthals nor Prince Charmings. They're flawed. ~ Sandra Brown

There's a remarkable amount of sexism on TV. When male characters are flawed, they're interesting, deep and complex. But when female characters are flawed, they're just a mess. It's good to put more flawed but interesting female characters out there because it promotes equality. ~ Ellen Pompeo

I love writing about men. To get by in the world you have to know how men think. Not that all guys think alike, but women tend to think about more things at the same time, an overgeneralization, but I find it easier to make my male characters focus than I do my female characters. ~ Bonnie Jo Campbell

Final Fantasy VII awoke American gaming to the possibilities of narrative dynamism and the importance of relatively developed characters - no small inspiration to take from a series whose beautifully androgynous male characters often appear to be some kind of heterosexual stress test. ~ Tom Bissell

Often, I'll read a script and the female character's an extension or serves some sort of purpose in terms of the male character's narrative and it just isn't fully formed. But they will be very beautiful. Whether a secretary or a doctor or a vet, they will be very beautiful. ~ Andrea Riseborough

When you look at all of the male characters on television and in film, it's not like every one of them are the people doing the right thing that you can point to as your own moral compass. ~ Ari Graynor

I had an obsession that I was male characters from movies. ~ Illeana Douglas

I approach writing female characters the same why I approach writing male characters. I never think I'm writing about women, I think I'm writing about one woman, one person. And I try to imagine what she is like, and endow her with a lot of my own thoughts and history. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

In a world where people are equal, I feel it's important to have strong male characters, counterparts. Equality is important. It's about compatibility and compassion. And it's amazing. ~ Haifaa Al-Mansour

Nobody is surprised that women writers accurately represent male characters over and over again, no doubt because everybody knows that women understand men much better than vice-versa. ~ Peter Straub

I have this theory that the likeability question comes up so much more with female characters created by female authors than it does with male characters and male authors. ~ Curtis Sittenfeld

Women don't question themselves when they enter into a story that has male characters, but men do question the validity of a female narrative. ~ Romola Garai

Henry Fielding, a highly successful satiric dramatist until the introduction of censorship in 1737, began his novel-writing career with Shamela, a pastiche of Pamela, which humorously attacked the hypocritical morality which that novel displayed. Joseph Andrews (1742) was also intended as a kind of parody of Richardson; but Fielding found that his novels were taking on a moral life of their own, and he developed his own highly personal narrative style - humorous and ironic, with an omniscient narrative presence controlling the lives and destinies of his characters.

Fielding focuses more on male characters and manners than Richardson. In doing so, he creates a new kind of hero in his novels. Joseph Andrews is chaste, while Tom Jones in Tom Jones (1749) is quite the opposite. Tom is the model of the young foundling enjoying his freedom (to travel, to have relationships with women, to enjoy sensual experience) until his true origins are discovered. When he matures, he assumes his social responsibilities and marries the woman he has 'always' loved, who has, of course, like a mediaeval crusader's beloved, been waiting faithfully for him. Both of these heroes are types, representatives of their sex.

There is a picaresque journey from innocence to experience, from freedom to responsibility. It is a rewriting of male roles to suit the society of the time. The hero no longer makes a crusade to the Holy Land, but the crusade is a personal one, with chivalry learne ~ Ronald Carter

Strong man still smile and move forward even with many obstacles in life. ~ Sophieya

The funniest things just come from honesty. We have a tendency to see female characters as representative of something larger than what they are, when male characters are just characters. ~ Elizabeth Meriwether

Women have been driven mad, "gaslighted," for centuries by the refutation of our experience and our instincts in a culture which validates only male experience. The truth of our bodies and our minds has been mystified to us. We therefore have a primary obligation to each other: not to undermine each others' sense of reality for the sake of expediency; not to gaslight each other.
Women have often felt insane when cleaving to the truth of our experience. Our future depends on the sanity of each of us, and we have a profound stake, beyond the personal, in the project of describing our reality as candidly and fully as we can to each other. ~ Adrienne Rich

Guy Gavriel Kay's 'Tigana' is, in my opinion, one of the best, if not the best fantasy novel ever written. It's beautifully written, the characters are unforgettable, the worldbuilding is exquisite. ~ David B. Coe

Perhaps this is what Henry James meant when he talked about the "irresponsibility" of characters. Characters are irresponsible, art is irresponsible when compared to life, because it is first and foremost important that a character be real, and as readers or watchers we tend to applaud any effort made towards the construction of that reality. We do not, of course, indulge actual people in the world this way at all. In real life, the fact that something seems real to someone is not enough to interest us, or to convince us that that reality is interesting. But the self-reality of fictional characters is deeply engrossing, which is why villains are lovable in literature in ways that they are not in life. ~ James Wood

But calm is precisely what is absent from love's classroom. There is simply too much on the line. The "student" isn't merely a passing responsibility; he or she is a lifelong commitment. Failure will ruin existence. No wonder we may be prone to lose control and deliver cack-handed, hasty speeches which bear no faith in the legitimacy or even the nobility of the act of imparting advice. And no wonder, too, if we end up achieving the very opposite of our goals, because increasing levels of humiliation, anger, and threat have seldom hastened anyone's development. Few of us ever grow more reasonable or more insightful about our own characters for having had our self-esteem taken down a notch, our pride wounded, and our ego subjected to a succession of pointed insults. We simply grow defensive and brittle in the face of suggestions which sound like mean-minded and senseless assaults on our nature rather than caring attempts to address troublesome aspects of our personality. Had ~ Alain De Botton

I've always had a fandom. I've always had characters who live in my head and mess with my heart and tell me stories, and I love it. ~ Hannah Moskowitz

I've done movies that have mostly feminine characters and elements, and I think that both 'Heathers' and 'Truth About Cats and Dogs' are, in their own weird ways - they're different ends of the girl movie spectrum, but they're very much centered around the female characters, and I like those movies, and I like working with good actresses. ~ Michael Lehmann

James's friendship meant more than any feelings I might have. That was enough. It would have to be enough. ~ Jennifer Cosgrove

I do love editorials - you're free to do whatever you want and portray a different character. ~ Jacquelyn Jablonski

In New York, the street adventures are incredible. There are a thousand stories in a single block. You see the stories in the people's faces. You hear the songs immediately. Here in Los Angeles, there are less characters because they're all inside automobiles. ~ Joni Mitchell

Characters, for good or evil, are part of an author's family. Once we have let them out of our imaginations, they stay with us forever. ~ Andrew M. Ferrell

I think it's important I stay connected to every part of my personality. I play basketball. I rock climb. I paint. I'm a little bit scattered, but it's so I can convincingly play all these characters. ~ Ansel Elgort

To me, it doesn't matter if your scapegoats are the Jews, the homosexuals, the male sex, the Masons, the Jesuits, the Welfare Parasites, the Power Elite, the female sex, the vegetarians, or the Communist Party. To the extent that you need a scapegoat, you simply have not got your brain programmed to work as an efficient problem-solving machine. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

All people have three characters, that which they exhibit, that which they are, and that which they think they are. ~ Alphonse Karr

You want everyone to be a full character. No one is just evil, or very few people are, hopefully. They're characters, so you want to flush them out. You've got to show all sides of them. There is definitely an antagonistic relationship between guards and prisoners, and I do think it flares up. ~ Jenji Kohan

The best method, I believe, that can be adopted to correct a fondness for novels is to ridicule them; not indiscriminately, for then it would have little effect; but, if a judicious person, with some turn for humour, would read several to a young girl, and point out, both by tones and apt comparisons with pathetic incidents and heroic characters in history, how foolishly and ridiculously they caricatured human nature, just opinions might be substituted instead of romantic sentiments. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

I've always written stuff based on personal experience, but I've always disguised it by the use of characters. ~ Sune Rose Wagner

No other party in Germany came near to attracting so many shady characters. As we have seen, a conglomeration of pimps, murderers, homosexuals, alcoholics and blackmailers flocked to the party as if to a natural haven. Hitler did not care, as long as they were useful to him. ~ William L. Shirer

Men have worked as essentially shop keepers and store clerks for a lot longer than they have worked on assembly lines. There have been waiters forever. Lawyers are the world's second oldest profession. Teaching was a male-only profession for centuries. The idea that men are and ought to be unreflective, grunting, two-fisted louts is a class thing, not a gender thing, and it is imposed upon working class men by a system that needs them to be beasts of burden. ~ Lance Mannion

In 1996, when my first novel, 'Masquerade,' was published, I knew international thrillers - or spy novels, if you prefer - had been the domain of male authors for decades. ~ Gayle Lynds

I think it's a wonderful thing to have African-American characters. Look at life. It's not a white world or a black world; there are all kind of people in it. It's showing growth, and in today's world there are so many outlets. ~ Darius McCrary

It's kind of my whole philosophy as an actor. I think that's what we're supposed to do is play a wide range of characters - or it's just what I like to do, I should say. I like to try to be as different as I can from one thing to the next. ~ Garret Dillahunt

The thing to me that's fun is trying to make the characters seem believable, or realistic. And it's especially challenging when you're doing fantasy stories, when you're doing superhero types of things. ~ Stan Lee

It was almost as if she had willed him into existence, into standing before her at the precise moment she was willing to accommodate him, arriving not a minute too early or too late. ~ Roy L. Pickering Jr.

Basie would lie on the mattress and talk endlessly, sometimes drinking from a bottle of Murree's whisky he'd bring with him, bought from one of the clandestine bars in Heer where there were locked cages for female drinkers, to prevent them from being sexually assaulted by the inebriated male clientele, as well as to stop the drunk women from killing every man in sight. ~ Nadeem Aslam

Even American women are not felt to be persons in the same sense as the male immigrants among the Hungarians, Poles, Russian Jews,
not to speak of Italians, Germans, and the masters of all of us
the Irish! ~ Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi

Ever and again, our mind may become befuddled when we have to find out what is heads or tails. Ever and again, bewilderment may strike our brain when we have to interpret the contrasts between the dark and the bright sides of things when we have got to read complex cases and assess the divergences between the iridescent outward appearances and the grisly undercurrents of particular characters. ('"Côté cour…Côté jardin" ) ~ Erik Pevernagie

I write. I imagine. The act of imagining in itself enlivens me. I am not frozen and paralyzed before the predator. I invent characters. At times I feel as if I am digging up people from the ice in which reality enshrouded them, but maybe, more than anything else, it is myself that I am now digging up. ~ David Grossman

I think writers can get too attached to these worlds they create, these characters they make real, so that, instead of ending the story where the story's asking to end, they draw it out, unable to let go. ~ Stephen Graham Jones

In "Drive," there's a heightened male edge. In "Only God Forgives," it was almost crawling back into the womb of the mother. And now with "The Neon Demon," being reborn as a 16-year-old girl. ~ Nicolas Winding Refn

It was only after university that I said to myself that I had to take the risk and have a serious go at acting. It's such a bizarre profession, because you have to be totally tough to deal with all those times when you're being turned down, and then really soft in order to access your character's emotions. ~ Felicity Jones

There is no more mercy in him than there is milk in a male tiger. ~ William Shakespeare

I went into Andie's bathroom, took a piss, looked at myself in the mirror, and made myself say it: You are a cheater. You have failed one of the most basic male tests. You are not a good man. And when that didn't bother me, I thought: You're really not a good man. ~ Gillian Flynn

Khepra was asserted to have generated and caused to come into existence, itself through itself, it united in itself, the male and female principles of life. ~ Isaac Myer

I think about 'The Simpsons,' which has been going on for 25 years. Homer is still in his late 30's. Lisa is 8, Bart is 10. Their stories are told. Yet the series keeps going on and on like a zombie that won't lie down and die. That feels forced and unnatural. The characters never change, grow, age. ~ Ted Naifeh

If you have lived in cities and have walked in the park on a summer afternoon, you have perhaps seen, blinking in a corner of his iron cage, a huge, grotesque kind of monkey, a creature with ugly, sagging, hairless skin below his eyes and a bright purple underbody. This monkey is a true monster. In the completeness of his ugliness he achieved a kind of perverted beauty. Children stopping before the cage are fascinated, men turn away with an air of disgust, and women linger for a moment, trying perhaps to remember which one of their male acquaintances the thing in some faint way resembles. ~ Sherwood Anderson

By the end of the seventies the feared yet desired black male body had become as objectified as it was during slavery, only a seemingly positive twist had been added to the racist sexist objectification: the black male body had become the site for the personification of everyone's desire. ~ Bell Hooks

Some comedians love their characters. I don't fall in love with mine. In fact, I get tired of them very fast. You have to be willing to throw it all away. ~ John Belushi

You can't really judge characters, because that's when it gets really hard to play them. ~ Ellen Pompeo

I'm from the East Coast. I love the city. I love the characters. I love the kind of people we are, the kind other people look at in amazement. ~ Ralph Bakshi

I think all of us, under certain circumstances, could be capable of some very despicable acts. And that's why, over the years, in my movies I've had characters who didn't care what people thought about them. We try to be as true to them as possible and maybe see part of ourselves in there that we may not like. ~ Martin Scorsese

Such a dark green, his eyes. They reminded her of the forest, of all the dangers lying dormant behind that verdant cloak of leaves. ~ Nenia Campbell