On Unlikeable Characters Quotes

I don't write books for people to be friends with the characters. If you want to find friends, go to a cocktail party. ~ Zoe Heller

The Baron took his cane and put it under the doctor's chin. "You are a very unlikeable man. In my true form, I'd think you as little more than spooge on the bottom of my shoe. ~ Daniel Younger

But I have always believed that stories, too, have a similar effect on us. I am not saying that fiction has the magnitude of an earthquake, but when we are inside a good novel we leave our cozy, small apartments behind and, through fictional characters, find ourselves getting to know people we had never met before, and perhaps had even disliked as Our others. ~ Elif Shafak

I spend more time with the living, than the dead now. ~ Jennifer Hotes

I'm more fascinated by a character's reaction to the monster than I am by the monster itself. ~ Nathan Kane

The only characters I've made to resemble real people have been grotesques. ~ Glen Cook

...Turn our thoughts, in the next place, to the characters of learned men. The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning. Read over again all the accounts we have of Hindoos, Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Teutons, we shall find that priests had all the knowledge, and really governed all mankind. Examine Mahometanism, trace Christianity from its first promulgation; knowledge has been almost exclusively confined to the clergy. And, even since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate a free inquiry? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your legs and hands, and fly into your face and eyes.

[Letters to John Taylor, 1814, XVIII, p. 484] ~ John Adams

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

I was always cutting dialogue out when we were rehearsing, and when I produced movies, too. I felt that people don't say things in life - they act, they do things. I always wanted my characters doing, rather than saying what they were doing - which was redundant. ~ Donna Mills

There are fantastic stories yet to be told featuring Marvel's characters, old and new, and I'm thrilled to be part of them. ~ Charles Soule

When the music and the characters are flawlessly synchronized, the opera develops an emotional force that movies and plays cannot match. ~ Bruce Beresford

There is a scene in the movie where Astrid and Hiccup fly on Toothless's back toward the island of Berk. The animation is intensely real, from the waves on the sea to wisps of wind blowing in the characters' hair. The feeling I get watching that scene is why I fly - just for that feeling. ~ Craig Ferguson

Your average genre novel is like a high speed car chase ending in a massive crash, with death, destruction, and balls of flame, from which the main characters (usually) emerge mostly unscathed. Everything builds up to the crash, and it's the anticipation that keeps us turning pages.

Anthony Trollope, by contrast, is like a pleasant Sunday afternoon drive through the countryside in an open carriage behind a pair of matched horses. There's conflict, sure; a herd of sheep blocks the road, two countrymen come to blows outside the pub, the cows in this field are looking daggers at the cows in that field. But the point of the drive is the drive itself, not the destination, because of course you're just going to end up at home anyway. ~ Will Duquette

The stronger the participation of the female characters, the better the movie. They knew that in the old days, when women stars were equally as important as men. ~ Clint Eastwood

When one of my characters becomes aware of a magical element, it might be because the world is wider than we assume it to be, but it might also be a reminder to pay attention to what is here already, hidden only because it's been forgotten. ~ Charles De Lint

Stories want to be told. Stories have a power of their own ... you can't write a story until you've felt it. Breathed it in. Walked with your characters. Talked with them. ~ Angelica Banks

Some people see me as dissecting my characters in some kind of heartless, coldblooded, analytical way, when in truth making these movies is a passionate, intensely emotional experience for me. I'm detached from the characters only to the degree that I have to be in order to write honestly about them. ~ Todd Solondz

If you have a story to tell, put it out there. Get the thing done. No excuses. No procrastinating. No apologies. It will never be as good as you want it to be, so forget about perfection. Just be satisfied that you've done the best work you can do at this stage in your life as an author. Then roll the rocket onto the launch pad and fire it off. After that, write another story. Always keep going. Move fast. Stay one step ahead of the forces of distraction and self-doubt. Love your characters enough to give them a good home. Love your readers enough to give them a place of refuge from life's tragedies, big and small. And love the world you live in enough to make it the world of your dreams. ~ James Hampton

In my books, I never portray violence as a reasonable solution to a problem. If the lead characters in the story are driven to it, it's at the extreme end of their experience. ~ Dean Koontz

The trouble is that when you read criticisms about the other films that I've made you get the impression that they're all about themes, or problems, or ideas. But those are actually things that develop out of characters, out of images and out of other things. These more abstract things develop while working on the material, and out of it. It's not a theoretical exercise from the outset. ~ Michael Haneke

There's a weird thing about me and characters with hair, from Ariel or Pocahontas to Tarzan with his dreadlocks and now Rapunzel ... it's like I'm trying to make up for some loss in my life, I don't know what that is. ~ Glen Keane

If the characters are not alive to me, it doesn't matter how good the sentences are. It just becomes all cake and no frosting. ~ Amy Bloom

To a large extent: it's about economy of space. You have so little real estate when you're writing a half hour show. It's really twenty minutes. So you have to with a pilot introduce all your characters, set up the premise in a way that shows the potential for a series and make it funny and do it all in about thirty-five or forty pages. It's very hard. ~ Jonathan M. Goldstein

It's very witty and it's great to see teenage characters have control that way. And you can actually hear about sex and pot and it's okay, it's not completely bad and you can't say that to teenagers. ~ Caroline Dhavernas

My remembrance of the past is a novel I am constantly recomposing; and it would not be a historical novel, but sheer fiction, if the material events which mark and ballast my career had not their public dates and characters scientifically discoverable. ~ George Santayana

I like films that take their time a little bit more and don't show you all of their cards right away, characters that are conflicted and contradicting and seem one way at first and then suddenly turn out to be something else. ~ Oscar Isaac

I like writing teen characters because they're vulnerable to the newness of things; and vulnerability makes emotional responses raw, vital and unguarded. Lacking a context of consequences, choices are riskier and stakes higher. Life is lived without a safety net. As an author and reader, I find that a mighty charge to drama. ~ Allan Stratton

grew up reading books where vampires were scary. This novel is an attempt to make them scary again. When I thought of the premise that became DRACULAS, I knew it needed to be a group project. Take four well-known horror authors, let them each create their own unique characters, and have them fight for their lives during a vampire outbreak at a secluded, rural hospital. This is NOT a collection of short stories. It's a single, complete novel. And it's going to freak you out. If you're easily disturbed, have a weak stomach, or are prone to nightmares, stop reading right now. There are no sexy teen heartthrobs herein. You have been warned. ~ Blake Crouch

It is only when you open your veins and bleed onto the page a little that you establish contact with your reader. If you do not believe in the characters or the story you are doing at that moment with all your mind, strength, and will, if you don't feel joy and excitement while writing it, then you're wasting good white paper, even if it sells, because there are other ways in which a writer can bring in the rent money besides writing bad or phony stories. ~ Paul Gallico

I don't want to play high schoolers anymore. I guess I don't feel that way. I just want to play characters who are really good. ~ Nat Wolff

Old Mr. Rarx was not a pleasant man to look at, nor yet to talk to, or to be with, for no one could help seeing that he was a sordid and selfish character, and that he had warped further and further out of the straight with time. ~ Charles Dickens

Occasionally he took us on a picnic or a camping trip and taught us many valuable lessons. The chief one was to remember that camping was a good way to find out people's characters. Those who were selfish showed it very soon, in that they wanted the best bed or the best food and did not want to do their share of the work. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

A creative person has to be alive. He can't borrow from things he's done in the past. He can't let his method choose his subjects or his characters. They can't be warped to fit his style. ~ John Steinbeck

I don't even like to show midriff - it's my characters who are always showing midriff. ~ Jennifer Sky

I think I technically learned some things, hopefully. But I go to the movies for characters and story and a berserk vision. ~ John Waters

The most careful reasoning characters are very often the most easily abashed. ~ Madame De Stael

There are no new stories. It all depends on how you handle them. In romances the characters are going to fall in love with each other; you know that when you see the syrupy cover. It's how get there that's the fun. ~ Jude Deveraux

It is worthy of note that the Chinese and Japanese characters for money and gold are the same. ~ Donald Miller

Whats great about Freddy in this is when he gets to comment and manipulate the back stories and the fears of the characters - especially with Jason. ~ Robert Englund

In plotting a book, my goal is to raise the stakes for the characters and, in so doing, keep the reader mesmerized. ~ Barbara Delinsky

With drama, especially, it seems like the bigger the budgets and the edgier the characters, the more interesting they are. We're very lucky because 'Modern Family' wouldn't fit on cable: they'd want us to push it more and be edgier and turn it into something that it's not. ~ Steven Levitan

I continue to be known as a guy that plays really complex, three-dimensional characters. ~ Robert Knepper

The biggest challenge is not the storytelling, it's to track every character's arc through the entire movie. ~ Simon Kinberg

A criminal has a kind of freedom by definition that the ordinary citizen doesn't have. The criminal's able to realize himself in ways not available to the general population, if you want to put it that way. They're interesting and unpredictable. Characters always have to break some sort of bound or other to be interesting. It also helps if they're paradoxical. ~ William Monahan

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

When you have a show that's called Jessica Jones, if Jessica Jones isn't in a scene the rest of it become almost irrelevant until you earn other character storylines. You've got to flesh out those characters enough that you can travel. ~ Melissa Rosenberg

I get bored with the same old film coming out every weekend. It feels like it's the same story all the time, and the same visuals, and the characters' dilemmas are remarkably similar. ~ Josh Hartnett

What's fun is that the characters in 'Broad City' are rushing and hustling, and our process reflects that. ~ Ilana Glazer