Characterization quotes:

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Characterization is integral to the theatrical experience. -- Robert Ludlum
Characterization is an accident that flows out of action and dialogue. -- Jack Woodford
Characterization in a play is like a blank check which the dramatist accords to the actor for him to fill in. -- Thornton Wilder
Characterization is not divorced from plot, not a coat of paint you slap on after the structure of events is already built. Rather characterization is inseparable from plot. -- Nancy Kress
I think my wife would take objection to any characterization of me as perfect. -- Peter Blair Henry
The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. -- Alfred North Whitehead
An attempt to write nothing but characterization will soon bog down; I for one don't want to have somebody tell me about someone else. -- Daniel Keys Moran
My theory of characterization is basically this: Put some dirt on a hero, and put some sunshine on the villain, one brush stroke of beauty on the villain. -- Justin Cronin
I think with any characterization there's a point where you empathize, no matter how much of a deviance his or her actions may be from your understanding of humanity. -- Benedict Cumberbatch
I've never bought into any sort of hard and fast, this-box/that-box characterization. People are individuals. Yes, they may be expected to be a particular way. But that doesn't mean they're going to be that way. -- Margaret Atwood
There are technical tricks that may help you create more effective characters. My approach to characterization is not at all technical. I can't really analyze how I do it, but I am sure of one thing. To write convincing characters, you must possess the ability to think yourself into someone else's skin. -- Juliet Marillier
Characterization requires self-knowledge, insight into human nature . . . it is more than impersonation. -- Leon Surmelian
Acting is characterization, the process of two entities merging-the actor and the role. -- George C. Scott
Characterization requires a constant back-and-forth between the exterior events of the story and the inner life of the character. -- David Corbett
As a reader I like both great characterization and fast moving plots. The challenge is to balance the both and not compromise one for the other. -- Tobsha Learner
When the drama attains a characterization which makes the play a revelation of human conduct and a dialogue which characterizes yet pleases for itself, we reach dramatic literature. -- George Pierce Baker
A good novel is an indivisible sum; every scene, sequence and passage of a good novel has to involve, contribute to and advance all three of its major attributes: theme, plot, characterization. -- Ayn Rand
I'm trying to make the case that the church can indeed, from within its own resources, move out of a false, and often a hateful, characterization of and set of attitudes toward gay and lesbian people. -- James Alison
In art and life we're always reading bodies and behaviors (and skies and skylines or whatever), constructing brief and shifting coherences, and I guess I want to capture that process of characterization and re-characterization instead of offering up a few stable, easily-summarized individuals. -- Ben Lerner
Instead of saying, ah, I don't have the money, just embrace it and do what we can do. And the scenes that we film and the characterizations in the scenes can come out interesting. And I really feel good about that, going into it. -- George Tillman, Jr.
We in the FBI have created a malware repository and analysis tool known as the Binary Analysis Characterization and Storage System, or BACSS, which provides near real-time investigative information. BACSS helps us link malware in different jurisdictions and paint a picture of cyber threats worldwide. -- James Comey
I write about life as it exists within houses and on the streets. And there's nothing, hopefully, in any of my characterizations or in any of my plottings or in any of my valuations that doesn't ring true to life. I'm a novelist. I'm not a theoretician. -- Richard Grossman
The best characterization is provided by the product of this religious education, the Jew himself. His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine. -- Adolf Hitler
You can use the fun of the genre, but I also really wanted to come at it from the point of view of some really complex characterization. There was a lot that I wanted it to do, and I wanted it to be fun. It's fun, but it's not simple fun. -- Adrian Hodges
It is the curse of minorities in this power-worshipping world that either from fear or from an uncertain policy of expedience they distrust their own standards and hesitate to give voice to their deeper convictions, submitting supinely to estimates and characterizations of themselves as handed down by a not unprejudiced dominant majority. -- Anna Julia Cooper
Because the world of this film begins and ends in the imagination of Tim Burton, you're not seeing a movie that's been shot on locations that you've seen a million times. Because this world has no rules, you're seeing so many different and separate brushstrokes and colors and characterizations somehow getting combined through Tim. -- Anne Hathaway
UG [universal grammar] may be regarded as a characterization of the genetically determined language faculty. One may think of thisfaculty as a 'language acquisition device,' an innate component of the human mind that yields a particular language through interaction with present experience, a device that converts experience into a system of knowledge attained: knowledge of one or another language. -- Noam Chomsky
Sometimes after a compliment about my characterization skills, I'm asked if I model my characters on real people. Emphatically, no. And sort of, yes. -- Brent Weeks
I like dramatic ballets, particularly if they're ballets in which I have a chance to go from one extreme of style or characterization to another. -- Suzanne Farrell
I just adore Kate Winslet. I love her because you're never aware of all the stuff that's going into her characterization and, yet, she completely transforms. -- Anna Torv
I love working fictional characters into a piece of history. It plays to my strengths, which are characterization and dialogue, and assists me in my admitted weakness, plot. -- Laurie Graham
When the drama attains a characterization which makes the play a revelation of human conduct and a dialogue which characterizes yet pleases for itself, we reach dramatic literature. -- George Pierce Baker
I think I'm very strong at dialogue, I think I'm very strong in characterization. I think sometimes I use dialogue and character work to cover weaknesses in my plotting. -- Kelly Sue DeConnick
I need it all: in-depth characterization, fantastic/warped world building, a plot that could out-race Secretariat, and a 'voice.' I need to hear a uniqueness in the author's voice. -- Rob Thurman
'True Detective' is a densely layered work with resonant details and symbology and rich characterization under the guise of one of the forms of this mystery genre. That's what we shoot for. -- Nic Pizzolatto
The instinct to impersonate produces the actor; the desire to provide pleasure by impersonations produces the playwright; the desire to provide this pleasure with adequate characterization and dialogue memorable in itself produces dramatic literature. -- George Pierce Baker
Despite the characterization of some that teaching is an easy job, with short hours and summers off, the fact is that successful, dedicated teachers in the U.S. work long hours for little pay and, in many cases, insufficient support from their leadership. -- Andreas Schleicher
Whether you're writing a horror show or a James Bond film, I think what bubbles beneath is interesting characterization. The colors that emerge through storytelling is what a dramatist does. There's always got to be something bubbling underneath that will erupt at some point. -- John Logan
I will never forget the pleasure and instruction I derived from working with a true master of his art, such as Edward G. Robinson was - and is. Surely his record for versatility, studied characterization - ranging from modern colloquial to the classics - and artistic integrity is unsurpassed. -- Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
The requirements for illustrating an eight-page story are as different from that of an ensemble-cast mini-series as they are different from a solo ongoing. Whether or not they're named Captain America or Ruby Thursday matters less to me than whether or not their characterization is consistent and actions logical... storytelling concerns. -- Stuart Immonen
From 1949 to 1953, I studied towards the diploma in Natural Sciences at the Swiss Polytechnical School in Zurich. It is in the last year of this study that I made my first contacts with fundamental research, when working on the isolation and characterization of a new isomer of Cl34 with a half-life of 1.5 seconds. -- Werner Arber
The craft of writing is all the stuff that you can learn through school; go to workshops and read books. Learn characterization, plot and dialogue and pacing and word choice and point of view. Then there's also the art of it which is sort of the unknown, the inspiration, the stuff that is noncerebral. -- Garth Stein
Now, learning how to make a movie is something you can figure out in about an afternoon. The physics of it, the marks, the lights, etc. What's hard to do is to suspend your own feelings of self consciousness. The natural actors can do that; they can become part of a characterization and learn how to maintain it. -- Tom Hanks
I think 'Two Towers' is a completely distinct film from 'Fellowship of the Ring' or 'Return of the King.' I think that you can watch them as a group and watch how the story evolves, but I think each one was made in its own entirety, and each one has its own palate of sound and music and color and characterization. -- Howard Shore
I'm not interested in plots. I'm interested only in the characterization of people and what they do. -- Erskine Caldwell
Philosophy is the product of wonder. The effort after the general characterization of the world around us is the romance of human thought. -- Alfred North Whitehead
Steve [King] has been incredibly supportive. He's also really good about getting back to me when I have questions about plot or characterization. -- Robin Furth
But eventually I moved the portraiture into the smaller clay things which gave them more of a caricature look to them, rather than a characterization. -- Joe Fafard
Even in cerebral roles that are seemingly intelligent and nothing else, I think it's so important to wrap your characterization in a physical form as well. -- Benedict Cumberbatch
The only time that I've adopted characterization again since that point, for my own albums, has been an album called "Outside" that I did with Brian Eno . -- David Bowie
The only thing that surprises me is the characterization of teachers as lazy and greedy. Only someone with very little understanding of what teaching requires would say such a thing. -- Taylor Mali
Carver's best book yet! FROM A CHANGELING STAR combines deft characterization and fascinating extrapolation into a complex, compulsively readable thriller. I wish all science fiction novels could be this good. -- Craig Shaw Gardner
I can see a movie and believe the story and characterization and stay proud of it. It doesn't change. Even if it's unappreciated, that doesn't mean it can't be appreciated in the future. -- Oliver Stone

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