19 quotes found
“In many ways, likability is a very elaborate lie, a performance, a code of conduct dictating the proper way to be. Characters who don't follow this code become unlikable. Critics who criticize a ch...”
“That was Emmashe'd have enjoyed knowing she had something like that, something that could blow her whole fucking life and mine apart if it came out. Her little bit of power.”
“If through no fault of his own the hero is crushed by a bulldozer in Act II, we are not impressed. Even though life is often like thisthe absconding cashier on his way to Nicaragua is killed in a c...”
“Over the years I have forged intimate familial ties with these characters, who are reflections of a portion of myself. Consequently, even a character who appeared only once in a short story waits n...”
“Favoring 'resolution' the way we do, it is hard for us men to write great love stories. Why?, because we want to tell too much. We arent satisfied unless at the end of the story the characters are ...”
“I am the man who comes and goes between the bar and the telephone booth. Or, rather:that man is called 'I' and you know nothing else about him, just as this station is called only 'station' and bey...”
“A brain is a space that is infinite that give people the capability to accumulate new information that we never know or revive the information that they forget. However, peoples' character can real...”
“I've committed to nothing...and that's just suicide...by tiny, tiny increments.”
“Saul is as different from Simon Wakefield as it's possible to get, I find myself thinking. And Edward Monkford is utterly different from both of them. It seems incredible that Emma could have had r...”
“Good characters in fiction are the very devil. Not only because most authors have too little material to make them of, but because we as readers have a strong subconscious wish to find them incredi...”
“There are three types of actions: purposeful, habitual, and gratuitous. Characters, to be immediate and apprehensible, must be presented by all three.' Katin looked toward the front of the car. The...”
“Now, to be sure, Mrs Varden thought, here is a perfect character. Here is a meek, righteous, thoroughgoing Christian, who, having mastered all these qualities, so difficult of attainment; who, havi...”
“When people really hate one another, the tension within them can sometimes make itself felt throughout a room, like atmospheric waves, first hot, then cold, wafted backwards and forwards as if in a...”
“Characterization is integral to the theatrical experience.”
“That was Emma—she'd have enjoyed knowing she had something like that, something that could blow her whole fucking life and mine apart if it came out. Her little bit of power.”
