Italian writer-director Paolo Sorrentino makes zombie movies, which probably comes as a surprise to him. At the center of his best and most recent pictures are the walking dead, characters in a race with themselves across mortality's finish line, their spirits arriving before the rest of them.
I guess you could say that no matter what the characters are enduring, I try to make them retain their humanity. Their self-absorbed, grouchy, selfish, aggravating humanity.
Whether or not you agree with Ayn Rand - and I have certain issues with some of her beliefs - the woman can tell a story. I mean, the novel as an art form is just in full florid bloom in 'Atlas Shrugged.' It's an unbelievable story. The characters are so compelling, and what she's saying is mind-expanding.
I want as much as I can to try and explore different roles and different characters; that's important to me to get involved in as many different parts as I can.
If you don't spend the time you need on developing characters and finding stories, complicated stories, the audience gets tired because they think they're seeing the same thing again and again.
'White Teeth' has far too many characters, and its plot is tortured. But Smith has an astonishing intellect. She writes sharp dialogue for every age and race - and she's funny as hell.
I don't like to read novels where the novelist tells me what to think about the situation and the characters. I prefer to discover for myself.
I loved writing fiction. I mean, once I found the character, or the characters, and knew who they were and knew their back-stories, it really - I mean, I went into my studio every day, thinking, 'What's gonna happen to Billy today?'
I think kids want the same thing from a book that adults want - a fast-paced story, characters worth caring about, humor, surprises, and mystery. A good book always keeps you asking questions, and makes you keep turning pages so you can find out the answers.
All the best novels are about one thing: how we go on. The characters must survive the fallout of their own cowardice, folly, denial or misguided passion. They squander what matters most, and still they pick up the pieces.
It's not that I'm a serious person; I'm playful and stuff like that, but I take characters very seriously and the work very seriously.
Killing characters on television has become an easy short cut to cathartic emotion.
I've been very lucky in the characters I've chosen. Up until last year I was a nobody. I did jobs I booked because I needed to put food in my mouth.
Preacher is a book that somehow allows me time by its settling on it's characters, that sort of modern gothic western feel. You're not likely to see the boat veering too far from that.
No, there isn't a particular type of genre that I'm drawn to. I'm more drawn to the possibility of creating different characters, or being able to go from one genre to the other and to show that I could do it, that I could be good at it.
Hollywood is lacking realness in their female characters. I don't think I'm the only one who thinks that and wants to change it.
For our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even for the better.
I've been trying to take this journey over the last four years of getting away from playing manipulative and villainous characters and playing characters that are affected by what happens to them as opposed to unaffected.
I've always believed in populating my films with characters who we like, who we have some warmth for, who have warmth for each other, who we would like to hang out with, who we emulate in one way or another.
I had been thinking for a while about how bored and tired I was of playing straight-down-the-middle everymanish characters that have what I call white guy problems. And I missed playing characters who lacked dignity and more importantly, lacked social skills.
There are still plenty of people who want to burn me at the stake for my Wonder Woman run. And I can't really blame them, you know? That was my take on the character, and when people are invested in the characters, they see them very clearly and in the way they like.
I'm really proud of the characters I've been able to play. Certainly, playing the character on 'CSI' as Dr. Sherman Hawkes is a wonderful stereotype-busting role.
When I read a script, I try not to judge the characters. I try to have an open mind and really see what it makes me feel.
I just have my own taste, and I just try and stick with that. I'm just trying to play as many characters as I can for as long as I have an opportunity to.
I love that we've chipped away at the celluloid closet and have wonderful programs that feature gay and lesbian characters in really rich, fully developed ways.
If you don't have obsessions, don't write. my characters are obsessed.
I like to have my characters talking in an up-to-date way, and I like their essentially modern self-awareness, which means we can have lots of irony and jokes.
There's a very strong force in Tolkien's characters.
When you begin a play, you're going to have to spend a lot of time with those characters, so those characters are going to have to be rich enough that you want to take a very long journey with them. That's how I begin thinking about what I want to write about and who I want to write about.
I wouldn't be able to tackle a character like Rosalee on 'Underground' without having tackled the many characters I've played before.
You have to find something there that relates to the characters and reality on some level.
I like doing them and they're ridiculous and the actors can improvise a lot, and they don't have to be really realistic characters that hit a very specific tone as in a feature film. They're really fun, I want to make more of them definitely.
I think the plasticity of the novel is its greatest challenge. There are no rules; there is no necessary form. You can know what you want it to be, or do, and still not know how to write it. There are endless possibilities, infinite choices. What voice should it be in? What events to start with? What characters will be part of it?
With all of the qualities of the scene-setting, the dialogue, the place and time and the time and place in which your characters move. And I want to move with the characters, move with them and describe the world in which they are living.
I feel like, sometimes, characters that are just good and nice can seem boring or uninteresting.
It's funny, because in drama school, my greatest strength was my range. So my early career was like that: I played all kinds of different characters.
