Top 78 Characterization Quotes & Sayings

I get letters from adults saying that they love the books because they are more in-depth with characterization than the comics. The luxury of writing a whole novel is you can really explore who the characters are.

When I began writing novels, I read Aristotle to learn how to perfect structure, Pearl Cleage to sustain tension, and Nora Roberts for characterization.

Characterization requires a constant back-and-forth between the exterior events of the story and the inner life of the character.

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.

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.

Hard science fiction, which is what I write, often is rightly criticized for having either negligible or unbelievable characterization, but the science I've actually studied most post-secondarily is psychology, and characterization is the art of dramatizing psychological principles.

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.

Characterization in a play is like a blank check which the dramatist accords to the actor for him to fill in.

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.

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.

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.

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

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.

By definition it uses and plays and delights in time. It delights in the interlacing of chronologies and the consequences of that interlacing. And those have personal and psychological expressions in a character. Aside from other issues of writing, psychological characterization is what narrative can do best.

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.

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.

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.

The work that Google is doing in China is indirectly benefiting the Chinese military. Indirect may not be a full characterization of the way it is. It's more of a direct benefit to the Chinese military.

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.

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.

For me, 'The Hobbit' is an object lesson in storytelling, both in terms of characterization and story structure. It is an exemplar of storytelling in that regard.

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.

Characterization requires self-knowledge, insight into human nature . . . it is more than impersonation.

Acting is characterization, the process of two entities merging-the actor and the role.

I think that there was a lot of fantasy projected onto me, and that resulted in a reappropriation and re-characterization of who I am.

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.

I'm not interested in plots. I'm interested only in the characterization of people and what they do.

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.

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.

One thing about beginning writers is that they don't really always know their own strengths and weaknesses - you might think you're bad at characterization, but that might really be because of some issue you're having with another element, which is making it hard for you to express character in a convincing way.

'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.

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.

My feeling for reality TV isn't ironic, guilty, or apologetic. Reality TV is one of the few remaining modes of popular entertainment in which characterization is permitted as plot.

The concept of the characters in animal skins and us satirizing modern technology made it fun. But the voices we cast and the characterization of Fred Flintstone had a lot to do with it.

My sensibility is such that I automatically get drawn to films that have a good story, good characterization.

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.

I'm very disturbed at the picture that was painted by Senator Ted Kennedy that Samuel Alito is not a man of his word, that he is dishonest. The implication that he is not reliable I don't think is a fair characterization of what I've read.

Steve [King] has been incredibly supportive. He's also really good about getting back to me when I have questions about plot or characterization.

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.

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.

Trump's characterization of undocumented immigrants is, of course, absurd. Not only do the facts, well, trump his assertions, but his prejudiced views demonstrate a deep ignorance about Mexican immigrants in the United States.

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.

When I debut on television with 'Meri Awaaz Hi Pehchaan Hai,' there were a lot of things that I experienced as an actor and felt that one could get into more nuances in terms of characterization. At the end of it, I wept non-stop for 15 minutes to get out of that character. It was that kind of emotional bond.

Characterization is integral to the theatrical experience.

Characterization is an accident that flows out of action and dialogue.

I think my wife would take objection to any characterization of me as perfect.

Chomsky's characterization of the United States as a 'propaganda' state like all the rest - distinguishable only by its more effective and seductive salesmanship - is particularly hard to swallow.

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.

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.

A lot of people characterize women as more cautious. I don't think that's an inappropriate characterization, but that's not a natural thing we're born with, it's something that comes about.

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.

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.

There were certain things that I tried to do on 'Karamchand.' Initially, they were hated, but eventually everyone loved the characterization.

The acting of the '50s is really stylized, so you're not really getting a lot of authentic, everyday characterization of people.

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.

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.

Philosophy is the product of wonder. The effort after the general characterization of the world around us is the romance of human thought.

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.

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.

Great novels have great characterization no matter what. But multiple points of view let me examine characters from entirely different perspectives, allowing me to learn more about everyone in the process.