Michael Chabon Quotes

You use your emotions to try and find them in the character that you're playing.

We have to be able to use our imaginations to make the character's experiences real to us.

I've thought a lot about the power of empathy. In my work, it's the current that connects me and my actual pulse to a fictional character in a made up story, it allows me to feel, pretend feelings and sorrows and imagined pain.

When I'm writing a song, I try to be the character.

I don't want to draw from my own experiences in life. I first like to become the character and then think from her point of view.

I think the two main tools actors have are the imagination of what other people have gone through, to connect with and through research, and there's one's own experience.

I really become the characters when I'm writing them. I'll become one or two of them more than others, I'm consistent that way.

A lot of people ask, "What do you pull on in your own life from your character?" In all honesty, it's not something that really works that way for me. I tend to look at these things as an imaginative process and a challenge of imagination and empathy, to some degree. I get much more out of meeting people who have lived these lives than I do digging around in my own limited experiences.

There's a kind of acting that goes on in my head when I'm writing a character where I put myself in their place.

What I try to do in writing any character is to put myself in his position.

I think in a lot of ways, writing, when you're really in there, is like being an actress because you're in somebody else's head.

I actually see myself in all my characters. In order to imagine what it feels like to be another person I have to use my own experiences and responses to the world.

I try to put myself into whatever character I play.

In all my characters, I try to find an iota of myself, and in Castle, I found a lot. He gets away with a lot, so that's fun.

I love the creating part of taking on a character. It is fun to be another person and create what it would be like to be that person.

Seriously, my music really does help my acting, and, like, getting in and out of a character from a different lifestyle and writing a song about it. Likewise, my acting inspires the music because I can write a theme that I wouldn't necessarily approach at all in life.

That's why I enjoy acting: getting in the mind of someone else.

I really do literally put myself into a character's shoes.

I just love to be able to actually build a character.

In terms of the characters I think are really fun to play, a lot of times it's someone in my head saying 'I know that woman.'

I like to build a character, trying to stretch my imagination as far to the walls of my brain as I can to come up with something that feels truthful and feels real - as close to the skin as I can get it.

I'm not saying that I am all of my characters, but for me to bring a character to life, you've got to be able to find your own truth.

Acting isn't necessarily pretending. It's storytelling. It's giving someone your perspective on something.

Acting is an imaginative leap, really, isn't it? And imaginations prosper in different circumstances.

I think actors always retain one foot in the cradle. We're switched on to our youth, to our childhood. We have to be because we're in the business of transferring emotions to other people.