Elizabeth Bowen Quotes

Your internal dialogue has got to be different from what you say. And, you know, in film, hopefully that registers and speaks volumes. It's always the unspoken word and what's happening behind someone's eyes that makes it so rich.

As much as movies are about the words that you're saying, they're also about what's not said, the silent moments.

It's just that the characters are speaking their mind. As opposed to it just being an expression, they're actually saying what's on their mind, and that's something that Tennessee Williams is really famous for. Shakespeare does that and Tennessee Williams does that. You crave that, when you're an actor, for sure.

If you string together a set of speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point and diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and artistically constructed incidents.

When you manage to express something with a look and the music instead of saying it with words or having the character speak, I think it's a more complete work.

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.

Good acting is all in the writing. If it isn't on the page, then it really won't make any difference. You cannot act on force of personality alone.

My thing is, I like playing guys who have a really interesting internal monologue.

I was always cutting dialogue out when we were rehearsing, and when I produced movies, too. I felt that people don't say things in life - they act, they do things. I always wanted my characters doing, rather than saying what they were doing - which was redundant.

The big difference with Juliette and the others in that film is that she goes beyond acting.

Things aren't interesting if you level them. It's the voice that's interesting.

When you go to a movie, it's about what's not being said. I tried to bring that to Greg Sumner. It was always about what's not being said.

In a Western, you talk more with your eyes and your actions than you do with big speeches. I love that.

I always think about Faulkner, and I would argue that there can be a difference between the way that characters express themselves internally and externally.

Dialogue is not always the best way to show emotion, to show your thought process, or to reveal yourself, as a character.

Most of my acting in general is about what's going on in the head, and the lines are just something that comes out.

You don't want to hit readers over the head like they're completely incapable of picking up on subtlety.

I don't necessarily set out to teach or say anything in particular in my writing. Morals and themes come out as I'm telling the tale.

You don't want to have a character say what's bothering him; you want to define characters by action.

I would like for people to hear my music and hear/realize that people and experiences are deeper than what's at face value. Hopefully, with the span of my career, I can try to convey that in more ways than one.

I don't want a performance to give me everything. You can look at Charlotte Rampling in '45 Years,' and you don't really know what she's thinking, but you know something interesting is happening.

I want stories that tackle things.

I'm not very good at depicting the characters' psychology on the page.

The plot is not very important to me, though a novel must have one, of course. It's just a line to hang the washing on.

Whatever character you play, remember they are always doing something they are not just talking.