Curtis Sittenfeld Quotes

I don't think that I would ever, while writing, think to myself, "I need a little more psychological realism."

For an author, the nice characters aren't much fun. What you want are the screwed up characters. You know, the characters that are constantly wondering if what they are doing is the right thing, characters that are not only screwed up but are self-tapping screws. They're doing it for themselves.

We're all complex human beings, and if some of that complexity shows through, I think it's advantageous for the movie.

A conventional playwright tries to tell you more about the characters than they know about themselves.

It's more interesting when people overcome inner turbulence, but at the same time I do like the innocent. Have you ever read The Idiot? I think Dostoyevsky created a brilliant character there. He doesn't have any self-inflicted wounds. I love that. People don't like him because he's so pure.

When I'm writing a script, I don't worry about plot as much as I do about people. I get to know the main characters - what they need, what they want, what they should do. That's what gets the story going. You can't just have action, you've got to find out what the characters want. And then they must grow, they must go somewhere.

The novel is a big space, and a lot can happen. Just think about the parts of your life. How do we account for our own contradictions? The only way to understand them is to let them exist, as truths that indicate something about character. People are built of elements that don't fit together - and the conflict of that is their essential drive.

Ultimately, all characters have some negative and positive energies. That's just how I see it. I didn't go out looking for negative characters; I went out looking for people who have a struggle and a fight to tackle. That's what interests me.

I have done scenes as Harvey Two-Face. It's interesting. I won't tell you exactly what we're going for, but I think that I can say that it will use all of today's technology to create this character. He's going to be interesting, and I think that's what makes this character important in the movie-you get to see him as he was before, as in the comic books. Harvey is a very good guy in the comic books. He's judicious. He cares. He's passionate about what he loves and then he turns into this character. So you will see that in this film.

When you're training as an actor, a lot of the big work you're learning is to treat fictional characters like real people. You don't have the problem of discovering a backstory with real people, but there's always a mystery which is common to both fictional and factual characters. They are never quite the person you think they are.

No matter what character your play. I feel like whenever anyone is honest and whole and well-written, you're going to be able to connect to that person because we're all kinda made up of the same stuff and I think that's always one of the really powerful things about approaching each individual character and role and film.

I believe that to create real-seeming characters, the writer must be willing to go on a voyage of self-exploration. It can be revealing and even painful to explore your own weakness, but it gives you genuine emotion. Characters in fiction come alive because of the believability of their emotional lives and that is what I strive to create.

I like the discipline of writing a script. You can't go into the character's head - you have to find these creative ways to help externalize what they're thinking.

I think you approach a part the same way and just find out in what's making them tick and who they are. In a movie like this you may have a little less time and few dialogue scenes and exposition scenes for your character to really get that across, and so I wanted to be able to convey that she's not somebody who's just punching a clock but she has this weird emotional investment in her job to where she does get quite myopic and that's what makes her relentless.

I don't think being flawed is a bad thing for a character... nor do I think it's a bad thing for a person in life, because that's how we all are.

That's always my ambition is to create a character out of what will help tell the story. I've never been an actor to say my character wouldn't do that, because he should do that in order to help tell the story.

I think even the characters that are fundamentally evil and wrong, I want people to really love them. I think that's important to writing believable characters. They don't have to be likable but they have to be loved, at least by the author.

I think when you have a character as richly drawn, I suppose then there are subconscious, mental notes that you've made.

I was thinking about the difference in voice between the different characters. Each voice has to be unique. Hypothetically you should be able to read each chapter without the heading that tells you who is telling the story.

All actors have to believe that our characters have a point that makes sense. Hopefully, they make sense to the crowd watching it, but at least he has to make sense in his own mind, in his own universe.

Comic book characters are characters who wear costumes. They're not necessarily different than other characters. The trend I think that you're seeing are comic book movies, at least the ones that Marvel makes, don't have comic book stories. They have dramatic human stories.

That's your job as the actor, to understand the human part of the character, to make it real.

It depends on the story and the filmmaker. And it depends on the character, and the heart and soul of the person that I see on the page, and if it resonates with something that I think I can summon in myself.

As an actor, it's your job to find the way to play a character. I think you can latch on to some things that might have happened.

The thing I always guard against when I'm talking to people I'm working with about a script is that there's a thing I don't like and it's called "talk story." It's when you're talking about the story; the characters are tasked with talking about the story instead of allowing the audience to experience the story.