Greg Iles Quotes

The scene is never really about moving the story forward on 'Breaking Bad.' That's the functional veneer of the scene, but it's always about what's going on with the characters.

I've often said the reader knows every bit as much about Thorne as I do. When I created him for 'Sleepyhead,' I was determined he should be a character who would develop, book by book, change and grow as we all do, and who - crucially - would be unpredictable.

But I also wanted to give them an intelligent emotional journey, without having to suspend reality - to be able to look at those characters and see reasons for the relationships and why what happens happens.

As an actor, you want to be able to move your character forward into new ground, but also it's really interesting to go backwards and unpeel those layers and the interesting elements of what your character is and what informs the decisions that you make so that you can have as much meat to work with.

With any role I play, I find out what the human problem is first.

The thing with '24' is that because it moves so much, it's a challenge, and sometimes things get revealed about these characters as you go.

It's much easier for me to think in terms of character movement and emotion and story rather than, 'What are some wacky hijinks we can throw together?'

What I like about 'Paper Girls' in particular is that, because we're approaching it more from a female perspective, we're able to consider the emotional states of these characters a little bit more and think more of their interiority.

It's nice to create a character, not just within two scenes, but within the journey of a whole movie. It's fun to do that.

I still don't understand why the tag of 'action hero' follows me. My films have all these elements - romance, action and comedy. None of the fight sequences of my character is an act of randomness. There's a reason to action in my films.

I think what good television does well is that it shows characters evolving.

I'd never really been in a series, where you see a man at different points and perspectives in his life. Usually it's a film, where I'm playing a character who just comes in and offers something up.

I enjoy pushing my characters to the limit. No matter how far out there I go, I look for things that make the characters human.

I usually start with a repulsive character and go on from there.

My books usually end where they began. I try to bring characters back to a point that is familiar but different because of the growth that they have gone through.

I locate that special problem in a character and then try to understand it. That's the genesis of all my work.

When I get a role, I try to delve as deeply as possible into the character.

I tend to relate to a character in terms of the arc: what's interesting is where he starts versus where he ends up.

I don't start with the characters. I start with the series of events that will provide the conflict and how it can be resolved. Characters are incidental.

'Longmire' is more of a show about the characters, and you couldn't pay a bigger compliment than to want to know more about my character, or the characters on the show.

The life of a character doesn't just exist between action and cut.

But I'm attracted to roles where I get to really go in and explore a character.

There's something pretty awesome about staying with a character and growing.

You'd be surprised how hard it is getting the human emotional arc in a script to work. Ultimately a director stands and falls by their ability to do that.

What's great about 'Game of Thrones' is they change the perspective, the POV, all the time. So you will have one story told by one character and you'll go, 'Oh my God, horrible', and then maybe the season after you have the same story told but from the person you thought was just the most horrible, vile creature.