Quentin Tarantino Quotes

Trust your actors. That's why I work with the same actors time and time again. I encourage them to change the dialogue to achieve one thing: keep the characters honest.

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.

To me, truth is the big thing. Constantly you're writing something and you get to a place where your characters could go this way or that and I just can't lie. The characters have gotta be true to themselves.

You can't take a character anywhere they don't expect the character to go. But within those confines is where creativity lies.

Always be original. Never duplicate what you've seen another actor do. Be true to the character that you've been given, and the rest will come easy.

When you work on a pre-existing character, when you end up getting invited to be part of a legacy character like Superman, I don't feel like it would be true to the character if all I did was go in looking to express my own voice.

I've said before that the common perception that all good actors should be good liars is exactly the opposite; only bad actors lie when they act.

I think it's very important to write a demythologized woman character. My characters are flawed. They are no better than they should be.

I never go into a scene - ever, ever, ever - thinking, I have to make myself more empathetic toward the audience. Once you start doing that, you get into really dangerous territory. I think you start to become kind of untrue to the character.

It's very hard to play a man without any flaws.

Do I want a character who just has the best motives and the best intentions, zero flaws, and is doing things for the right reasons? No!

With all due respect to the other writers, I don't want to disparage any other writers; I don't want to have to invent a bigger villain than Deathstroke so Deathstroke can seem heroic fighting this bigger villain. I'd rather just have Deathstroke be who is, and he's kind of a bastard.

I choose grey characters, as I enjoy playing a human character. I don't shy away from showing the shortcomings of my characters.

I want to remove the curtain of pretence from all of my characters.

I feel like it's too easy to just say, "We'll just change the name of this male character to a female, but have her do all the same things that a male does." I don't believe in that. I think there's something else. I think there's more to women than that.

I just try to be honest and true to the character and play the part.

My idea of no makeup on actors is really no makeup. I mean, they can be wearing makeup. I don't care what they're wearing as long as it looks like they're not wearing makeup. But an actress will suddenly appear with some lipstick on. And that's makeup. Keener's character wears makeup. Her character would wear makeup. I try to stay true to whoever that person is. I hate that kind of thing where you're waking up in the morning with makeup on in a movie. I just think it pulls you out of the movie.

If nothing will finally survive of life besides what artists report of it, we have no right to report what we know to be lies.

Art remains the one way possible of speaking truth.

As a writer, I demand the right to write any character in the world that I want to write. I demand the right to be them, I demand the right to think them and I demand the right to tell the truth as I see they are.

I enjoy playing real human beings after playing a lot of larger than life characters. I love playing true to life characters and that is what I intend to do for the majority of my career.

There are many counterfeits of character, but the genuine article is difficult to be mistaken.

Whereas if I want to create a prostitute character now from memories of different prostitutes and inventing stuff, I can say, "this could happen," "this is quite plausible." But I don't feel I know enough about border life to do the latter.

Actually, I identify with all my characters, good and bad. I have to do that in order to make them genuine. I have to understand them even if I don't approve of them. Not completely - it's impossible; complete identification is, in fact, not desirable.

If you're going to play a character who has a deformed face, you should have a deformed face.