John Ratzenberger Quotes

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

When we don't have all the details about our characters, we have to make it up to fill in all the details. So, for me, writing and acting go hand in hand.

As an actor, our very palette is one of imagination. So it is a walk onto an empty space and then imagine the world beyond it is what we do.

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

The way I like to work is to attach personal experiences to what I'm doing, so it helps tremendously if I can write my own play under what the writer has written.

When you're an actor or any kind of artist, you use your life as something to draw from in every experience.

I take stuff from real life and try to make a character out of it. And I try to live the world of the characters a little bit.

It's what still excites me most about acting: letting your imagination go places it's never been before. There's nothing better than that.

I don't believe you just create a character out of thin air, there's always something of yourself you bring.

I really wanted to create some of my own characters, then it became wanting to act the parts, then it sort of grew from there because I really enjoyed doing it.

I was focused as a writer and marketing and a character. I was like Jim Carrey.

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 don't ever really know where I get my characters from.

I've been doing this since I was 10 years old, inhabiting different people and playing different roles.

When I do a character, I try to base it on someone I have met or an experience I've had.

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.

Characters don't belong to anyone, not even the person who plays them.

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.

With any role, you're extending yourself and acting out things that never happened to you.

The characters in my stories, whether historical or fictional, usually prove to be a compilation of influences taken from differing sources, but never drawn from one model.

I find it easier to play someone who is so far from me because you create someone - you build this person based on the story and the script, with the director.

You know, working as an actor, I'm always working within my own imagination.

When I was in school, I was always writing scripts and dressing up as characters. I'd constantly be that guy who'd get up on stage. I used to write imaginary TV shows, like soap operas, for fun.

I always think I know the way a novel will go. I write maps on oversized art pads like the kind I carried around in college when I was earnest about drawing. I need to have some idea of the shape of the novel, where its headed, so that I can proceed with confidence. But the truth is my characters start doing and saying things I don't expect.

I like acting; I like being lost in the creative process.