Ne-Yo Quotes

A lot of entertainment, and especially in a half-hour format, can be all jokes, all the time. And some of those jokes can be really, really funny, but what I respond to, as a viewers, is identification or caring about the characters.

Certain characters get to me and stay with me for a while.

I love characters songs and I love to fit into a story. I love singing through a character's journey.

You can watch someone on-stage cry and cry - but in the audience you feel nothing. It's easy to become indulgent. For me, what's important is the story first.

If a movie is really working, you forget for two hours your Social Security number and where your car is parked. You are having a vicarious experience. You are identifying, in one way or another, with the people on the screen.

People like the comedy more when they care about the characters.

It always helps me connect with characters, to think about what music they respond to.

I'll say, what makes me happy about making movies is, every once in a while through movies we find a kind of honesty. There's an honesty in fiction that's as effective or even more powerful than the honesty of our lives. We can find something that's genuinely true, like a chemistry between people or a statement that speaks to an audience.

If you're not connected emotionally to a story, then you're dead. You're really just opening the door for people to lose interest and their minds to wander, for them to start picking it apart.

You want to feel that your reader does identify with the characters so that there's a real entry into the story - that some quality speaks to the individual.

We can't help identifying with the protagonist. It's coded in our movie-going DNA.

Big stories need human stakes.

It's amazing when I do a gig how many people of different ages come up to me afterwards and chat to me about songs. The emotions I feel are what any person can relate to. Sometimes I'm just a narrator.

In drama, I think, the audience is a willing participant. It's suspending a certain kind of disbelief to try to get something out of a story.

Fiction is about intimacy with characters, events, places.

In 'The Prophet' I really fell in love with those characters, there was an emotional connection there that I don't think I've had in a while. It made me think it would be nice to stick with the characters for a little bit and see what happens.

Once I start writing about somebody, I become very protective of them.

What really motivates you to try to work things out as an actor is in large part fear, because you want to get into that narrative and bring the audience along.

But in film you always watch situations or stories that you really have no relation to. A lot of times just because there's no personal connection doesn't mean you can't connect with the film or the characters in the film.

I'd say Rob Reiner's 'When Harry Met Sally' is my all-time favorite. It made me realize there's a way of telling a story where the audience is so in love with the characters that they forget you're even telling a story.

The film depends on the audience's belief in this relationship.

I like finishing a movie and having this living, breathing thing.

You need the audience to become invested in the characters and in order to become invested, they need to identify with the characters... and that's why the characters need to be real.

It's hard to be scared if you don't feel for a character, because you don't care if they die or live.

If you care about the characters, then whatever scary thing happens to them, you feel it even more.