Bernardo Bertolucci Quotes

I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.

To get a connection to your characters, you have to put them in a situation that you can feel yourself.

I always believed in my characters. I lived them.

I really fall in love with my characters, even the bad ones. I love getting together with them. They tell me what to do; they take me on a wild and wonderful trip.

I've always felt, even with sketches, that if you don't care about these people, then it doesn't matter.

My characters are always utterly sympathetic to me, if that makes any sense.

One of the things that happens when you write characters - and maybe this is my own sentimentality - is that I always find I have an instinct to protect them.

I love all the characters I write.

If we get caught up in a story, it's because we've started to care about the characters, and that can only happen if we've moved beneath the surface.

So much of movie acting is in the lighting. And in loving your characters. I try to know them, and with that intimacy comes love. And now, I love Voldemort.

If there is any secret to my success, I think it's that my characters are very real to me. I feel everything they feel, and therefore I think my readers care about them.

I suppose it's possible that a writer would have feeling for his characters, but I can't see how, because writing is such a meticulous, intricate, technical business. I wish I could say that I love my characters and that frequently they take over the book and run away with the plot and so on. But they don't exist.

The great thing about writing is that you always put yourself in the shoes of the character. If you're doing it right, you can see into the heart of all your characters. Usually, when there's a writing problem, it's because you aren't doing that.

I never have particular actors planned when I'm in the process of writing.

I think you have to love the characters that you write. I don't know how you could possibly write a TV show where you didn't love the characters.

I seem to have to make my characters family before I can access their hearts in any way that matters.

I spend a lot of time with my characters.

I am a firm believer that a good plot makes for a fun enough read, but it's not what binds us. If we don't care about the characters, we won't care - not in a lasting way - about what's happening to them.

Besides the mistakes that are pointed out, I love the way readers become involved with the characters. When readers start asking about character motivations instead of concentrating on the special effects, it means you're connecting with them on a personal level.

I want to have compassion for my characters - I feel like I am the characters when I'm writing them.

Once I started to value and respect my characters, I could really hear them. I just let them start talking.

My job is to see the world through the character's eyes.

You can start imagining all kinds of things characters would feel, but you have to have a sense of whether those imaginings might be right.

When I read a script, the important thing is that I can connect in some way with that character and have some idea from what his story is that I can tell that story too, because that's all acting is, is storytelling.

There's some of me in all my characters.