George Orwell Quotes

So often in English fiction, people are either upper-class twits, or else they're knockabouts, less than human.

I am writing about people who are alive in the city of New York during mid-20th-century America. And these people are like a character in a play or they are figures in a short story or a novel.

After Shakespeare, Dickens is the great creator of characters, multiple characters.

Those are more universal things than some of the characters I play, who are slightly sociopathic. I keep reminding people I can do ordinary.

There are two kinds of characters in all fiction, the born and the synthetic. If the writer has to ask himself questions - is he tall, is he short? - he had better quit.

I don't think that you necessarily need a certain type of background to take on roles. You see actors from very, very privileged backgrounds playing working class characters and vice-versa. I don't think your background limits you as to what you can do.

The test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way. If it never surprises it is flat. Flat characters ... in their purest form ... are constructed round a single idea or quality; when there is more than one factor to them, we get the beginning of the curve toward the round. The really flat character can be experessed in one sentence such as, "I will never desert Mr Micawber." There is Mrs Micawber - she says she won't desert Mr Micawber; she doesn't, and there she is.

We don't have enough folks who grew up in working class rural communities.

Nobody ever recognizes themselves unless they are not the character. There are many people who have claimed to be in my books, but unfortunately they were usually people that I didn't know.

I had great memories of growing up in a working class estate. I remember it being sunny all the time. So we're putting that on screen. It's not people wallowing in degradation.

I make films about working class people. All my films have always been about that. For example, the brothel is a workplace. It's aberrant, but a workplace nonetheless. I was more interested as opposed to glamorizing and saying, oh, this is a great erotic place, it's a place of business. The commodity is sex.

Literary characters, like my grandmother's apparitions, are fragile beings, easily frightened; they must be treated with care so they will feel comfortable in my pages

The Democratic party is one that I've always observed. I have struggled greatly in life from the day I was born and I am honored to be apart of something that focuses on working class citizens and molds them into a proud specimen. Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Kennedy have done so much in that regard for the two generations they've won over during their career course.

But some characters in books are really real--Jane Austen's are; and I know those five Bennets at the opening of Pride and Prejudice, simply waiting to raven the young men at Netherfield Park, are not giving one thought to the real facts of marriage.

I want to put the interests of ordinary working people right up there, center stage. Those people who - you know, they're working all the hours. They're doing their best for their families and sometimes they just feel the odds are stacked against them.

That's the choice they allow you - now the outlet is being a pop star, which is really what I'm saying on the album in 'Working class hero'. As I told Rolling Stone, it's the same people who have the power, the class system didn't change one little bit.

If I'm a character, it's a biographical movie. My character is as close to me as possible. As close to being myself as possible. So my character, J. Cole, is very close to Jermaine Cole.

The future and the hope for the middle class church lies in the renewal of its lifeblood, which is only possible if the church succeeds in winning the working class.

I think if you're able to do over the course of your career 20, 30, 50 very wonderful rich characters, you'd rather have that than an Oscar.

People forget that actors are actors, who are looking to put on the clothes and the character, and then shed it just as easily.

I rarely write in my own voice except in book reviews and memoirs; otherwise, I am writing in mediated voices, modulated in terms of the characters whom the voices express.

It doesn't matter if it's a drama or a comedy, the need to get the emotion and the character arc across is way harder in something like this so was more of a preparation.

It doesn't help for you to name a character's first name be Mindy and then be like, "I'm nothing like the character."

Each form of the acting is different. I think it keeps your mind active. TV, film and theater are different disciplines, as are independent films, opposed to studio films. There are differences in the size and the genre, or a period drama as opposed to a contemporary drama, or the types of characters.