Richard Whately Quotes

Everything is so funny in the movie. The funniest thing about the movie is the transformations they were able to make with the characters.

I honestly do feel that I am a role model for young people.

I always set out to tell a good story, to create a character that young people can relate to, place them in a situation that will be interesting, intriguing, eventually suspenseful. But what I find is that after I do that, then there are themes that emerge, which teachers can then use to provoke discussion and debate.

I think you are who you are, and your kids will see who you are. So you'd better be a good person, because they are going to see it, and that's going to shape them. They are going to become you.

Intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.

I'm not accomplished enough to over-analyze something, because I don't have the background as far as people who write and know how to break down a character or story and stuff. I mostly go by gut instincts.

'Tammy,' the new movie starring, produced, and co-written by Melissa McCarthy, could be an artifact from some alternate universe: the creatures there resemble Earthlings but have an entirely different and debased idea of what's funny.

For me, playing a really bad character is about figuring out what brought the person to where we need him.

I need to get lost and sometimes my characters lead me to places I don't expect to go.

What we need is a rebirth of satire, of dissent, of irreverence, of an uncompromising insistence that phoniness is phony and platitudes are platitudinous.

You cannot build up a character in a solitude; you need a formed character to stand a solitude.

I find Billy Eichner to be hilarious, though I also imagine that for many, a little goes a long way. Billy provides a kind of comedy the Parks and Recreations show did not have - an insane person screaming at everyone, and our job going forward, as it is with all of our characters, is to develop him and make him more three dimensional.

I don't aim it at anybody specific, I don't aim my characters to make old people laugh or young people or professionals or blue collar, just whatever I think is going to be funny and it just so happens that.

When I see something, I know why something's funny or seems to be funny. But in the end it's just another picture as far as I'm concerned.

Your characters should be as smart as you are, if not smarter.

Music has a power of forming the character, and should therefore be introduced into the education of the young.

Adults need more complex narratives. They have their own narratives. The main characters are themselves.

As a filmmaker, you are going to manipulate the character as you need to make the scenes work.

I'm not a writer, inherently. Most of the writers I've met have stories they need to tell. I don't have that. I'm an interpreter. I like getting a script, seeing a character and thinking, "Oh, wow, I know what I can do with that."

[Kids] don't remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.

Courtesy is a science of the highest importance. It is...opening a door that we may derive instruction from the example of others, and at the same time enabling us to benefit them by our example, if there be anything in our character worthy of imitation.

For example, the character of Claire in In Dreams wasn't imagined enough by me. Annette Bening is a great actress, and she gave a great performance, but because I hadn't fully written it essentially the character wasn't finished.

The first thing, the main thing, about how I work is I need to understand the character.

It's a constant learning process - not just what you need to learn for the character or as far as good actors - but as an actor, there's no limit. Every time now, you're learning so, I think that's a good thing though.

Over and over I feel as if my characters know who they are, and what happens to them, and where they have been and where they will go, and what they are capable of doing, but they need me to write it down for them because their handwriting is so bad.