Jane Levy Quotes

I love creating new characters that are whatever they are.

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

Sometimes a character is really based on research that you do. Other times it's just based on your imagination or perhaps your conversation with the director. Or sometimes all of the above. It depends on the movie and character.

When you have a script, and you're discussing what it can be, and who going to play what role, that's a kind of like a fantasy football game. You can imagine these different dream teams interpreting these characters that only exist in your head.

Whichever character I'm using and wherever I am in my mind dictates what kind of story I'm going to tell.

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.

I usually don't find myself reacting to my characters. I just create them ... And let the audience decide whether they're empathetic or scared or compelled to cheer me on.

I love telling stories. Creating a character, a world, a whole universe out of nothing. That part I can't get enough of.

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

I don't base any character on a real person, and really don't do composites either. I make them up.

Very few of my characters are based on people I've known. It is too constricting.

I never write with an actor in mind - never.

When you're creating a character out of nothing, you have to make all the guesses as to how they walk, how they talk, how they think. It was all there on the table for us to pick and choose for Murrow.

In my head, at least, the business of spinning stories has no closing time. Twists in my characters' lives, glimpses of their secrets, obstacles to their dreams... all arrive unbidden when I'm getting cash at the ATM, walking my son to camp, singing a hymn at a wedding.

I'm really quite bad at coming up with plot ideas. I like to create characters and just see what will happen to them when I let them loose!

I feel I do my best work when it's all there on the page, and I feel that the character is very vivid as I read the script and I'm not having to create stuff and trying to cobble together something. If I have to do that, then I don't entirely trust what I'm doing.

Most of the time, when I'm writing, I'm writing for myself. I'm thinking, 'What will my character say at this time? What will come out of her mouth?' I create individuals so real to me, I sometimes start talking to them. Then I let them loose on the page.

What I'm really trying to do is create unique characters.

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.

You invent this massive lagoon of information without any pressure to do anything apart from create this person, a person that might fit the bill that is the character that is emerging from the research.

Before 'The Walking Dead,' a few of the jobs before that were just like, 'Ugh.' I try and make everything as creative as possible, even when I get the script and can't imagine what I'm going to do with it.

I don't really base any of my characters on specific people that I know, although my characters are informed by the kind of people who live in my community.

A lot of my characters are born out of a small grain in a person that I heighten and take to that next level. They're not based on anyone I've ever met, but they are these extreme versions of something.

When I write a book, characters come to life for me somewhere at the back of my head. I strive to make them flesh and blood in an abstract way, in words.

When you create a character, you create it for yourself - you do whatever you want. It's your job to explore it in as many different avenues as you can in order to make it a fully wounded character.