Jane Austen Quotes

It is quite impossible to understand the character of a person from one action, however striking that action may be.

As if one could know the good a person is capable of, when one doesn't know the bad he might do.

I always compare human beings to animals. It's a nice way to figure out who they are.

I always say, if you want to judge a person, see what he/she laughs at.

With any character, I try to focus more on who the character is and how they got to be who they are.

I'm fascinated with psychology, and with why a person walks the way they walk or why they walk into a room the way they do or why we are the way we are, and it's not exclusive to the psychology of a character.

Of course, when you work on a character, you try to understand her. You feel that everything she does has a reason.

Now for the hitch in Jane's character,' he said at last, speaking more calmly than from his look I had expected him to speak. 'The reel of silk has run smoothly enough so far; but I always knew there would come a knot and a puzzle: here it is. Now for vexation, and exasperation, and endless trouble!

I don't have any of the answers, son. Never did. All I can do is keep asking the questions. Keep trying to make sense of why people do what they do.

It can be annoying not to know who you are, where you came from, or what you're doing. To try to create a character without a whole lot of information can be taxing.

Immigration confuses and terrifies me, so why not try to write a comic and make some sense of it?

A doctor has a stethoscope up to a man's chest. The man asks, "Doc, how do I stand?" The doctor says, "That's what puzzles me!"

Directing is more like you're being a psychologist and you're kind of analyzing the situation and evaluating each person for their idiosyncrasies.

That's something that rationally and logically I can't try to figure out, how somebody "transitions" so rapidly and so drastically, but I don't worry about it now.

Sometimes small incidents, rather than glorious exploits, give us the best evidence of character. So, as portrait painters are more exact in doing the face, where the character is revealed, than the rest of the body, I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks of the souls of men.

when someone speaks he looks at a mouth, not eyes and their colors, which, it seems to him, will always alter depending on the light of a room, the minute of the day. Mouths reveal insecurity or smugness or any other point on the spectrum of character. For him they are the most intricate aspect of faces. He's never sure what an eye reveals. but he can read how mouths darken into callousness, suggest tenderness. One can often misjudge an eye from its reaction to a simple beam of sunlight.

It is no use trying to sum people up.

There is a grey blur, and a green blur. I try to stay on the grey one.

Like two sparrows in a hurricane trying to find their way.

I'm not saying I know everything about love. I'm still trying to figure out girls... I don't think we'll ever totally figure out girls.

The day will probably come when you can tell everything about a person from his dreams except his age and weight.

There is no escape from mystery. It is the character of our being.

Is she kind as she is fair?

Don't give me that look. I'm not trying to find out who you are. I don't care who you are. I just want to know why it is you are the way you are.