Eleanor Catton Quotes

A trio of reputations lie at the heart of Henry James's 'The Portrait of a Lady.'

I love Victorian novels, the way they capture the nuances of the human condition.

The book says, 'Vanity Fair - a story without a hero.' Becky is effectively the protagonist, the hero we follow. But she is flawed. Becky is a subject of her own time.

I think one of the few faults in Dickens is that mostly his lead characters are blanks - who is David Copperfield, who is Oliver Twist? And yet he takes such joy in populating the rest of his novels with these fantastic, grotesque people like Pecksmith and so on.

There are movies where we are interested in seeing people's lives without agreeing with what they're doing.

I think Shakespeare had a lot to contribute with his understanding of the human condition.

The contemporary crime novel is, at its best, a novel of character. That's where the suspense comes from.

One of the things I really like about Ford's films is how there is always a focus on the way characters live, and not just the male heroes.

I was a little bit wary of playing Nicholas. In the script, which I think is true of the novel and the film, he's the only character not singing and dancing in a musical style. Playing someone who is the personification of good is a little difficult.

I think that if you get too close to the character, if you do too much historical research, you may find yourself defending your view of a character against the author's view, and I think that's terribly dangerous.

To be able to analyze plays and novels is so relevant to acting.

What I've tended to do is to use my own experiences to get into someone else's mind, like in Wuthering Heights.

Shakespeare lets us see real people undergoing real processes, with real feelings.

Don't go around asking the question, 'Is this character likeable?' and expect that to be compatible with serious literary endeavours. That's not what it's about.

Whenever I approach any character, I try to find examples to draw upon.

Literature has become too psychological.

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.

It seems that the analysis of character is the highest human entertainment. And literature does it, unlike gossip, without mentioning names.

To say that Agatha Christie’s characters are cardboard cut-outs is an insult to cardboard cut-outs.

All that matters to me as a reader are characters. I want characters to be real, authentic, and rounded. I will be digging into characters for at least a month. Who they are. What they are like. Outside of the story.

You don't read Gatsby, I said, to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how complicated issues such as adultery and fidelity and marriage are. A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil.

Badlapur' is a drama, a character-driven story. It is not so much about plot.

I never do roles, I play people.

In 'Poster Boys,' every character is well defined.

Grey characters don't only mean broody characters. A totally smitten lover boy can be equally grey if written that way.