Bille August Quotes

The movies and TV shows I like to watch tend to put their characters in situations where they have to dig deeper.

When I read a script or I see a character, I don't necessarily see the arc of her, that by the end she is this person, she's different from she was in the beginning. I guess it's more a subconscious understanding of that arc.

I care more, and I think readers do also, for characters in a state of transformation.

I think what good television does well is that it shows characters evolving.

All fiction is about people, unless it's about rabbits pretending to be people. It's all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that's what we call 'the plot'.

Although my stories are all very different on the surface, I like to write stories about characters struggling with big problems. I'm always reminded, no matter how different from me one of my characters is from me on the surface, how we're all pretty much the same underneath.

Movies are open doors, and at every door, I change character and life.

I enjoy heroines who grow and come into their own during the course of a story.

My books usually end where they began. I try to bring characters back to a point that is familiar but different because of the growth that they have gone through.

I write about the trials and triumphs of contemporary life - and often the readers see themselves between the lines of the story.

In America, the stories we tell ourselves and we tell each other in fiction have to do with individualism. Every person here is the center of his or her own story. And our job as people and as characters is to find our own motivations and desires, to overcome conflicts and obstacles toward defining ourselves so that we grow and change.

It's the journey of self, I guess. You start with this kind of loner, outside guy, which a lot of people can relate to, and he goes out into the world.

When you're telling a story, the best stories, every character has an arc. Every one. And that arc is usually about finding yourself, or about at least finding something about yourself that you didn't know.

Every single film I've done, it's about the character.

The stories that I like to tell and the movies I like are always grounded in the emotional arc of the characters.

I'm trying to make all the characters change and grow, or regress.

Plot makes the character just as history makes the man.

The function of the novel is the exploration of the human condition. Really, that's what it's all about.

I am a big proponent of character arcs that show us how people change over time.

Although a novel takes place in the larger world, there's always some drive in it that is entirely personal - even if you don't know it while you're doing it.

Characters develop as the book progresses, but any that start to bore me end up in the wastepaper basket. In real life, we may have to put up with tedious people, but not in novels.

My writing is a very authentic journey of discovery. I'm going out there to learn who I am. My readers, consequently, take the same journey as my protagonist.

You have 22 episodes to start from zero to hero; you can really take a nice, big, long arc. In a film, it's tough to do that - you only have 90 minutes.

For me, one thing I love is having an arc for a character.

When I go to the movies, I want to see a human being dealing with their lives. That's all I ask.