Kurt Busiek Quotes

You've got to leave the reader with more than just a name and a costume - they need to know who the character is, what they're like, what kind of attitude they have, what sort of role they play.

Creating characters is like throwing together ingredients for a recipe. I take characteristics I like and dislike in real people I know, or know of, and use them to embellish and define characters.

I try to distinguish my characters from each other.

Each character, be it the antagonist or the protagonist, brings with himself his own personality... and I have tried to stay true to each one of them; each is enjoyable in their own way!

I have always argued, in a good novel, interesting things happen to interesting people.

You decide which characters you want and then do the best you can to bring their humanity to the forefront in the context that you place them in - the crises in which you've placed them.

Somebody said something really smart: It's like you end up being the defense attorney for your role. Your job is to defend their point of view. You're fighting for what they want. You learn that in acting school - it's Acting 1A: 'What do you want? What's in the way?'

It's people politics, people dynamics that make a show really good, whether it's 'Desperate Housewives' or 'Lost' or 'The Sopranos.' It's the people we've grown to love or otherwise.

Supporting characters add depth to a story, and great actors leave their imprint with the audience.

It's really about, oh come on, this guy wouldn't say that or he wouldn't do that, you know, it's about the characters, about the story, about the situation.

I also try very hard to create characters - both heroes and villains - with psychological depth.

You just play what a writer writes, in terms of what a character chooses to do and how a character chooses to deal with their various relationships.

It's exciting that you've got an entire season to experience 24 hours of highly dramatically charged human experience. It allows for the close inspection of minutiae in behaviour.

'Push' had a story, 'The Paperboy' story you could just throw up in the air and shoot holes through the book because the story wasn't as strong. But I felt the characters were stronger in 'The Paperboy'; they were vivid.

I try to create characters that I am fascinated by on some level or intrigued by or can't stand.

To create a fully formed character full of life, struggle, and humanity is tough.

I create each character as an individual, coming from a certain place, sounding a certain way, having been introduced to things a certain way.

With an interesting character, there's always something to say.

I'm interested in characters and relationships.

Variety of characters and themes bring out the best in me.

For me, any story I tackle begins with the human relationships and not the plot.

You don't want to make performances; you want to make people. When a project knows, 'Okay, my bad guys need to be a little sympathetic, and my good guys need to have a bit of a mean streak,' you're off to a good start.

I start out giving characters archetypes and parameters. Once I know the basics and have a rudimentary model, it's easier to carve unique curves and edges. It's quite easy to guess how a character is going to react if you know their background, and at a certain point, you realize you understand them personally.

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

It's always fun to layer a character, to make the character a little bit more dynamic than it is on paper.