Peter De Vries Quotes

You can't understand a character intellectually, you have to become one with its emotional core.

When I find the character, I try to spend time with them and get to know them very well. Therefore my notes are not from the character that I had in my mind before, but are instead based on the people I've met in real life.

It's easier to write about heartbreak after you've had your heart broken. You have more material to draw from, you can extrapolate from your own experiences and make reasonable assumptions about how your characters would feel and act.

Sometimes when a character in a novel is difficult for me to enter, I sue something in myself or in my own life as a doorway into that character's mind and emotions.

As an actor you bring some of your own experiences which can make things easier. You build off of it, but your imagination is always the best thing you have as far as creating things I think specifically for what that character is going through. But you're definitely drawing obviously upon things that you can connect to, and then you kind of mold the change that you're making into something that's right for the character.

I have found that the characters in my novels stay with me after a book has ended. I know them in some sense. I never map anything out. I just think until I am secure in the voice of one of them, and then let the character unfold.

When you write a character and their dialogue, you can't help imagining how you would be acting if you were them. You kind of have to relate to all of them. It's the most personal thing I've ever done.

I find the characters in my head and the more I write about them, the better I get to know them.

To be a character who feels a deep emotion, one must go into the memory's vault and mix in a sad memory from one's own life.

I feel like there are things I can relate to in every character. But I feel like when you read a script, you don't get to see the definition behind someone, you just get to read what the person goes through and find a place to come from to make it real.

I like all my characters in one way or another, or at least I understand them.

I like to explore characters who are very different to me, or varied parts are very similar to me.

As I write each new Thorne novel, I'm determined that whatever is happening plot-wise, a new layer of the onion will be peeled away and reveal something about Thorne that is surprising to me as much as anyone else. If I can remain interested in the character, then hopefully the reader will stay interested, too.

I spend a lot of time with my characters.

You've got to understand what makes the character human.

I always prefer to write songs about emotional situations and heartbreak because I like getting into the character.

As an actor, you want to be able to move your character forward into new ground, but also it's really interesting to go backwards and unpeel those layers and the interesting elements of what your character is and what informs the decisions that you make so that you can have as much meat to work with.

My job as the actress playing Hanna Schmitz, as the actress playing any part, is to understand the character, and to ultimately love the character. And I did love Hanna, absolutely, because I understood her as profoundly as I did at the end of the day.

When you are playing someone who is dealing with issues on a really personal level, if you don't bring your own issues into the equation, it's not going to feel really personal to the people watching it.

An actor knows much more about a character than the character knows about himself.

I think the two main tools actors have are the imagination of what other people have gone through, to connect with and through research, and there's one's own experience.

I separate myself from my characters as much as possible, but I have these books that I create which are interactive diaries/timelines/memory books/pictures of the character's entire world.

I always at least try to come from some sort of human place no matter how ridiculous the character is. That's really awesome. That is more the work that I'm leaning towards doing.

I choose to write characters from the inside because I feel like that's the way I'm gonna get the most honest version of them.

I would love nothing more to participate in a real struggle to find a character, and really delve into and develop a character. That's why I'm an actor.