Ray McKinnon Quotes

In terms of the character itself, I can't really say that I find anything really difficult. I enjoy the character so much I don't perceive difficulty in trying to be him. It's just a matter of how do we get there.

I just love to be able to actually build a character.

I started improvising the Cliff character, based on someone I grew up with.

I think the idea of creating a character from scratch, one that has not been done in a novel or an existing story, is immensely exciting, terrifying and ultimately rewarding.

I don't really set out to explore grand themes. I set out to tell a story. And one I have to be able to imagine right through.

Writing fiction is... an endless and always defeated effort to capture some quality of life without killing it.

The interesting thing is, when you play a real-life character or someone based in a book, you always come up against people's preconceptions of what they have in their heads.

Acting is contained - you act for three months, then leave it - but writing is the act of creation. Writing is dangerous.

Before 'The Walking Dead,' a few of the jobs before that were just like, 'Ugh.' I try and make everything as creative as possible, even when I get the script and can't imagine what I'm going to do with it.

To be able to be a good actress and portray other people's stories, you have to be true to yourself.

As Laurel Van Ness it's so much fun, and with that comes a creative outlet. You can be who you wanna be and be that particular character. I'm so thankful that Impact allows me to do that.

In all my characters, I try to find an iota of myself, and in Castle, I found a lot. He gets away with a lot, so that's fun.

What interests me in writing a novel is taking really remote voices, characters, and stories and beginning to create some kind of web.

The interesting thing about fiction from a writer's standpoint is that the characters come to life within you. And yet who are they and where are they? They seem to have as much or more vitality and complexity as the people around you.

Nobody should expect an actor to have these wonderful ideas and concepts about the world: they pretend to be other people for a living.

When I'm painting and drawing I only do people. Acting is obviously portraiture - and writing is as well.

I shoot people in a way that makes the audience feel equal to them. And it's hard to express and it's hard to execute but I think it works on every level - the choice of the material the choice of the actor, my relationship with the actor, and so on.

Being a novelist is the adult version of a kid creating a make-believe world. But unlike a child, a writer of fiction has to come up with a structured story, one that has as much meaning for others as it has for her.

As an actor, our very palette is one of imagination. So it is a walk onto an empty space and then imagine the world beyond it is what we do.

I had to focus and create a character in Bagger Vance, not just do my 'Will Smith' thing and get paid.

One of the things about acting is it allows you to live other people's lives without having to pay the price.

I like to build a character, trying to stretch my imagination as far to the walls of my brain as I can to come up with something that feels truthful and feels real - as close to the skin as I can get it.

I find it easier to play someone who is so far from me because you create someone - you build this person based on the story and the script, with the director.

My characters are fictional. I get ideas from real people, sometimes, but my characters always exist only in my head.

I normally write in the first person, and my narrators are as real to me as any of the people I have worked with. They live and breathe in my imagination.