#characterization

I've committed to nothing...and that's just suicide...by tiny, tiny increments. ↗

— Nick Hornby

#dark-humor #fiction #personal-insight #rob-gordon #humor

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. ↗

— Alfred North Whitehead

#consists #european #footnotes #general #philosophical

An attempt to write nothing but characterization will soon bog down; I for one don't want to have somebody tell me about someone else. ↗

— Daniel Keys Moran

#attempt #characterization #down #else #i

He gave me a look of great contempt; as I supposed, for venturing, even by implication, to draw a parallel between a lack of affluence that might, literally, affect my purchase of rare vintages, and a figure of speech intended delicately to convey his own dire want for the bare necessities of life. He remained silent for several seconds, as if trying to make up his mind whether he could ever bring himself to speak to me again; and then said gruffly: 'I've got to go now. ↗

— Anthony Powell

#ironic #verbosity #wry #life

Off the bike she was like a smoker without cigarettes, never sure what to do with her hands. As soon as she got off the bike, her heart was expected to perform all these baffling secondary functions like loving someone and feeling something and belonging somewhere - when all she'd ever trained it to do was pump blood. ↗

— Chris Cleave

#cycling #training #love

Characterization is integral to the theatrical experience. ↗

— Robert Ludlum

#experience #integral #theatrical

Authors can write stories without people assuming that they are autobiographies, but songwriters and poets are often considered to be the characters in their works. I like Michelangelo's vision, 'I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. ↗

— Criss Jami

#art #artist #author #autobiography #character

Favoring 'resolution' the way we do, it is hard for us men to write great love stories. Why?, because we want to tell too much. We aren’t satisfied unless at the end of the story the characters are lying there, panting. ↗

— Roman Payne

#feminism #fiction #literary-theory #making-love #panting

The way she looks right now, you have to think about multiple car pile-ups. Imagine two bloodmobiles colliding head on. The way she looks, you'd have to think of mass graves to even log thirty seconds in the saddle. Think of spoiled cat food and ulcerated cankers and expired donor organs. That's how beautiful she looks. ↗

— Chuck Palahniuk

#beauty

Over the years I have forged intimate familial ties with these characters, who are reflections of a portion of myself. Consequently, even a character who appeared only once in a short story waits now in the wings, concealed by the curtain, for his next appearance on-stage. Not one of them has ever broken free of his familial ties with me and disappeared for ever - at least, not within the confines of my heart. ↗

— Shūsaku Endō

#characters #fiction #writing #family