Don’t say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.

In fairy tales the bad guy is very easy to spot. The bad guy is always wearing a black cape so you always know who he is.

You will always have partial points of view, and you’ll always have the story behind the story that hasn’t come out yet. And any form of journalism you’re involved with is going to be up against a biased viewpoint and partial knowledge.

No amount of ability is of the slightest avail without honor.

A reader can never tell if it’s a real thimble or an imaginary thimble, because by the time you’re reading it, they’re the same. It’s a thimble. It’s in the book.

When I start to write, I don’t have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.

I love stories about women.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.

You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That’s what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.

You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author’s world.

I loved writing for kids, I loved talking to children about what I’d written, I don’t want to leave that behind.

At first, I was scared to show fear because you can never be sure how people will perceive you. But I dared myself to do that, to stand out. Now I’ll talk about being beaten up or robbed or making a stupid decision because of a girl or whatever.

Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness. People are just people, and all people have faults and shortcomings, but all of us are born with a basic goodness.

I’m never a reliable narrator, unbiased or objective.

A man’s character is his fate.

A man is great by deeds, not by birth.

I wouldn’t put myself forward to do a film like ‚Changeling‘ if I thought I couldn’t pull people into a story because of all the other ways people see me.

We grow older, but we do not change. We become more sophisticated, but at bottom we continue to resemble our young selves, eager to listen to the next story and the next, and the next.

You see, the interesting thing about books, as opposed, say, to films, is that it’s always just one person encountering the book, it’s not an audience, it’s one to one.

All cartoon characters and fables must be exaggeration, caricatures. It is the very nature of fantasy and fable.

They’ve got this crazy actor who’s 82 years old up there in a suit. I was a mayor, and they’re probably thinking I know how to give a speech, but even when I was mayor I never gave speeches. I gave talks.

Every hero becomes a bore at last.

These are all personal crises, I’m sure, that I manifest in a song format and project into physical situations. You make little stories up about how you feel. It’s as simple as that.

Every man’s reputation proceeds from those of his own household.

I can tell you all kinds of moral tales, but fashion and reality are vaguely different.

You see something, then it clicks with something else, and it will make a story. But you never know when it’s going to happen.

Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.

Character is destiny.

I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.

There should be a point to movies. Sure, you’re giving people a diversion from the cold world for a bit, but at the same time, you pass on some facts and rules and maybe a little bit of wisdom.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

I really haven’t had that exciting of a life. There are a lot of things I wish I would have done, instead of just sitting around and complaining about having a boring life. So I pretty much like to make it up. I’d rather tell a story about somebody else.

One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man’s laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man.

Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.

A properly balanced story provides an equal representation of the negative and positive attributes of, I could say the world, but it’s actually a being. ‚Harry Potter“s a good example. So Harry’s the hero, right. But he’s tainted with evil. There’s a dark and a light in every bit of that narrative. It’s well balanced.

Character is expressed through our behavior patterns, or natural responses to things.

‚Thursday‘ is a conceptual album. Whatever that situation was, I spent the whole album focusing on that situation.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

I don’t think the relationship between novels and realities are one to one. Of course novels play different roles. It’s essentially just a long narrative form. What you use that long narrative form for can be very different.

Dreams are the touchstones of our character.

On one occasion, I accompanied my father to Pinares de Mayari. I was eight or nine years old. How he enjoyed talking when he left the house in Biran! There he was the proprietor of the land where sugar cane, pasture, and other agricultural crops were planted.

There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.

I love to watch videos, and I’ve always liked to film and take pictures. I have an eye for really weird things that nobody thinks about. I used to make little movies about myself and then edit them on iMovie.

Today we affirm a new commitment to live out our nation’s promise through civility, courage, compassion and character.

All of my songs are autobiographical.

You’ve all seen over the last eight years what President Obama means to this country. He is the embodiment of honor, resolve, and character – one of the finest presidents we have ever had.

I have definitely been curious and involved in the process; even as a young actor. I was always looking at where the camera was, what story it was telling. And as my experience grew, I wanted to know even more.

Not always actions show the man; we find who does a kindness is not therefore kind.

Music helps me tell my story. That’s where I can really be heard. But there’s so much focus on the things that aren’t music.

I believe the first test of a truly great man is in his humility.

Digital technology allows us a much larger scope to tell stories that were pretty much the grounds of the literary media.

For ‚Hercules,‘ I went for the demigod look: big and mean. When you’re playing a character like the son of Zeus, you only get one shot.

I deserve respect for the things I did not do.

Love is the answer to everything. It’s the only reason to do anything. If you don’t write stories you love, you’ll never make it. If you don’t write stories that other people love, you’ll never make it.

Human beings need stories, and we’re looking for them in all kinds of places; whether it’s television, whether it’s comic books or movies, radio plays, whatever form, people are hungry for stories.

By a lie, a man… annihilates his dignity as a man.

With action films, it’s great if it’s not just driven by action, but by a good story and interesting characters, as well. Though, there’s nothin‘ like kicking butt!

The willow which bends to the tempest, often escapes better than the oak which resists it; and so in great calamities, it sometimes happens that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier character.

When I meet people who say – which they do all of the time – ‚I must just tell you, my great aunt had cancer of the elbow and the doctors gave her 10 seconds to live, but last I heard she was climbing Mount Everest,‘ and so forth, I switch off quite early.

Objects in pictures should so be arranged as by their very position to tell their own story.