Philip Kitcher Quotes

I think my very earliest stories were all intellectual exercises and I was writing from experiences I had never had about characters who were about an inch deep.

There is a curious thing that happens with the passage of time: a calcification of character... Change isn't always for the worst; the shell that forms around a piece of sand looks to some people like an irritation, and to others, like a pearl.

I think there's a false division people sometimes make in describing literary novels, where there are people who write systems novels, or novels of ideas, and there are people who write about emotional things in which the movement is character driven. But no good novels are divisible in that way.

Maybe I'm perverse, but the question of "rooting" for a character, or setting out to write a character for whom other people will root, has never had anything to do with why I read or write fiction. As long as the writing and story remain alive, intense, invigorating, provoking, the characters can be as demonic or saintly as the author wants.

I suppose that the sympathetic/unsympathetic debate about characters sometimes feels to me like a misstatement of purpose. I always think of truly complex characters are falling between the cracks in that debate.

Ultimately, all characters have some negative and positive energies. That's just how I see it. I didn't go out looking for negative characters; I went out looking for people who have a struggle and a fight to tackle. That's what interests me.

To say that Agatha Christie’s characters are cardboard cut-outs is an insult to cardboard cut-outs.

We're in a freefall into future. We don't know where we're going. Things are changing so fast, and always when you're going through a long tunnel, anxiety comes along. And all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a voluntary act. It's a very interesting shift of perspective and that's all it is... joyful participation in the sorrows and everything changes.

In the movie, you have to decide as an actor how you are going to give a character presence. You can't really move, walk, and talk like yourself. This creates something so you have to find something "other".

People say to me 'You've changed.' and I say 'Haven't you?' People change, it's just life.

I love my job. It's such a privilege to be able to play such complicated characters. Growing up, I wanted to be a billion different things. I realized in order for that to happen, I don't have to be them all because the characters I want to play require such research and such a transformation to make that work - that's something that I love doing.

Characters must not brood too long. They must not waste time running up and down ladders in their own insides.

There are lots of authentic, moving characters in so-called systems novels, just as there are certainly deep structural ideas in some character-driven novels.

When it comes to thinking about how a character talks, there are literary and language considerations. For actors to be able to differentiate between themselves and the characters they are playing while at the same time remain in character and spontaneous requires a sophisticated combination of skills and spirit.

You're always choosing the start point and the end point. And almost by definition, the most interesting period is where something happens, as a result of which something is different at the end. And so to me, the idea that you know everything about a character at the beginning is sort of ridiculous. Something has to be revealed. I like it when the deeper you go with the character, the more you see the layers start to peel away. It's more challenging to me, but it's also just interesting. Those are the things I like to watch. I like to watch the evolutions of something.

I have done scenes as Harvey Two-Face. It's interesting. I won't tell you exactly what we're going for, but I think that I can say that it will use all of today's technology to create this character. He's going to be interesting, and I think that's what makes this character important in the movie-you get to see him as he was before, as in the comic books. Harvey is a very good guy in the comic books. He's judicious. He cares. He's passionate about what he loves and then he turns into this character. So you will see that in this film.

I think the business of writing a great deal of it is the business of paying attention to your characters, to the world they live in, to the story you have to tell, but just a kind of deep attention and out of that if you pay attention properly the story will tell you what it needs.

God uses change to change us. He doesn’t use it to destroy us or to distract us, but to coax us to the next level of character, experience, compassion and destiny!

I think that the way that I write stories is by instinct. You have some basic ideas - a character, or an image, or a situation that sounds compelling - and then you just feel your way around until you find the edges of your story. It's like going into a dark room... you stumble around until you find the walls and then inch your way to the light switch.

I didn't play the Ghost Rider in the first movie. That was a stuntman. In this film, the Ghost Rider feels much more alive because I did put some thought into how he should walk and into how he should move. I was so into the character, in fact, that I would paint my face with white and black makeup to look like a skull. And I put on blacked-out contact lenses, so I almost looked like an Afro-New Orleanian voodoo icon by the name of Baron Samedi. Oh man, I would walk around the set without saying a word to anybody, and I could see the fear in my co-stars' and co-directors' eyes.

In dramatic writing, the very essence is character change. The character at the end is not the same as he was at the beginning. He's changed-psychologically, maybe even physically.

You don't read Gatsby, I said, to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how complicated issues such as adultery and fidelity and marriage are. A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil.

Flora, always tall, had grown to be very broad too, and short of breath; but that was not much. Flora, whom he had left a lily, had become a peony; but that was not much. Flora, who had seemed enchanting in all she said and thought, was diffuse and silly. That was much. Flora, who had been spoiled and artless long ago, was determined to be spoiled and artless now. That was a fatal blow.

A character is 2D, and then after I come in it becomes a 3D; it becomes alive.

The lack of predictability with television is something that's constantly changing what your perception of who you think your character is.