We are like travellers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs. Whilst we see that it always stands ready to clothe what we would say, we cannot avoid the question whether the characters are not significant of themselves.
So long as the spectator has to figure out the meaning of this or that person, or the presuppositions of this or that conflict of inclinations and purposes, he cannot become completely absorbed in the activities and sufferings of the chief characters or feel breathless pity and fear.
I don't know where the characters are going to go or what's going to happen. I know that something inevitable will happen. I know that they want certain things and they're in a certain room and they smell like this and they look like that. More often than not, an entropy creeps in that strangles me, and then the inevitable happens. I don't know if I have the ability to write an ending like My Fair Lady's, when everyone gets what they want after a few minor conflicts. If I tried to write that it would just be false. Or I'd have someone enter with a machine gun.
I think the least stereotypical gay character on television is probably Matt LeBlanc on Episodes. He just plays it so straight-faced. They never talk about the fact that he's such a huge gay person.
Learning to stand in somebody else's shoes, to see through their eyes, that's how peace begins. And it's up to you to make that happen. Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world.
Some men are born to own, and can animate all their possessions. Others cannot: their owning is not graceful; seems to be a compromise of their character: they seem to steal their own dividends.
I get the impression from some people that unless they get direct access to characters' thoughts and realizations, either through thought balloons or narrations or some sort of showy action, then those thoughts and realizations never existed.
May I ask you what these questions tend?' 'Merely to the illustration of your character,' said she, endeavouring to shake off her gravity. 'I am trying to make it out.' 'And what is your success?' She shook her head. 'I do not get on at all. I hear such different accounts of you as puzzle me exceedingly.
It is always a practical difficulty with clubs to regulate the laws of election so as to exclude peremptorily every social nuisance. Nobody wishes bad manners. We must have loyalty and character.
One trait in the philosopher's character we can assume is his love of the knowledge that reveals eternal reality, the realm unaffected by change and decay. He is in love with the whole of that reality, and will not willingly be deprived even of the most insignificant fragment of it - just like the lovers and men of ambition we described earlier on.
We should strive to welcome change and challenges, because they are what help us grow. With out them we grow weak like the Eloi in comfort and security. We need to constantly be challenging ourselves in order to strengthen our character and increase our intelligence.