Main Character Quotes

I like emotional horror. I don’t like horror movies. I hate them. But, if you can make emotional horror movies, I’m in. If I can care and root for the main character, then I’m in.

I think the character does tend to suit an episodic thing, because what’s fun about him is that he doesn’t care about anyone else, and it’s very difficult for a main character – a lead character – in a movie to not care about anybody else.

I’m often asked where my nickname ‘Kun’ comes from. My parents says it was a Japanese cartoon I used to watch on television when I was very young, set in the Stone Age, where the main character was a boy called Kum Kum, the little caveman.

When I work on a movie, I look at the script or watch the film, and I talk to my director or producers and make a plan: this is our main character; we need a theme for this plot. We need a love theme.

Good comedy films, if you listen to the score, the music is not trying to be funny. It’s always, in a way, underscoring the tragedy and struggle of the main character.

My friends once told me I remind them of the main character from the American comedy series ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm.’ I thought they must mean a sunny, affable girl-next-door, but instead I was confronted with Larry David! Crabby, moody, perversely neurotic Larry David. And the thing is, my friends were right.

I would love to write a script where the main character is a woman. I know I can direct a film where the main character is a woman. I cannot write that film.

The writer must be a participant in the scene… like a film director who writes his own scripts, does his own camera work, and somehow manages to film himself in action, as the protagonist or at least the main character.

You know it’s a great story when you identify with the main character to the point that you forget you’re a spectator or a reader.

From the start I was a kid who read ‘Goosebumps‘, and that led me to Stephen King, and then I saw ‘Aliens,’ and ‘Night of the Living Dead,’ the original. And with ‘Night of the Living Dead’ I was like, ‘Oh my god, there’s a black person who’s the main character. Does anybody see that?’

My dad calls me ‘Mac‘ a lot, from ‘Mike Tyson‘s Punch Out’ – Little Mac is the main character. I was obsessed. I can still beat Mike Tyson on ‘Punch Out.’

Stories in which the player doesn’t inhabit the main character are difficult for games to handle.

I did not have a mobile phone in 1993. No one did, except the occasional banker or Hollywood star seeming smart, or the main character in ‘American Psycho.’ In 1993, every day was ‘let’s get lost.’ I could walk Greenwich Village for hours and not be found.

My dad didn’t have a formal education, but he had a wonderful vocabulary. So in ‘Harvest,’ I wanted my main character to be an innately intelligent man who would have the vocabulary to say whatever he wanted in the same way as lots of working-class people can.

Generally, if a good script comes in I read it, and if it appeals to me, it appeals to me. And it doesn’t have to be anything – it doesn’t have to be the main character, it doesn’t have to be a huge part. It could be a nice cameo – anything that I think is good and surrounded by good, enthusiastic people.

To me the interesting main character is never the one without flaws.

Allowing alternative narrative modes in popular entertainment may seem obvious, yet when you turn a pilot into the people upstairs and the main character isn’t after what she wants by the top of page two, you get treated as if you’ve failed at writing.

‘100 Bullets‘ is a novel on its own. ‘Brother Lono,’ other than the main character, has nothing to do with ‘100 Bullets.’

I’ll tell you what I really enjoy. We all go to the movies, we all watch television, we know what they’re about, how they work. When the main character is a cop or a spy, it’s very exciting, but I also very much enjoy when the main characters are nobodies – a trucker.

The big insight that I have, not so much from writing ‘Red Notice‘ but from living as the main character of ‘Red Notice’, is that Russia was and is a criminal state unlike any other sovereign country.

The same way that you are the main character of your story, you are only a secondary character in everybody else‘s story.

Doing field trips rather than simply researching online allows me to experience the story from the point of view of my main character; you can’t get that by sitting at a desk.

I like books that have razor-sharp plotting that snaps and moves along. It’s not about the main character being different at the end. I don’t want my main character to be different in the end. I still want him committed to his ideas, to be steadfast, true and loyal.

There’s a real, brutal nature to the capitalism practiced by the main character in ‘How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia.’ And I think playing dirty is certainly part of that.

I love the show ‘Billions.’ But the main character is basically a hedge fund scumbag, and he’s the hero.

I actually reached out to my agent about appearing on ‘The Good Wife.’ The main character of the show went to Georgetown and that’s where I played my college ball so there’s a small connection.

I think ‘The Searcher’ is a departure from my first because it’s less grounded in religion and is far more rooted in the mythic tradition: more of an existential thriller where the main character is actually the central mystery, and his journey is all about trying to figure himself out.

I want to push that no matter what race you are, you’re never just a sidekick or broken character. You’re the main character, you’re the funny character, you can be whatever you want.

If you’ve seen ‘Spirited Away‘, ‘Spirited Away’ is set in a very, very Japanese sensibility. And so, to Japanese audiences, when Sen would walk up, the main character, and look at this big building with a flag on it with Japanese writing on it, everyone in Japan would know what that is.

Any show that kind of relish the damage of its main character without really investigating what that damage does, where it’s from or what it means, is a show I think needs to be taken down a peg.

‘The Butler’ has virtually nothing in common with its source material, the life of White House butler Gene Allen, except for the fact that the main character of the film and Allen were both black butlers in the White House.

I basically drew my own family. My father‘s name is Homer. My mother‘s name is Margaret. I have a sister Lisa and another sister Maggie, so I drew all of them. I was going to name the main character Matt, but I didn’t think it would go over well in a pitch meeting, so I changed the name to Bart.

Whatever you perceive, you always make a story with yourself as the main character, and that dictates your life. Then when you read ‘The Four Agreements‘, you hear another voice beneath the story, the voice that comes from your integrity, your spirit.

Whenever people say they didn’t like the main character of a book, they mean they didn’t like the book. The main character has to be a friend? I don’t get that.

In 2018, according to the Children’s Cooperative Book Center at the University of Wisconsin‘s School of Education, fewer than a third of all children‘s and young adult books in the United States featured a person of color as a main character.

My first two books, I was very close to my main character, stuck inside their head. And then with ‘Arrogance,’ I broke into many different voices. I introduce many different characters, and that helped me to develop a confidence to move between different characters, between different voices.

When you are reading about a book, you focus on the main character, of course. When you have something in common with them and connect with them, you remember the lessons they learned, and then you can apply them to your life. So you can live the best life you can.

My first time playing a main character was in ‘Seventeen Years.’ It was directed by famous Sixth Generation director Zhang Yuan, but it wasn’t a large commercial film.

I was inspired to become an actor from theater I’d seen, so I assumed I’d do a lot of theater. But when I left Guidhall, the first thing I did was a short film – I played the main character. And I loved it. I love working on camera. I love the smallness of it and the detail and the routine of it.

Of course, ‘The Last Stand‘ has a villain who is traveling to the border to fulfill his own desires, but it’s more about the main character. The Sheriff putting a stop to this villain and defending his town. ‘The Last Stand’ is more about protecting something. About protecting a value.

I guess when you take a look at the book ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ I think most people always like to identify with the main character – that would be John Galt. I guess I identify with Hank Rearden, the fella that just refused until the very end to give up.

It’s really a misconception to identify the writer with the main character, given that the author creates all the characters in the book. In certain ways, I’m every character.

I don’t want to work just for the sake of working. Generally, if a good script comes in, I read it, and if it appeals to me, it appeals to me. And it doesn’t have to be anything – it doesn’t have to be the main character; it doesn’t have to be a huge part.

I’m feeling a lot of pressure because it is first time for me to cast as the main character.

There are relatively few science fiction or fantasy books with the main character being an old person.

Working on ‘Nightmare Before Christmas,’ I had endless arguments, like the studio saying, ‘You can’t have a main character that’s got no eyeballs!’ ‘How is anybody going to feel for somebody with just eyesockets?’ You know? So, it’s those kind of things that really wear you down.

It’s always scary when you’re doing a sequel to a film, because you don’t want to just repeat the first film in a different location like most sequels. You want to do something totally different, and something that actually expands the world of the main character.

It’s really exciting to get to be the main character of something.

The main character in the book is usually someone you’re identifying with because the story is being told through this person’s mind.

‘Cloud Atlas’ is for everybody. The main character in the movie is humanity.