Citatepedia^®.com

In a way, the characters often do take over.

quote by Margaret Mahy
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Loveable Characters

I long for the streets but the Lord knoweth best,
For there I am never a saint;
There are lovable characters out in the West,
With humour heroic and quaint;
And, be it Up Country, or be it Out Back,
When I shall have gone to my Home,
I trust to be buried 'twixt River and Track
Where my lovable characters roam.

There are lovable characters drag through the scrub,
Where the Optimist ever prevails;
There are lovable characters hang round the pub,
There are lovable jokers at sales
Where the auctioneer's one of the lovable wags
(Maybe from his "order" estranged),
And the beer is on tap, and the pigs in the bags
Of the purchasing cockies are changed.

There were lovable characters out in the West,
Of fifty hot summers, or more,
Who could not be proved, when it came to the test,
Too old to be sent to the war;
They were all forty-five and were orphans, they said,
With no one to keep them, or keep;
And mostly in France, with the world's bravest dead,
Those lovable characters sleep.

I long for the streets, but the Lord knoweth best,
For there I am never a saint;
There are lovable characters out in the West,
With humour heroic and quaint;
And, be it Up Country, or be it Out Back,
When I shall have gone to my Home,
I trust to be buried 'twixt River and Track
Where my lovable characters roam.

poem by Henry Lawson
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

A Mirror Image

How many times when reading a book,
do we identify with the characters within?
Their traits they have we share,
their loves and heartaches
their lives go through somehow mirror our own.
It’s as if the author was writing about us.
As though he has put us under a microscope
and then writing down everything, he saw.
However, we know this isn’t so
because he or she has written
segments of their own life
and by accident they happen to mirror ours.
Every writer will tell you
that they have their characters under control.
Having written numerous novels,
I know the characters take on a life of their own
and do what they want to do.
We become their instrument as they guide us on our way.
We end up writing what they want us to say.
To every writer his characters are real,
they live, breathe and feel.
The more you write about them,
the more alive they become.
So the next time you pick up a book
and the characters seem real,
they probably are to the author
who looks after them.

24 September 2008

poem by David Harris
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Character is something you forge for yourself; temperament is something you are born with and can only slightly modify. Some people have easy temperaments and weak characters; others have difficult temperaments and strong characters. We are all prone to confuse the two in assessing people we associate with. Those with easy temperaments and weak characters are more likable than admirable; those with difficult temperaments and strong characters are more admirable than likable. Of course, the optimum for a person is to possess both an easy temperament and a strong character, but this is a rare combination, and few of us are that lucky.

quote by Sydney J. Harris
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Cinematic

It's a strange task to put something down in ink
The things worth saying
Are the things that can't be said- I think
The songs that mean something to sing
Are beyond words above language
The kind you can't directly engage
All this to say what I now say
Is worth saying, worth it to me

When I write a movie script
There's something about me
That becomes
Invested
Inserted
Infused
Into my characters, it's a feeling that is foreign
For I feel what they feel and not what I fell
And yet their person flows from who I am, closer than kin
Simultaneously their emotions are born of mine
As their emotions are born in me.
It's not quite as if I see what they see
And yet they are me, more than just a sign
Of something I feel, something I thought
They're a piece of myself that I brought
To fictional life with words that don't
Describe all that they are, nor all I am
Sometimes it feels like their identity hits me, unplanned
But then there's the sense it was always there
Was always here
Was always me-

Some characters scare me
Are they all pieces of myself?
Are they all mine? If they're mine are they me?
Do I have that darkness? Their darkness?
That light? Their light?
That hope? Their hope?
That despair? Their despair?
That love? Their love?
That hate? Their hate?
Is everyone so attached to their characters?
I feel their pain it makes me cry
I cry real tears in fake dreams
Fake stories with fake screams
If it's all so fake, then why?
So close, so near, and when they die...
Do I lose them? Do they live forever
Without ever living or do they die and
Pass away? Am I allowed to wonder such things, allowed to ponder?
One thing I know

[...] Read more

poem by David Knox
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

I think it's definitely beneficial for these characters to have good acting voices behind them and it affects the characters in a way that people can feel like they're part of the game and that they know these characters.

quote by Tara Strong
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

It's a funny show. The characters are surprisingly likable, given how ugly they are. We've got this huge cast of characters that we can move around. And over the last few seasons, we've explored some of the secondary characters' personal lives a bit more.

quote by Matt Groening
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Part of the success of the show is that the audience sees themselves in the characters, becomes the characters. The more they inhabit the characters, the more they see.

quote by Bebe Neuwirth
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

My characters surprise me constantly. My characters are like my friends - I can give them advice, but they don't have to take it. If your characters are real, then they surprise you, just like real people.

quote by Laurell K. Hamilton
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

A Victorian Superstar

A literary genius was born this day
Charles John Huffam Dickens was he
two hundred years ago in 1812
he wrote great classics like Nicholas Nickleby.
Writing by candlelight using quill and ink
he created stories that will never end
great characters like Oliver Twist and Scrooge
and novels such as Little Dorrit and Our Mutual Friend.
On his shoulder perched Grip his pet Raven
at his feet his dog Timber Doodle would sit
as Dickens wrote for hours and hours
about the exploits of Edwin Drood and Martin Chuzzlewit.
If he was alive today he'd be bigger than Elvis
then again he was way ahead of his time
living in the harsh Victorian era
he would write about corruption, poverty, and crime.
He liked to give his characters wacky names
inspired by people on the streets and in the pub
like Jerry Cruncher, Mr Fang, Horatio Fizkin,
Toby Crackit, Mrs Spittletoes, and Gabriel Grub.
So happy birthday Mr Dickens and many thanks
for your great books and characters full of fun
these novels are still being enjoyed today
so long live A Christmas Carol and Dombey and Son.

Charles Dickens born 7th of February 1812.

poem by Kevin Halls
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Rainbow Of The Character Game

Stomach is a special vocational training.
Kitchen is a special stomach show case.
Asking the participants to judge its usefulness reflecting on the needs-based game
Is it a game of characters in time of confused truths
The scene of how- might- characters- be -shaped- and- modified will be
The rainbow of the games characters are animated alive on the screens.

Augusto Boal's 'The Rainbow of Desire' is not a new game anymore but the rainbow of the character games are truths in the theatricality of the world on the changing stage.

poem by Nyein Way
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Hudibras: Part 3 - Canto II

THE ARGUMENT

The Saints engage in fierce Contests
About their Carnal interests;
To share their sacrilegious Preys,
According to their Rates of Grace;
Their various Frenzies to reform,
When Cromwel left them in a Storm
Till, in th' Effigy of Rumps, the Rabble
Burns all their Grandees of the Cabal.

THE learned write, an insect breeze
Is but a mungrel prince of bees,
That falls before a storm on cows,
And stings the founders of his house;
From whose corrupted flesh that breed
Of vermin did at first proceed.
So e're the storm of war broke out,
Religion spawn'd a various rout
Of petulant Capricious sects,
The maggots of corrupted texts,
That first run all religion down,
And after ev'ry swarm its own.
For as the Persian Magi once
Upon their mothers got their sons,
That were incapable t' enjoy
That empire any other way;
So PRESBYTER begot the other
Upon the good old Cause, his mother,
Then bore then like the Devil's dam,
Whose son and husband are the same.
And yet no nat'ral tie of blood
Nor int'rest for the common good
Cou'd, when their profits interfer'd,
Get quarter for each other's beard.
For when they thriv'd, they never fadg'd,
But only by the ears engag'd:
Like dogs that snarl about a bone,
And play together when they've none,
As by their truest characters,
Their constant actions, plainly appears.
Rebellion now began, for lack
Of zeal and plunders to grow slack;
The Cause and covenant to lessen,
And Providence to b' out of season:
For now there was no more to purchase
O' th' King's Revenue, and the Churches,
But all divided, shar'd, and gone,
That us'd to urge the Brethren on;
Which forc'd the stubborn'st for the Cause,

[...] Read more

poem by Samuel Butler
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Politics Of Revelation Spinning Truth

down under in the lands of the kiwi and the kangaroo
wise men and women well do know an unwritten rule;
not to speak about 'religion or politics' in their pubs
where alcohol and tempers do met opinion rue speaks;
as alcohol freely flows intolerant fists can soon snow

truth can freely flow in literature in any characters wise
or characters unsavoury who may speak at wrong times;
policy of William Shakespeare is sometimes best used
prime characters timely tell truth exempt of retributions;
is the fool, a touchstone for truth, but even the fool must

think wisely use clever disguises in wise speech discretion
an insane King Lear is most useful in proving how foolish;
use of power in state political decisions threatens nations
unpopular truths have repercussions many including class;
types of beheadings in diverse forms suiting social justice

people in mass are ignorant if we live in clone societies
media is controlled half truths lies are policy in politics;
in big business truth wears political spin public masks
truth can be found more easily in biting political satire;
comic books cartoons code truth with exquisite flavours

truth is often hidden manipulated in silky webs of words
con artists may suffer consequences the long arm of law;
or purchase immunity get out of jail exemption from law
crimes of rich include vast fraud premeditated schemes;
white collar crime rare serves time like petty cash crimes

quality publications tell more truth than sensation tabloids
legalize law field jargon players spot kick truth for profit;
constitutions laws crafted for protection benefit of society
are swift circumvented by corporations tipping politicians;
good will is party contribution purchased back both parties

intelligence behind truth attempts to avoid conflict balance
society cultural interactions maintain restore world order;
problem is conflict reaps easy unjust rewards cheap spoils
major powers have region spheres of influence third world;
to reap politically redefined as developing world resources

bad grammar is believing rights of pawn countries count
balance of power was established to protect empire aims;
stirring up divide conquer conflicts carving up new spoils
is appealing feast option popular in reshaping world maps;
war is diplomacy by other means deception reaps rewards

research history working out pivotal defining moments
remember real truth is buried with shovels bulldozers;

[...] Read more

poem by Terence George Craddock
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Chatterton's Will

Burgum, I thank thee, thou hast let me see
That Bristol has impress'd her stamp on thee,
Thy generous spirit emulates the Mayor's,
Thy generous spirit with thy Bristol's pairs.
Gods! what would Burgum give to get a name,
And snatch his blundering dialect from shame!
What would he give, to hand his memory down
To time's remotest boundary?--A Crown.
Catcott, for thee, I know thy heart is good,
But ah! thy merit's seldom understood;
Too bigoted to whimsies, which thy youth
Received to venerate as Gospel truth,
Thy friendship never could be so dear to me,
Since all I am is opposite to thee.
If ever obligated to thy purse,
Rowley discharges all-- my first chief curse!
For had I never known the antique lore,
I ne'er had ventured from my peaceful shore,
To be the wreck of promises and hopes,
A Boy of Learning, and a Bard of Tropes;
But happy in my humble sphere had moved,
Untroubled, unsuspected, unbelov'd.
To Barrett next, he has my thanks sincere,
For all the little knowledge I had here.
But what was knowledge? Could it here succeed
When scarcely twenty in the town can read?
Could knowledge bring in interest to maintain
The wild expenses of a Poet's brain;
Disinterested Burgum never meant
To take my knowledge for his gain per cent.
When wildly squand'ring ev'ry thing I got,
On books and learning, and the Lord knows what,
Could Burgum then, my critic, patron, friend!
Without security attempt to lend?
No, that would be imprudent in the man;
Accuse him of imprudence if you can.
He promis'd, I confess, and seem'd sincere;
Few keep an honorary promise here.
I thank thee, Barrett-- thy advice was right,
But 'twas ordain'd by fate that I should write.
Spite of the prudence of this prudent place,
I wrote my mind, nor hid the author's face.
Harris ere long, when reeking from the press,
My numbers make his self-importance less,
Will wrinkle up his face, and damn the day,
And drag my body to the triple way--

This is the last Will and Testament of me, Thomas Chatterton, of the city of Bristol; being sound in body, or it is the fault of my last surgeon: the soundness of my mind, the coroner and jury are to be the judges of, desiring them to take notice, that the most perfect masters of human nature in Bristol distinguish me by the title of Mad Genius; therefore, if I do a mad action, it is conformable to every action of my life, which is all savoured of insanity.

[...] Read more

poem by Thomas Chatterton
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Daily Soaps

The new trend on television,
Are daily soaps overflowing with confusion,
Though the story does not have any head or tail,
They are the favorites amongst the females,
They are filled with unnecessary twist, turns and slopes,
Yet people watch these unrealistic daily soaps.

To watch them people are ready to miss a meal or two,
As they love the entry of new characters out of the blue,
They enjoy watching those characters change their faces & names,
Because for them plastic-surgery is just a game.

To make any stupid daily soap a big hit,
A brainless cast will be just fit for it,
We will need a fresh heroine a bit funny in the head,
And then a tablespoon of a spicy vamp totally covered in red,
A sweet ‘n’ salty chatter-box who can be a male or a female,
And a cup of new characters always ready to jump in the tale,
A properly sliced good looking hero and a villain bad tempered,
Quite dangerous and just not to be tampered,
Now we need to add just one last thing,
A perfect mixture of ‘Saas-Bahu-Sautan’ as seasoning,

If you’re ready with a plate of this dish,
No other producer can beat you no matter how big is the fish,
I wonder how people can write stories like these,
And people act them out with such ease.

poem by Srishti Mohapatra
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Joseph's Gloss On God

When Joseph tells his brothers: “I
am not God, ” he perhaps implies
that unlike God he sometimes lies,
and unlike Him, is doomed to die.

The words that Joseph never said
are wrong, as we find out when burned;
God often lies, a lesson learned
from history, and God is dead.

Inspired by a review by Paul Buhle of R. Crumb’s The Whole Book of Genesis, in Forward, October 10,2009 (“In the Image of God: The Ambition of R. Crumb’s Graphic Genesis”:

To say this book is a remarkable volume or even a landmark volume in comic art is somewhat of an understatement. It doesn’t hurt that excerpts of the book appeared during the summer in the New Yorker and that the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles is opening an exhibit of the original drawings from which the book’s contents were adapted. “The Book of Genesis, ” Robert Crumb’s version, nevertheless stands on its own as one of this century’s most ambitious artistic adaptations of the West’s oldest continuously told story.
No comic artist has been more influential than Crumb. In terms of sales, his work is dwarfed by the superheroes and, in comic art prestige. Art Spiegelman, and a short list of others including Alison Bechdel and Marjane Sartrapi may have displaced Crumb. But Crumb’s influence abides and endures in his occasional LP/CD covers, in his volumes of collected work (16 volumes so far and counting) , his artistic prizes and a generation of artists who have incorporated his particular view of humanity.
Surprisingly, his best work in 20 years has actually been in the genre of adaptation, specifically an adaptation of Franz Kafka, dating to the mid 1990s. On that highly curious point, any consideration of this “Genesis, ” as a highly personal comic art, properly begins. Notoriously, Crumb is a gentile who fled from his deeply dysfunctional Delaware family to the Cleveland neighborhood of Harvey Pekar and the arms of the first of two Jewish wives. “Crumb, ” the 1994 film documentary, was in many ways about emotional pain (including a brother doomed to suicide) and his craving for a certain kind of woman, who, although possibly any female with a bemuscled backside, was in fact most likely to be Jewish. She, reality and image, was his consolation. The strips that he drew of Jewish-American life, nevertheless, reworked stereotypes, some funny (he visits Florida with his second wife, and holds a tiny grandfather on his knee) , and some, doubtless, insulting to many readers.
In the pages of “Introducing Kafka, ” Crumb became his fictional protagonist with such depth of insight into the logic of the doomed writer, as well as of Kafka’s famed works, that many readers were simply astonished, this reviewer among them. Kafka is the exemplar par excellence of a type of ambiguous, tortured mittel European Jewish personality as it hovered between faith and uncertainty, shortly before the Holocaust. Not Spiegelman, not Ben Katchor, nor Sharon Rudahl, nor others who drew historical or quasi-historical strips about Jewish history, had taken the characterization as far as Crumb. An earlier escape from Middle American culture had propelled Crumb toward his satirical protagonist Mister Natural, a Zen-like, robed quasi-prophet of the 1970s-80s. Three decades later, Crumb’s robed prophets are far from Zen.
Crumb’s “Genesis” is then perfectly serious and the author wants us to know it. As he says on the cover, “Nothing Left Out! ” Every “beget” from the King James Bible can be found here, along with plenty of scenes censored from previous graphic adaptations. And more prose, in the final “Commentary” segment of the book, than non-writer Crumb may have put on the page anywhere, aside from his published letters. More striking for anyone but the seasoned Crumb fan: unlike previous Biblical comic adaptations, including some published and drawn by Jews, Crumb’s characters actually look Jewish, the women even more than the men. The contrast to the classic work, EC Comics’ “Picture Stories from the Bible” (1945) in that respect is most illuminating. But more recent works like the best-selling “Manga Bible” (2000) are not much different (nor was the “The Wolverton Bible” by one of the strangest of comic artists Basil Wolverton) . Close readers will see Crumb’s wife Aline Kominsky, to whom the book is dedicated, again and again, in various guises; perhaps only Chagall drew his beloved wife so often and with such varied imagination.
Not only are the characters Jewish here, they are all ages and sizes. If, for instance, there are more drawings of Jewish elders in any single volume of comic art anywhere, I have never seen them. The women here are beautiful when young, heavily busted with large, muscular thighs. The men are strong, their beards full and noble. The deity has a really big beard and retains his notoriously bad temper, as well as his commanding presence, and absolute demand for loyalty. The animals of Genesis (in Noah’s ark and elsewhere) may be where Crumb is most similar to earlier comic art adaptations of Biblical texts, but they are drawn, like everything else, with such loving care that they are special and demand repeated viewing.
In those extensive notes at the end, Crumb comes as close as he is ever likely to revealing the sources and depth of his commitment to the text. He had been puzzling, no doubt under a wave of feminist criticism, about the gender struggle, until Torah scholar Savina Teubel’s “Sarah the Priestess” (1984) gave him new insight: a matriarchal background, female deities and actual female power, in a society turning toward patriarchy but retaining some elements of women’s prehistorical strength and centrality to the direction of early civilization. If anything is reinterpreted purposefully in “Genesis, ” it is in gender, and Crumb does so not by scoring points but by rearranging the visual subtext. Gender issues also help him reframe somewhat the class dimension of tribal society, which endures not through brute force but because of the strength of its women.
The commentary on his visual choices and his broader interpretations explores and explains his few intentional deviations, not only in the name of narrative clarity but artistic intent. Mainly, his notes drive home how he struggled to interpret the text in suitable graphic form, chapter by chapter, sometimes even character by character. There is no doubting the artist’s integrity or hard work, in no small part because he redrew again and again, trying to find historically accurate clothing and scenery. The Old Testament of cinematic Charlton Heston, so to speak, became the Genesis of lived and perceived experience, socially real and super-real. Clues are provided with translations of specific Hebrew names within the visual text, essentially metaphorical in meaning. These clues may be the closest to footnotes that Crumb has ever provided.
Comics scholar Jeet Heer, has noted in “Bookforum” that Crumb’s biblical characters, with the exception of the deity, have no internal lives: only the deity has depth and personality. As with the original text, much more is implied in Crumb’s visual text than can be stated, because scenes rush by so fast and because the artist forever works out, pen or brush in hand, a unique meaning that escapes easy interpretation. Even closer to the mark, Heer argues that above all, this is a book about bodies, the natural expression of an artist whose work has, possibly more than any other master of comic art, been concerned with body structure and expression.
And offending the deity? Crumb treads with a caution all the more remarkable for an artist, who, short decades ago, allowed himself the full run of his imagination, heedless of the consequences. Crumb’s innovation might be summed up in his characterization of Joseph, brilliant in subjugating Egypt but weary of his own powers. In the final phrases of the book, the artist suggests a radical view several thousand years previous to Jewish Karl Marx. “In the very last chapter, when his obstreperous brothers fling themselves at this feet and proclaim, ‘Here we are, your slaves, ’ he says to them, “I am not God, am I’ Joseph has learned a much finer humility than the fear-driven kind shown by his barbaric brothers.” So says a humble Crumb.

10/22/09

poem by Gershon Hepner
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Believer's Jointure : Chapter II.

Containing the Marks and Characters of the Believer in Christ; together with some further privileges and grounds of comfort to the Saints.

Sect. I.

Doubting Believers called to examine, by marks drawn from their love to Him and his presence, their view of his glory, and their being emptied of Self-Righteousness, &c.

Good news! but, says the drooping bride,
Ah! what's all this to me?
Thou doubt'st thy right, when shadows hide
Thy Husband's face from thee.

Though sin and guilt thy spirit faints,
And trembling fears thy fate;
But harbour not thy groundless plaints,
Thy Husband's advent wait.

Thou sobb'st, 'O were I sure he's mine,
This would give glad'ning ease;'
And say'st, Though wants and woes combine,
Thy Husband would thee please.

But up and down, and seldom clear,
Inclos'd with hellish routs;
Yet yield thou not, nor foster fear:
Thy Husband hates thy doubts.

Thy cries and tears may slighted seem,
And barr'd from present ease;
Yet blame thyself, but never dream
Thy Husband's ill to please.

Thy jealous unbelieving heart
Still droops, and knows not why;
Then prove thyself to ease thy smart,
Thy Husband bids the try.

The following questions put to the
As scripture-marks, may tell
And shew, what'er thy failings be,
Thy Husband loves thee well.

MARKS.

Art thou content when he's away?
Can earth allay thy pants?
If conscience witness, won't it say,
Thy Husband's all thou wants?

[...] Read more

poem by Ralph Erskine
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Unseen Academicals- 22/11/09

Pratchett’s Unseen Academicals was a
joy from beginning to end, the author is
a prince among men

Ridiculed fashion items like six-inch
stiletto heels and all kinds of bling,
empty-headed models

Remunerated exorbitantly for glittering
while toiling labourers doing necessary
things are paid next-to-nothing

Pratchett’s depiction of the Discworld
is bathed in a golden light of happiness
everybody joyously engaged

In activities normally depicted as unmitigated
Misery; does Pratchett realize how much the
positive attitude of his main characters

Contrast with his cynical omnipresent narrator
perspective, does he see the juxtaposition
between two aspects

His protagonists acting with integrity and his blasé
narrative voice, the dualism must cause a war
in his mind – verily, I suspect

That is happening at present, while Pratchett is
telling a world-weary tale of human nature, his
characters are presenting a morality play

He cannot subdue them, cannot force decadence
on his characters, they are whiter than snow –
how much does this irk him?

I would love to know...

Terry Pratchett ‘Unseen Academicals’ Doubleday 2009

poem by Margaret Alice
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

I have friends, African American actors, who've had more of a struggle; hopefully they're starting to see some air and light now. But in my directing career, in my acting career, in my producing career, I haven't been bound by a lot of limitations. When I first started doing these kinds of unique characters, these diverse characters, there was hardly anybody doing them. So I had this open road.

quote by Forest Whitaker
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

I think that there's an awakening inside of me really honestly, and I honestly believe that the best work of my life is about to happen. I'm finding a balance in myself as an artist from the external and the internal, and so as a result the characters I play are going to be quite different. So what's going to happen is that it's going to lift up the characters I play, we're going to start to see it and I think it's going to change the face of my career.

quote by Forest Whitaker
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

People say that to me and I think what unites all my characters is that they are hurt; it's most accurate to say I play characters that are hurt but are responding to their environment.

quote by Ashley Judd
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!