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There are three types of actions: purposeful, habitual, and gratuitous. Characters, to be immediate and apprehensible, must be presented by all three.
--
Chapter 6 (p. 166)

 

Samuel R. Delany

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We cannot judge either of the feelings or of the characters of men with perfect accuracy from their actions or their appearance in public; it is from their careless conversations, their half-finished sentences, that we may hope with the greatest probability of success to discover their real characters.

 

Maria Edgeworth

 

Every time I do anything, I have to ask myself: Is it a good role, and is it right to do it? There may be sex or nudity or violence in the script, and then you have to say: Is it gratuitous just out to shock people? Or is it there because it has to be? If role demands it, and it isn't gratuitous, I'll do it. It's my job, after all. I'm an actress. I know what I'm capable of — it's other people who have a problem with my image, not me. I hope I can do all sorts of things, not just one type who's all sweetness and light. Unfortunately, people forget it's a role and confuse it with you.

 

Julie Andrews

 

We see that all of Islam, all of its practices & beliefs were not presented by the Prophet in the first year, but rather presented over a period of 23 years. He presented them in a gradual way. First he presented the idea of monotheism. For 3 years he added nothing to the admonition, "Say: 'God is One,' & be saved." What is the prescribed fast? pilgrimage? poor-due? These had not as yet been presented. Thus the people who accepted Islam in the first 3 years and came to believe in the oneness of God and died were possibly people who drank wine, did not perform the prescribed fast, had not performed the prescribed pilgrimage & had not participated in the struggle in God's way [jihad]. His method was to gradually present Islam. He first presented an intellectual world view.

 

Ali Shariati

 

It's a universal tendency in films to be more about sex and violence than the real world is, but I would pose the opposite question: Why are so many characters that you see on TV so desexualized? A lot of them seem to be completely asexual — especially animated characters — and it implies that those characters are normal. The characters in Aeon Flux are normal people who have normal sex lives and appetites.

 

Peter Chung

 

Unlike most wars, which make rotten fiction in themselves — all plot and no characters, or made-up characters — Vietnam seems to be the perfect mix: the characters make the war, and the war unmakes the characters. The gods, fates, furies had a relatively small hand in it. The mess was man-made, a synthetic, by think tank out of briefing session.

 

Wilfrid Sheed