Well, I don't think I've ever been a huge target for the press, and I value that to a degree, because there's a certain value for actors staying beneath the radar so they can play characters.
I don't think of my characters as people I create, I think of them more as people I have met and whom I'm exploring on the page. I don't actually think of myself as having 'created' any of these people.
My mother saw a movie when she was 14 years old. I forget the name of the movie, but one of the lead characters was named Lark. She decided then she would name me and she stuck to it, and here I am.
The man I lived with is a Christian, so I would talk to him about it. What would this person do in the Bible? What's the story around this person? Generally, when people talk about characters in the Bible, there's one thing they're known for, like Jo...
If you feel that there's the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People have a habit of identifying the author with the narrator, and you can't, obviously, be all of the narrators in all of your books, or else you'd be a very...
There's something special about racing in real streets. The 'artificial' circuits have a certain sameness to them. But every race conducted on real streets has a character of its own - Barcelona, Monaco, and now Long Beach.
There is something I feel when I animate something; you can never really understand the character you're animating unless you've had the opportunity to turn it around. Once you've done that, you know it is a three-dimensional object.
Yes, the first job I had at the studio was Snow White. I don't like the term particularly, but I got stuck with the human characters. They just didn't have that many people who could draw humans.
I don't know if likeable, pleasant characters have enough conflict for me to want to do them. I admire those people, but I've never been that kind of screen presence who can do nothing. I need to do something.
With Charlie Brown, it was about loneliness and isolation. I always thought that the thing about Charlie Brown and those characters was the absence of the parents. Half the strip was about who wasn't there. The parents were never in the picture.
I have less to do with 'The Simpsons' every season, but I stick my nose in here and there. Basically, it's just trying to keep the characters consistent and making sure the show has a soul.
I'd never really considered doing young-adult novels, but one of the things that a friend pointed out to me is that I've actually had a teenage character in almost every adult novel that I've written.
The Roots of Violence: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice, Politics without principles." ( , 22 October 1925)
My instinct is to absolutely recoil when talking about writing in a mechanistic way. Nothing could be dumber than writing a film or TV script based on prescriptions, on other peoples' ideas of what character should be.
I don't think there is just one Louis Vuitton woman. That is why, for the fall/winter 2011 show, I loved the idea of lots of different characters - a wife, a mistress, a girlfriend - stepping out of the row of hotel elevators.
It seems like there's a lot of people who just do not understand satire. They think it's weird. There's people who just don't understand you portray something or just explore a character, it means you're condoning it, saying this is the way to live.
All the Disney lead male characters always have this kind of John Davidson kind of look to them. They all look like the same guy, and all the females look like the same, and I think the guys are just way too big.
The characters in my novels are my own unrealised possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented.
I've never fooled anyone. I've let people fool themselves. They didn't bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn't argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn't.
Favoring 'resolution' the way we do, it is hard for us men to write great love stories. Why?, because we want to tell too much. We aren’t satisfied unless at the end of the story the characters are lying there, panting.
If I'm really considering doing film from now on then that is the smart thing to do, or you can go either way. You can just do the same character over and over again and make a different comedy like over and over again.
