“As author in control of the plot I can choose and dictate the fall-out of events from any number of infinite possibilities -- which is a very volatile state of affairs, suggesting the ephemerality of fictional narrative. I can choose to have seven characters and kill six of them off in the first five minutes. I can have seventy characters and squash them under a fallen rock, make them copulate with beasts, sit them on the moon or turn their hair white. This casual condition of authorship is irresponsible.”

— Peter Greenaway

Watching Water

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Peter Greenaway 266

British film director 1942

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“I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of a work of fiction should be to tell a story; and I have never believed that the novelist who properly performed this first condition of his art, was in danger, on that account, of neglecting the delineation of character — for this plain reason, that the effect produced, by any narrative of events is essentially dependent, not on the events themselves, but on the human interest which is directly connected with them. It may be possible in novel-writing to present characters successfully without telling a story; but it is not possible to tell a story successfully without presenting characters: their existence, as recognizable realities, being the sole condition on which the story can be effectively told. The only narrative which can hope to lay a strong hold on the attention of readers is a narrative which interests them about men and women — for the perfectly obvious reasons that they are men and women themselves.”

Wilkie Collins book The Woman in White

Source: Collins explaining what he calls the literary principal guiding him, in the preface of the second edition of The Woman in White. Also in Reality's Dark Light: The Sensational Wilkie Collins by Maria K. Bachman & Don Richard Cox [University of Tennessee Press, 2003, ISBN 1-572-33274-3] ( p. xiv https://books.google.com/books?id=_X8AlmIp0dwC&pg=PR14)

“The character doesn’t have to be exactly like them, but as an author you have to give something to the reader that shows the vulnerability and where the character’s coming from…You can have characters do awful things, but you make them relatable or have some kind of backstory that makes their actions, even if it’s not excusable, understandable…”

Maurene Goo

On what makes a great character “Maurene Goo on Writing Relatable Characters and her Enduring Love of K Dramas” http://publiclibrariesonline.org/2018/02/goo/ (Public Libraries Online; 2018 Feb 28)

“I can’t get over this guy. He creates 100 villains at a sitting and then kills off half of them. Any one of these villains I can make a million off of.”

Jack Kirby (1917–1994) American comic book artist, writer and editor

Source: Stan Lee, “1993: Jack Kirby: The Hardest Working Man in Comics by Steve Pastis” https://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/effect/category/interview/, Happening Magazine, (1993) by Steve Pastin; as quoted by Rand Hoppe, The Kirby Effect The Journal of the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center, (28 April 2018).

“I can't choose any particular roles. I enjoyed all of them. I think it's very important for an actor to be able to enjoy playing many different kinds of characters.”

Akira Kubo (1936) Japanese actor

KAIJU CONVERSATIONS: An Interview with Akira Kubo https://web.archive.org/web/20060220090732/http://www.historyvortex.org/InterviewAkiraKubo.html (December 1995)

“The fact that I can tell stories not only by writing them but also by living them through a character and therefore giving the public emotions (possibly positive), which is the ultimate goal of entertainment.”

Isabelle Adriani (1972) Italian actress, journalist, singer, and writer

Italians in the World. Isabelle Adriani, perfect balance between life and fairy tale. https://www.tesoriditaliamagazine.it/italians-in-the-world-isabelle-adriani-perfect-balance-between-life-and-fairy-tale (5 June 2020)

“Events,” I say to the Captain, “events control our lives, although we have no understanding of them nor do they have any motivation. Everything is blind chance, happenstance, occurrence; in an infinite universe anything can happen. After the fact we find reasons.”

Barry N. Malzberg book Beyond Apollo

Source: Beyond Apollo (1972), Chapter 60

“If I want to be free from any other man’s dictation, I must understand that I can have no other man under my control.”

William Graham Sumner (1840–1910) American academic

The Forgotten Man and Other Essays (corrected edition), “The Forgotten Man” 1883 http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/sumner-the-forgotten-man-and-other-essays-corrected-edition?q=Civil+liberty+is+the+status#Sumner_1225_701.

“Because I can count on my fingers the number of sunsets I have left, and I don't want to miss any of them.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

“I can choose. I have to choose.”

Ivan Illich (1926–2002) austrian philosopher and theologist

We the People interview (1996)
Context: I can choose. I have to choose. I have to make my mind up whom I will take into my arms, to whom I will lose myself, whom I will treat as that vis-a-vis, that face into which I look, which I lovingly touch with my fingering gaze, from whom I accept being who I am as a gift.

“Let me tell you about what we call our field trips. It may surprise you to know, that I have personally visited, with many of my associates, practically every city in the United States, from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Canada to Mexico. If any of you has done this, you realize what big a country it is. It has taken me weeks and weeks of the hardest kind of work and continual travel to accomplish this. I which that my duties were such that I could do more of it; and I am trying to arrange my affairs so that I can. On these trips I visit from five to ten dealers a day. I meet them in their own places of business, talk with them across their own desks and solicit from them suggestions and criticisms as to their relations with the Corporation; the character of the product; the Corporation's policies; the trend of consumer demand; their viewpoint as to the future, and many other things that such contact makes possible. I solicit criticism of anything and everything.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: Alfred P. Sloan in The Turning Wheel, 1934, p. 343

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Peter Greenaway 266

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