Top 105 Arc Quotes

When you make a movie, a dramatization based on the real experience of a living subject, you can’t airbrush that away into to a perfect movie arc.

It turns out that the left temporal lobe, if there’s a lesion there, will create hyper-religiosity. People become super-religious. They see demons and spirits everywhere. We think Joan of Arc may have had it.

After ‘Prom Night’ I did two movies where I was playing a prostitute. I gravitate towards characters that have some sort of inner turmoil or some sort of character arc. That’s the great thing about acting, so many different things and being really diverse in your choices.

Unlike a novel, where you expect a different kind of arc that leaves us with a somber sense of resolution, I think a story in some ways as like a train window: being able to watch the landscape pass for a certain amount of time. And then your stop arrives, and you have to leave.

I was fortunate enough to do an HBO show, ‘Rome,’ in which my arc was built in by historical fact, and over the course of 22 episodes, we were able to tell the stories of these people. We had a beginning and middle and end, and as we went on, you changed every week.

Here’s what I know: My rise and success have been a direct result of the merits and fabulous opportunities from mentors, including Roger Ailes. Without him, my journey would be quite different. He has changed the arc of my career. He believed in me when people who looked like me were not in network news.

The most serious problem doing biography is the matter of time because you have to shape events into a narrative of two hours; you have to create a dramatic arc. That can be a challenge.

When you’re making a television show, it’s about the story and arc of the show rather than any particular episode or director.

The stories that I like to tell and the movies I like are always grounded in the emotional arc of the characters.

All the sudden, I was part of the ‘No Man’s Land’ thing, and there was a bundle of core writers for that, but somewhere along the line, I became the go-to guy after that initial arc.

Well, I don’t know what Ron has in mind, but I do know about the arc of the show. Looking at how intuitive and instinctive Eddie and I play, that is the sort of thing that leads into sexual chemistry. I wouldn’t be surprised if it emerged.

I wanted to create a heroine that was flawed. I wanted her to be a real person. She’s selfish, she’s childish, she’s immature and because I’m doing a three-book arc I really played that up in the first book. I wanted the reader to be annoyed with her at times.

The loveliest roles, for me, have a growth arc – a beginning, a middle, and an end – and I’m always grateful when I can find one of those emotional journeys.

The arc of our history is toward more equality being expanded to more and more people.

In documentary films, you’re a storyteller using found objects. You still have to have a story arc and all the elements that make a good story. It really helped me mature as a storyteller.

The earth together with its surrounding waters must in fact have such a shape as its shadow reveals, for it eclipses the moon with the arc of a perfect circle.

In a way, all Scandinavian movies are descendants of the original Scandinavian Christian-metaphor movie, Danish director Carl Dreyer’s 1928 ‘The Passion of Joan of Arc,’ one of the seven or eight best films ever made and impossible to watch more than once.

A funny thing about film is that it’s the only medium where people say there are really rules that you have to stick to. Nobody says to the writer – in a film you’ve got to have three acts – there’s a character arc you have to do – there’s no reason that’s true.

In the work that I normally do, you have a whole script, a whole arc, that you play. And I do believe a good actor will play every bit of information they’re given.

The secret to ‘Year One’ is that it’s a Jim Gordon story. It’s a great Bruce Wayne story, don’t get me wrong, but Jim Gordon is the focus of that book. To me, that’s the stronger emotional arc. It’s not that the Bruce Wayne stuff isn’t masterful, because it is, but it’s Jim’s book.

I think writers should create characters who are human and have a character arc of their own.

You’d be surprised how hard it is getting the human emotional arc in a script to work. Ultimately a director stands and falls by their ability to do that.

I… was not too happy to suddenly take on this public role thrust upon me. They just assumed I was the Joan of Arc of the women’s movement. And I wasn’t at all. It put a lot of unnecessary pressure on me.

In ‘Tintin,’ it’s like a live-action role. You’re living and breathing and making decisions for that character from page 1 to page 120, the whole emotional arc. In an animated movie, it’s a committee decision. There are 50 people creating that character. You’re responsible for a small part.

The fundamental story arc of the Bible is God is passionate about rescuing this world, restoring it, renewing it.

As an actor, you don’t want to know the beginning and end to your character’s arc. It makes it more fun. You’re not playing the end. You’re playing it realistically. You don’t know where this character is going to go and what’s going to happen to him, which just makes it more interesting for the viewers to watch.

I relate to people and roles that are about the arc of human experience, things that everyday people deal with every day.

I like roles of people who can overcome things because there’s strength in that and an arc – and roles where they start in one place, and toward the end of the script they end up in a completely different place, so you’ve seen this growth and some humanity in the role.

By the time Joan of Arc was 16 and had proclaimed herself the virgin warrior sent by God to deliver France from her enemies, the English, she had been receiving the counsel of angels for three years.

I asked my designer friend, Sam Klemick, to make a headdress for me, drawing inspiration from 1920s headpieces, Athena and Joan of Arc. Before each show, I have this quiet meditative moment where I put the headdress on and gather my thoughts and strength.

It’s a great luxury to have the writer with you on a new play because you can write and re-write, just trying to get the arc of the story, of their relationship right.

It’s rare that you get to play a great role that has an arc.

The joy of ‘Crash’ was that it was all about the work. It was my first real part. Before that, it was a line here and there, maybe a scene. ‘Crash’ was five scenes, a beautiful arc, a little vignette of my own. It really meant something.

There’s a progressive arc in the sound of ‘Black Sands’ creation. The title track was the first piece in place. Then the other live-sounding tracks like ‘Animals’ and ‘El Toro.’

I never think about the next movie. I always think about the situation I’m in now, but you do think about an arc someone can go. I love Johnny Depp, I love ‘Pirates of the Caribbean,’ but I never wanted to play the same character over and over again.

Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.

When something changes in Episode 7, you have to then begin moving things around, shuffling things backwards. Once you start moving material into it, that can derail your whole arc.

One of the negative sides of a really intense arc as a touring band is there are big gaps in your memory because you’re so exhausted.

I’d love to have played Joan of Arc. That would have been amazing.

With ‘Journey,’ we created an emotional arc for two different scenarios. So, if you play alone, it’s a good game. You have what we think is a complete emotional arc. You will feel, I guess, a sense of transformation in the single-player. Because it’s a hero’s journey.

Plotting is difficult for me, and always has been. I do that before I actually start writing, but I always do characters, and the arc of the story, first… You can’t do anything without a story arc. Where is it going to begin, where will it end.

I like the Hotel Costes, on rue Saint Honore, a boutique hotel near the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre and the Tuileries. I love the dark, moody decor as well as the fantastic scented, candlelit pool in the basement.

I look for two things when I am about to launch into a book. First, there has to be a dramatic arc to the story itself that will carry me, and the reader, from beginning to end. Second, the story has to weave through larger themes that can illuminate the world of the subject.

My early years were hardly a model of focus, discipline, and direction. No one who met me as a teenager could have imagined my going into research and making important discoveries. No one could have predicted the arc of my career.

All my games were political games; I was, like Joan of Arc, perpetually being burned at the stake.

I’m not like Jonathan Hickman, who’s able to sort of plot out three years of a book ahead of time. I’m much more of a guy who plots out an arc or two at a time.

I like it when actors get an opportunity to chew into something. They love scenes with beginnings, middles, and ends – scenes that give an arc to their characters and allow audiences to get to know these people.