Top 110 Protagonist Quotes

Nobody just flops a complete ‘Doc Martin’ script on the desk. They all have to be taken apart and all the apologizing taken out. Because it’s hard to have a protagonist that doesn’t really like anyone and nobody really likes him; it’s a hard premise to start from.

I couldn’t imagine what Fox thought they were doing, contemplating such a jagged protagonist for a prime-time drama. I only knew that I wanted the role very much.

As as a coach you shouldn’t take yourself too seriously and never forget that the main protagonists are the players. Your own influence is sometimes less than one believes or hopes for.

The protagonist in ‘Winter’s Bone’ was a really good role for a female. She was strong; she didn’t have to conform to something or be a sidekick to any man. That’s part of what you’re responding to; it’s a woman-centric situation. Her value in the film was not reliant on any man.

When writers for adults contemplate Venice, they behold decay, dereliction and death. Thomas Mann, Daphne du Maurier, L. P. Hartley and Salley Vickers have all dispatched hapless protagonists to Italy, where they see Venice – and die.

In fact, some reviewers have said that as they got into the story they forgot that the protagonist is a black woman. They were moved by the story – by the people as a whole – and not by the little things.

If I have a male protagonist, it’s a studio movie, and if it’s a female protagonist, it’s an indie movie. That’s just how it is. It’s not about the studios. It’s about America and who goes to see movies. Women are interested in men and women, and men aren’t interested in the woman’s story. They just aren’t.

I love a kind of shambling outsider protagonist who always feels like they’re ‘other.’

I’ve been playing with this idea in my mind that the hero’s journey that we’re all taught as screenwriters may resonate more specifically for male protagonists and maybe even male viewers.

I was born in a tiny place in Ivory Coast, so being a protagonist in this life is a dream.

Most of ‘Let the Great World Spin’ is centered on the day in 1974 when Philippe Petit walked on a tightrope between the two towers of the World Trade Center, creating an astonishing spectacle that intersects with the lives of many of the novel’s multiple protagonists.

Dogma not only blinds its protagonist, but it muzzles all other opposition.

I’m kind of a dummy. I make movies and not realize until afterwards, ‘Oh, I’m the protagonist.’

I can’t tell you the number of stories I’ve told with a female protagonist don’t get bought, or they do get bought and get changed drastically. Or, I will literally write into the script different races, and they get cast all-white. I hope that stops and it opens the door for more voices to be heard in movies.

The grappling hook allows for versatile and dynamic movement through the map, while a variety of shinobi-esque tools allow for all sorts of tricks and finesse. These are very important elements of ‘Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice”s gameplay and the protagonist’s nature.

The adolescent protagonist is one of the hallmarks of American literature.

I love when a protagonist and antagonist can find common ground.

Over time, it’s occurred to me that my protagonists all originate in some aspect of myself that I find myself questioning or feeling uncomfortable about.

My protagonists have problems that a new pair of shoes won’t solve. Retail therapy is not a bad thing, but it’s not going to fix their lives.

To become a villain, you had to have become disillusioned, and in order to become disillusioned you had to have been passionate about something you believed in that was shaken and ripped from your grasp as a protagonist in that stage of your life, leaving you disillusioned with God, if you will.

You have to go out of your way as a suspense novelist to find situations where the protagonists are somewhat helpless and in real danger.

‘Aashiqui 2’ and ‘Yeh Jawaani’ were hit films, especially the former film in which I was the protagonist.

I’ve always read broadly: literary fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, chick lit, historical, dystopian, nonfiction, memoir. I’ve even read Westerns. I prefer female protagonists.

Oftentimes in films, the female character, if she’s not the protagonist – and often, even if she is – feels like an imitation of what a woman is.

The film ‘The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,’ based the book of the same name, has a line that enlightens and comforts me. The protagonist, who has lost all ability to move except one eye, discusses his role as a father. He notes, ‘Even a fraction of a father is still a father.’

You don’t need to like your protagonists.

I started writing ‘Leaves Of Grass’ when my professional life was falling apart somewhat. I just had a movie implode in pre-production. And so I came back licking my wounds to New York, where I live, and started to write a script about a protagonist for whom the exact same thing happened: His life was falling apart.

My first novel, ‘Compromising Positions,’ was a whodunit. The protagonist was a Long Island Jewish housewife who turns private investigator. But she was Jewish the way I was: lighting Sabbath candles but envying her Protestant and Catholic friends’ December decorating options.

I think that ‘Room 104’ offered us an organic opportunity to tell all kinds of stories with all kinds of protagonists.

The way I wanted to write it, is with a hero, or sort of a pure character who was the protagonist. And the antagonists were these demonic evil children, cause when you’re a kid, seven or eight years old, and you’re looking at the world around you – everything seems black or white, good or bad.

Since Dhanush is the protagonist of my first film, he proved to be my lucky charm.

I had the feeling that focusing on objects and telling a story through them would make my protagonists different from those in Western novels – more real, more quintessentially of Istanbul.

I think I like reluctant protagonists.

The black person is the protagonist in most of my paintings. I realized that I didn’t see many paintings with black people in them.

I think for some reason we’re conditioned in movies that the protagonist must be heroic or redeemable in some way, whereas in theater, that’s not a necessary.

The writer must be a participant in the scene… like a film director who writes his own scripts, does his own camera work, and somehow manages to film himself in action, as the protagonist or at least the main character.

In ‘Yours Truly,’ I was the centre of the story; I was the protagonist. There was a lot more happening inside the mind of the character which was not projected loudly through dialogue and action… As a performer, playing such a nuanced, internal character is challenging.

I’m interested in flawed protagonists. I was raised on them.

Everyone likes a bit of variety. I’m sure none of my readers only want to read about anti-heroes or villainous protagonists any more than they only want to read about square-jawed heroes doing the right thing. I just write characters than entertain me and hope they’ll be ones that other people want to read about, too.

I would put Harry Kane in with Batistuta. All that is happening to him, he deserves. He is the protagonist of his life, and he deserves all the prize.

If you look at the great Westerns, and at Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology, they all contain elements in common: a harsh landscape; demons or outlaws trying to stop or kill the protagonist; and there are mythical legends at their core, innate in all cultures.

My intent is not to inflame Muslims but to entertain readers of great thrillers. At the end of the day, I want people to see a good protagonist struggle against serious odds and do so with courage and honor and integrity.

I’m always drawn to female stories with female protagonists, and I particularly yearn for more older actresses to take centre stage in 2018.

The orphan in children’s literature allows the child protagonist to move the story forward themselves. I think that, however happy a family, every intelligent child thinks: ‘How did I come to be born to these parents?’ – it is about finding your place in the world.

I often meet directors who want to cast me as the protagonist, but if the rest of the characters are not strong enough, the film is bound to fall flat on a creative level.

I like to write stories that read like historical fiction about great, world-changing events through the lens of a flawed protagonist.

For my 9th birthday, my only wish was to eat like a farmer boy. I had devoured ‘The Little House on the Prairie’ book series and wanted to be like Almanzo Wilder, the protagonist of ‘Farmer Boy,’ one of the later installments in the ‘Little House’ series.

I don’t hover over the thought of only playing a protagonist.

What happens with a good score is, somehow the composer manages to cast himself or herself in the role of the protagonist. And then you write from their perspective.

I’ve never read a script in which you are actively pulling for the protagonist in the beginning, but little by little, you lose that.

The ‘Black Panther’ series was never really about the Black Panther at all. The State Department guy, Everett K. Ross, was the series protagonist, so politics was simply a logical part of the character’s tool set.