"If I had been a little better putter, I'd probably be a miserable character because of all the wins I'd have," Fleck said.
In the first few minutes of Thumbsucker, the confused and miserable character of Audrey, played by Tilda Swinton, tells her son desperately, "I have to find something distinctive about myself".
They invest so much humanity in their miserable characters that despite your dislike, you empathize enough to think, there but for the grace of God.
Iyer's weird talent continues to grow, and the misadventures of his miserable characters are starting to seem like the brightest things in modern British fiction.
"It's probably one of the most spoofable shows because it's so grand and has all those miserable characters," he said.
If you're looking for the sort of bitchy nuggets that go to prove that people of achievement -- and intellectuals in particular -- are invariably miserable characters, this will suit you just fine.
Detachment suffers from the same syndrome; the script feels as if the writer (Carl Lund) dreamed up the worst things that could happen in public schools, put them on steroids, populated the scenes with the miserable characters, then let it run wild.
Geena Davis's character, miserable in her marriage, is seduced by JD, a petty crook, who entertains her with an account of how he carries off his hold-ups.
Was this student body — once described in a 1982 New York magazine article headline as "The Joyful Elite" — really a bunch of misanthropes unpacking their miserable hearts, 140 characters at a time?
This seven-scene, two-character work established Fugard's writing style: one set; a minimum of characters, living marginally in miserable spaces; and, usually, one offstage character (in this case, the brothers' mother), whose ghostly presence adds to the drama.
"His music is wonderful, especially his songs, but his character is miserable," Adolf Hitler said.
