Writers are in many ways like demi-gods. With one stroke of a pen they can give life to a character, or strike them from existence, with nary a twinge of grief at their passing.

My comedy does not come from a place of deep cynicism, and I tend to play characters who are naive in some way.

When writing fiction, you learn to only put things and characters in, that are going to progress your story. There is something to be learned about that approach in real life

But some characters in books are really real–Jane Austen’s are; and I know those five Bennets at the opening of Pride and Prejudice, simply waiting to raven the young men at Netherfield Park, are not...

We are starting off with our own different characters and our own laws and everything, looking at Bruce Wayne and how he came to be the person that he was and how he comes to...

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

When two characters or two actresses are together for a while there is bound to be chemistry developing.

I always enjoy impersonating my characters in the first-person singular.

Delicious days ahead for solitude and writing and, oh yes, the holiday meal with family. Live with my characters until term starts in 2012!

It’s not a romance, it’s a love story.

I like involved projects. I’m driven by the idea of characters and the song-cycle form is similar to a musical.

I want things to be characters and not me. Why would I want to play me?

When I started, there was more of a cultural assumption that many readers would find gay characters irrelevant or repugnant.

The 10 ever greatest misplacements in life:1. Leadership without character.2. Followership without servant-being.3. Brotherhood without integrity.4. Affluence without wisdom.5. Authority without conscience.6. Relationship without faithfullness.7. Festivals without peace.8. Repeated failure without change.9. Good wealth without...

I don’t try and write strong female characters or strong male characters, I just try and write, hopefully, strong characters and sometimes they happen to be female.

I write flawed characters. Ones that do not always make the best decisions and are driven by ambition or lust. They are not black or white, they are in the large space that exists between.

People like the comedy more when they care about the characters.

As a writer, my main objective is to tell the story urgently – as if whispering it into one ear – and to know the characters intimately.

There’s a very strong force in Tolkien’s characters.

My characters are quite as real to me as so-called real people; which is one reason why I’m not subject to what is known as loneliness. I have plenty of company.

I’m much more comfortable speaking through my characters’ voices than my own.

And the only sign of life is the ticking of the pen, introducing characters to memory like old friends.

One of the key secrets of great writing is knowing where to start and when to stop.

Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.

My films do have characters who have trouble escaping the world around them.

Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.”[From the preface.]

I’m still tremendously proud of ‘Crimson Petal.’ I’m still very emotionally involved with these characters. I still care about them.

[W]hen I put Jorge in the library I did not yet know he was the murderer. He acted on his own, so to speak. And it must not be thought that this is an ‘idealistic’...

Never annoy an inspirational author or you will become the poison in her pen and the villian in every one of her books.

Kids are more drawn to animal characters than human.

Write what you love. Fill your pages with the beating of your own heart, the breath from your own lungs. Live through your characters. Let your characters live through you. Then you will love what...

No writing is effortless. I’m not saying you can’t have a good day where the words just kind of flow, but even those words have to be edited. Probably more than once. And I’m not...

I don’t think I’m like any of the characters I’ve played – they’re all really far from who I am.

I enjoy working on new, different types of characters. Playing a range is what excites me.

One or two people have named their children after characters in my songs. That’s pretty intense.

I don’t judge my characters.

The genre of fantasy is about magic and occult characters.

We give you characters we’d feel very comfortable judging, and then go: ‘Oh yeah? Watch this’.

I’m driven by the idea of characters and the song-cycle form is similar to a musical.

Writing is hard work, and if anything’s true about the process, it’s that fact that a good story is hard to find and even trickier to get on paper. What’s less romantic than staring alone...

In daily life we never understand each other, neither complete clairvoyance nor complete confessional exists. We know each other approximately, by external signs, and these serve well enough as a basis for society and even...

My life story is too long to tweet. Too long by two characters—and by characters I don’t mean Dora J. Arod and Dark Jar Tin Zoo.

It’s very important to be able to distinguish the actors from the characters they play.

It is easier to influence strong than weak characters in life.

I like doing them and they’re ridiculous and the actors can improvise a lot, and they don’t have to be really realistic characters that hit a very specific tone as in a feature film. They’re...

I’d write of people and places like I knew, and I’d make my characters talk everyday English; and I’d let the sun rise and set in the usual quiet way without much fuss over the...

I love writing about Oklahoma. I love writing Oklahoma characters; I love playing Southwestern characters.

…when you look at a photo or realistic drawing of a face, you see it as the face of another. But when you enter the world of the cartoon, you see yourself.

‘True Blood’ differs from ‘Six Feet Under’ in that there are way more characters and plot-lines, but fundamentally it’s still about the characters and their emotions.

Casting ethnic characters is a very hard thing to do, but it’s important. It’s also interesting.