That’s what novels are: They’re amalgams of archetypes, collections of random traits one observes in other people through life, blended into fresh characters.

You don’t buy evil characters lattes. That’s not normal behavior.

There are so few shows that are willing to take risks with their characters in the way that ‘Homeland’ does. And yet, the audience still comes back and loves those characters.

The best plot twists are the ones you didn’t expect.

I think you can always find interesting, complex and fascinating characters to play in different kinds of movies. It’s in your hands.

I just love playing characters that are a long way away from me.

Real-life people are often the hardest to play, people that you recreate who have actually lived, because you have to live up to people’s knowledge of those characters.

I won’t sacrifice my characters morals/intentions/motives for the sake of what I believe is right or wrong. If the action fits the character it will be written. That’s that.

A novel must show how the world truly is, how characters genuinely think, how events actually occur. A novel should somehow reveal the true source of our actions.

My characters surprise me constantly. My characters are like my friends – I can give them advice, but they don’t have to take it. If your characters are real, then they surprise you, just like...

I guess the characters I play may be at the more destructive edge of the spectrum, more damaged or whatever, but I find a lot of female roles uninteresting.

For some reason, all my characters come to me with their names attached to them. I never have to search for the names.

I never draw blood on a first date.

What I look for these days is that I don’t have long speeches, the characters gets to sit down a lot, I don’t have to learn any foreign languages, and it doesn’t shoot in Minneapolis...

The best part of the fiction in many novels is the notice that the characters are imaginary.

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.

I seem finally to have stopped worrying about Elinor, and age. She seems now to be perfectly normal — about twenty-five, a witty control freak. I like her but I can see how she would...

When I started ‘Case Histories,’ the characters were all going to Antarctica on a cruise. The first part was called ‘Embarkation.’ It was supposed to be about everyone preparing to embark on the cruise, but...

Heavy is the head that holds the pen of creation. We construct these characters from nothing, molding them from our imaginations. We give them hopes and dreams and unique personalities until they feel so real...

Good story’ means something worth telling that the world wants to hear. Finding this is your lonely task…But the love of a good story, of terrific characters and a world driven by your passion, courage,...

I always think it’s really hard if you are Asian or Chinese to be really in Hollywood. There are not so many really great characters for you.

All the characters I’ve ever played have really had nothing to do with looks. There’s a lot of things that are a lot more interesting to me to play than that.

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.