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.

Believe in your character. Animate (or write) with sincerity.

Kitchens are hard environments and they form incredibly strong characters.

God is the source of life, honour and wealth.

When you start listening to side talks, you begin to behave like a child, and you must kill the child to sustain the man, the man is always overlooking and philosophical.

Discover everything about your characters that you can before you write your story. If you get stuck at any point, they will write your dialog for you.

Some writers, notably Anton Chekov, argue that all characters must be admirable, because once we’ve looked at anyone deeply enough and understood their motivation we must identify with them rather than judge them.

When you don’t have honesty in love then there is no communication. Honesty is improvisation of the heart; anything less is a well thought out and rehearsed script.

A novelist’s characters must be with him as he lies down to sleep, and as he wakes from his dreams. He must learn to hate them and to love them.

Getting all emotionally wrapped up in made-up people’s lives gives me a chance to take a break from my own life […].

Listen to what you have written. A dud rhythm in a passage of dialogue may show that you don’t yet understand the characters well enough to write in their voices.”[Ten rules for writing fiction (The...

I don’t have acknowledged preferences of characters.

I’ve been really fortunate in the fact that I’ve gotten a chance to do a real wide range of all different kinds of characters.

The movies and TV shows I like to watch tend to put their characters in situations where they have to dig deeper.

The magic and the danger of fiction is this: it allows us to see through other eyes. It takes us to places we have never been, allows us to care about, worry about, laugh with,...

I do know that I like to play characters that are sometimes a little on the outside – that’s because it feels kind of romantic and sexier to me. I really think they are the...

I’m much more interested in lesser-known eccentrics and characters and performers. Like Matthew Buchinger, who was born in Germany in 1674, had no arms or legs and yet did magic, and had 14 kids, and...

By the end, you should be inside your character, actually operating from within somebody else, and knowing him pretty well, as that person knows himself or herself. You’re sort of a predator, an invader of...

One of the benefits to television is that you’re with these characters for years, you know them so well.

In each of my characters there is a little of me. Not strictly autobiographical but a little piece of my soul.

People will fall in love with you due to your character, but they’ll stay in love with you due to your attitude

I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should accept more kindly, and even appreciate more...