To keep any great nation up to a high standard of civilization there must be enough superior characters to hold the balance of power, but the very moment the balance of power gets into the hands of second-rate men and women, a decline of that nation is inevitable. - Christian D. Larson
I spend many hours in conversation with wonderful characters from fantastic books. - Patti Roberts
Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than in what they think laughable. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The best part of the fiction in many novels is the notice that the characters are purely imaginary. - Franklin P. Adams
Maligned –powerfully-drawn characters acting out a disturbing view of our future. -David Compton, New York Times Best-Selling author - Kathleen Papajohn
I do believe that characters in novels belong to their writers and their readers pretty equally. I've learned a lot of things about the characters I write from people who read about them. Readers expand them in ways I don't think of and take them to places I can't go. - Ann Brashares
Parents can only advise their children or point them in the right direction. Ultimately people shape their own characters. - Anne Frank
Confession: I don't want to be one of my characters. I'm mean to them sometimes. Really mean. - Michelle M. Pillow
But how can the characters in a play guess the plot? We are not the playwright, we are not the producer, we are not even the audience. We are on the stage. To play well the scenes in which we are "on" concerns us much more than to guess about the scenes that follow it. - C.S. Lewis
There is no such thing as a perfect person in this world. We all must become the main characters or the stars of our lives. We are all different and start differently. But from whatever is our circumstances, it is very important that we find the opportunities to try out what we want to do. - Goo Hye Sun
Take a scientific fact or theory, add a futuristic or other-worldly setting, stir in an imaginative plot and fascinating characters, and a science fiction novel emerges from the cosmic mix. - Yvonne Coleman
Love work with trust, trust work with truth,truth work with characters. - Uche Daniel Oluwaseun
Whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings, they gradually begin to seem mild, harmless, rather engaging little things, not at all like the staring defects in other people's characters. - Margaret Halsey
Life is but a play and we are merely the characters of our own scene. - kamar brown
You can't make a fan of everyone. Stay true to your story, characters, music, art or whatever it is you do and fuck everyone else who doesn't like it. Life isn't perfect. - Ann Marie Frohoff
Character depends on characters. Few people are character. Other's should try to opt one but they don't, they lose. - Vikram Roy
I am simply not interested, at this point, in creating narrative scenes between characters. - Lydia Davis
The unknown characters of writing seem to be endowed with an evil of life of their own as though sentient, and fain would wrest themselves forth from the parchment and wreak mischief on whomsoever gazes upon them. - E. Hoffmann Price
In the ancient Indian Pali language, the words for mind and heart are the same. And the Chinese character for mindfulness is a combination of two characters. One part means now and the other means mind or heart. So, when you hear the word mindfulness you can also consider it to mean heartfulness. - Shamash Alidina
Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him. - Mel Brooks
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. - Kevin James Breaux
I read the bible every day and the one thing I have noticed is that those characters that are closest to God seem to be the ones who question and wonder and think more than others. - J.W. Lord
I am certain that a novelist is someone who attributes a different reality-value to the characters and events of his story than to those of 'real' life. A novelist is someone who confuses his own life with that of his characters. - Alain Robbe-Grillet
I don't write stories, I write characters. - Bhavya Kaushik
We are all characters in the book of life. - John E. Carson
And the only sign of life is the ticking of the pen, introducing characters to memory like old friends. - Fish
We love characters in proportion as they are impulsive and spontaneous. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Vladimir Nabokov, contemning readers who "identified" with characters in fiction, remarked that the best readers identify with the artist. - Joseph Epstein
Don't resist the urge to burn down the stronghold, kill off the main love interest or otherwise foul up the lives of your characters. - Patricia Hamill
I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I'm afraid of. - Joss Whedon
Writing is a solitary existence, especially if you forget to chat to your friends – sorry, I meant characters. - Carla H. Krueger
Writing is a solitary business. It’s just you and your characters and a blank page you need to fill. - Shannon Celebi
We liked to believe there is an alternate world, a better world, populated entirely by characters created by the yearnings of humanity--governing and inspiring themselves with all the lucidity wit which we rendered them. - Miguel Syjuco
Destroy your life; then put it back together.You'll get great material, meet some fascinating characters and – side benefit – the skills you develop will give you greater compassion, insight and range with the people you create on the page – or run into off of it. - Jerry Stahl
Much of the joy in falling in love with fictional characters comes from being able to envision new stories from them. - The Atlantic Monthly
And if the characters haven't died, they carry on murdering to this very day ... - Rebekka Kricheldorf
I didn't want to tell Mother I worked as a journalist. She thought I was a prostitute. Locking yourself in a room and inventing characters and conversations which do not exit is no way for a grown man to behave. - Sebastian Horsley
Writers seldom choose as friends those self-centered characters who are never in trouble, never make mistakes, and always count their change as it is handed to them. - Catherine Drinker Bowen
Nothing can be more notorious than the calumnies and invectives with which the wisest measures and most virtuous characters of The United States have been pursued and traduced [By American Newspapers] - Thurgood Marshall
Favoring 'resolution' the way we do, it is hard for us men to write great love stories. Why?, because we want to tell too much. We aren’t satisfied unless at the end of the story the characters are lying there, panting. - Roman Payne
Thou shalt not use the 140 characters limit as an excuse for bad grammar and/or incorrect spelling. - Mokokoma Mokhonoana
You can't write a story until you've felt it. Breathed it in. Walked with your characters. Talked with them. That's why you come here. To live your story. - Angela Banks
Fiction may amuse us, but reality instills lessons to be imbibed through experience; to 'live' this stark reality called 'life' as a blessing, whereas some foolishly waste it by following fiction and fictitious characters. - Henrietta Newton Martin
Good and evil are both within us. And when our primitive ancestors humanized these natural qualities of the mind, they got two completely opposite supernatural characters. One was the merciful lord almighty and the other was the wicked devil. - Abhijit Naskar
The best part of the fiction in many novels is the notice that the characters are imaginary. - Franklin P. Adams
In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations!"(Letter to Alexander Chekhov, May 10, 1886) - Anton Chekhov
Perhaps a book becomes a classic in proportion to how broadly its characters can be scavenged, how many readers find within it something they experience as desirable or even intimately necessary. - Janna Malamud Smith
I have found that in fiction one is freer to speak the truth, if only because in fiction the truth is not expected or required. You may easily disguise it, so that it is only recognized much later, when the story and the characters have faded into darkness. - Philip Sington
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 you write, and others will, too. - Amanda Emerson
You can never know enough about your characters - W. Somerset Maugham
Tell the story that's been growing in your heart, the characters you can't keep out of your head, the tale story that speaks to you, that pops into your head during your daily commute, that wakes you up in the morning. - Jennifer Weiner
The most exciting part of writing a novel is when the characters take control of the story - Brandt Legg
We may say that the characters in fairytales are ‘good to think with’…[and that] the job of the fairytale is to show that Why? questions cannot be answered except in one way: by telling the stories. The story does not contain the answer, it is the answer. - Brian Wicker
Honesty makes stories real and characters memorable. From there, taking them to where they need to go will be all the development they need. - Dan Alatorre
I feel like these characters, these places, these beings and plots, and even these inanimate objects are counting on me for survival. It’s my responsibility to reveal them to the world, to show my readers the names of these things, to show them their histories and stories. - Nicholas Trandahl
I write because, if I don't, my characters will murder me in my sleep. - Astrid 'Artistikem' Cruz
Books, films should be based on specific people... people which are rare and by it's own way pretty mystery as characters. - Deyth Banger
In dreams we see ourselves naked and acting our real characters, even more clearly than we see others awake. - Henry David Thoreau
The Dark Knight 2008, favourite character Joker always in the right face and showing all humans in one character. A character died from characters! - Deyth Banger
You know you are a writer when you talk about your characters as if they were real people! - Wyketha K Parkman
Do try The House by fresh new author, , it's funny, sad and very different, you'll love the characters and the stories. - Susannah Mansfield
My whole career has been fulfilling my childhood fantasies, playing characters that are larger than life, getting to play a knight, an elf, a prince and a soldier. - Orlando Bloom
Self-leaders are still true leaders even if they have no known followers. True leaders inspire by the influence of their characters and general self-made brands. Leadership is defined by the virtues of one's behaviour. - Israelmore Ayivor
When you read a book, the neurons in your brain fire overtime, deciding what the characters are wearing, how they’re standing, and what it feels like the first time they kiss. No one shows you. The words make suggestions. Your brain paints the pictures. - Meg Rosoff
I am a creator, writing like the wind, I carry the weight of a future world in the barrel of a pen, etching my characters into the paper with life giving ink so my dreams and reality might finally meet. - L.M. Fields
Tell the story as if it were only of interest to the small circle of your characters, of which you may be one. There is no other way to put life into the story. - Horacio Quiroga
These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. - Abigail Adams
Character builds on characters. Very few can recognised them as a character, others should look for it until they get one. - Vikram Roy
You can't live with literary characters no matter how much you might like to. You can have them as imaginary friends that you can call up when you need to. One of the tasks of art is to provide people with companions. - Henning Mankell
Characters have to be seen and felt when written, not told about. Writers are merely vessels of their manifestations. - Linda Durbin
On these days, I've never felt so hollow. Recollecting the many pieces of me that were lost in past sub-lives. They were the minor characters of my novel life, the sub-plots to the whole story. On these days I was the binding that held the book together, I was not the words. - Hubert Martin
I'd like my readers to feel they want to follow my characters off the page at the end of the book. - Vanessa Couchman
Though often scoffed at by serious writers, science fiction worms its way into our cultural psyche in interesting ways, and not just as predictors of technology. Many of these writers translate the –isms of our times into imagined futures populated with characters coping with the consequences. - Frank Daniels III
Fictional characters also evolve, the way human being do in real life. - Saumya Kaushik...
Just because we're fictional characters doesn't mean you can pick us up and move us anywhere you want.--the people of Lake Woebegon - Garrison Keillor
We are masters of our characters and in turn, slaves of their outgrowth. - Mohammed Ali Bapir
Children pay little attention to their parents' teachings, but reproduce their characters faithfully - Mason Cooley
I AM NOT A WRITER.My characters simply commandeer my fingertips, writing their own destinies. - T.N. Suarez
Much of what I learned about forgiveness I learned by inhabiting the lives of my characters. Even villains act with reasonable intent. Mercy is easier with understanding. Still, it helps that on paper I can kill them off. - Joyce Rachelle
An author is similar to an actor. They play many characters in their lives—photographer, nurse, dancer, doctor, writer, etc. As an author, you have to learn your craft, know each and every element to become that character you’re writing about to be able to live and breathe what they do. - Mischa Temaul
Writing therapy is my form of healing. Try and detach yourself from painful memories by infusing characters and then stepping back. - Phil Wohl
We are the generation of Social Media, Our biggest Revolution is a Tweet of 141 Characters. - Sandra Chami Kassis
Mark Twain said the difference between the right word and the almost right word is like the difference between lightning and the lightning bug, and people think he was good, right ? Didn't write any decent characters, as far as I can tell, but otherwise fine. - Adam Rex
If you treat your characters like people, they'll reward you by being fully developed individuals. - Don Roff
In general, watching children's television is a dark and surreal descent into madness where the characters on the screen talk directly to you.
It's difficult from one story to jump in another story, 2 stories are okay for one hour. But more and more characters you start losing the link. (Thriller 2) - Deyth Banger
I write fiction not for my readers and not for myself. I write fiction for the sake of those odd heroic characters that are contained therein. They are counting on me as much as I am counting on them. - Nicholas Trandahl
Most people carry their demons around with them, buried down deep inside. Writers wrestle their demons to the surface, fling them onto the page, then call them characters. - C.K. Webb
The characters act for reasons that they can’t control and, as readers, we have to believe in their motivations, their sense of choice and in the reality of their suffering, even though, deep down, we know it’s all just puppetry on the part of the writer. - Johnny Rich
If you focus on the humanity of your stories, your characters, then the horror will be stronger, scarier. Without the humanity, the horror becomes nothing more than a tawdry parlor trick. All flash and no magic, and worst of all, no heart. - Don Roff
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars. - Kahlil Gibran
Ending a series is a difficult one .......where should a story that you have followed for so long end? When do you step away from the characters and let the readers decide their fate from there? When they can stand on their own is my only answer for that. - Shandy L. Kurth
Her characters tend to err when they reject the grubby and complex circumstances of everyday life for abstract and radical notions. They thrive when they work within the rooted spot, the concrete habit, the particular reality of their town and family. - David Brooks
...we could think or feel as we wished toward the characters, or as the poet, discounting history, invited us to; we were the poet's guest, his world was his own kingdom, reached, as one of the poems told us, through the 'Ring of Words'... - Janet Frame
Most of my novels were developped from dreams I had. A dreamer I AM! Literally , at 1 AM. A dream with 140 characters is to dream an impossible dream. Too many characters to develoo from it. But in twitter that worked just fine for me, - Ana Claudia Antunes
I intend all my characters must escape from impossible situations; if they are not in trouble, then as a writer, I am. - Cleveland W. Gibson
I’m not beholden to the confirmation of your prejudices; to be perfectly frank, the prospect of confining the female characters in my story to placid, helpless secondary places in the narrative is so goddamn boring that I would rather not write at all. - Scott Lynch
[A]nd you may know how little God thinks of money by observing on what bad and contemptible characters he often bestows it."[Man and the Gospel (1865)] - Thomas Guthrie
As good surgical doctor works on a patient in the theater with varied kinds of surgical instruments, so a true leader also needs a clean bag of leadership characters that vary from task to task. One-way leaders are obvious failures! - Israelmore Ayivor
Life is better than any movie or TV show. In real life there is no plot and there are billions of characters. - Marc Pamittan
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. - James DeSantis
Good fiction often gives us characters in extremity, which ironically gives us a clearer mirror in which to see ourselves. - Sarah Van Arsdale
There are mystically in our faces certain characters which carry in them the motto of our souls, wherein he that cannot read A, B, C may read our natures. - Thomas Browne
Reading is like diving into an ocean of an alternate world, away from your real world, where in spite of going though the pain and pleasure of the characters, you remain a witness, unscathed. - Anirudha Lakshminarasimhan
Character builds on characters. Very few recognised them as a character, others should look for it until they get one. - Vikram Roy
You can't write a sory until you've felt. Breathe it in. Walked with your characters. Talked with them. That's why you come here. To live your story. - Angelica Banks
If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write. - W. Somerset Maugham
THE 52ND is a unique entry in the YA and Paranormal genres. With a diverse cast of characters, thrilling mythology, and a potential series ahead, Dela knocks it out of the park with THE 52ND. - Indie Reader
Once or twice I saw evidence that rats had been nesting among the books, rearranging them to make snug two and three-level homes for themselves and smearing dung on the covers to form the rude characters of their speech. - Gene Wolfe
Every word I write is like a drop of my blood. If it's flowed passionately and long, I need time to recover from the emotion spent before I begin a new story. My characters are aspects of my life. I have to respectfully and carefully move between them. - Red Haircrow
Films are about entering the world from distance... little being part of all people, series are all about entering the whole world with both feet... being part of all main characters or not only the main... but the killers... victims. - Deyth Banger
Characters who simply have goals opposed by others do not create the effects of a story. - Bill Johnson
There's not a woman in the book, the plot hinges on unkindness to animals, and the black characters mostly drown by Chapter 29.
The characters in my novels are my own unrealised possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented. - Milan Kundera
Fiction books give the reader a chance to step away from their own reality and into the shoes of the characters, and they show you a world that isn't the one you already know. And sometimes the story's not so different from your own, and it lets you get closer to your own feelings. - Shin Towada
the glory of the protagonist is always paid for by a lot of secondary characters - Tony Hoagland
...prose unfolds in time; and time contains both obstacles and revelations. Prose develops, the way characters and situations do. It requires a flow. A poem is an instant, lightning across the sky. Prose is before the storm, the storm, after the storm. - Molly Peacock
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. - William S. Burroughs
Plot comes from the mind but the characters come from the heart! - Varsha Dixit
In your Mind you live with thousands characters. - Tushar Saxena
There is a point where, as a writer, you grow to hate your characters, their stupid motivations, and their whiny inner dialogues. The only solution I have found to deal with that is to kill the character, resurrect him, then kill him again. - Caris O'Malley
In the world of your story, your outline is like the Ten Commandments. Unfortunately, your characters are all Atheists. - Jefferson Smith
In the books, I meet characters which I really like and I think that they are like me... but so far I haven't met them in real life! - Deyth Banger
All people have three characters, that which they exhibit, that which they are, and that which they think they are. - Alphonse Karr
Writing a book with completely fictitious characters is like running a democracy, centered around a capital state. You constantly live with the fear & suspicion that one of the characters will start an uncontrollable rebellion. - Shomprakash Sinha Roy
Leadership is an art expressed by the demonstration of characters worthy of immitation, emulation and inspiration. It is neither a title nor a postion. - Israelmore Ayivor
You learn to write by writing, and by reading and thinking about how writers have created their characters and invented their stories. If you are not a reader, don't even think about being a writer. - Jean M. Auel
To annoy or piss off are light offences. I'd say if you abuse the goodness of a novelist or a writer, the truth is, he or she can kill you multiple times or cannibalise you in many antagonist characters. - Angelica Hopes
Forming characters! Whose? Our own or others? Both. And in that momentous fact lies the peril and responsibility of our existence. - Elihu Burritt
I've learned to let my characters speak and act the way they want to! I've tried to interfere but they just get angry at me and throw big rocks. - Shandy L. Kurth
In general there should be gay characters in YA because a) surprise, there are gay folks everywhere and b) in my opinion as a father, there’s not a damn thing wrong with my child encountering gay folks in her literature, because see point a). - John Scalzi
I believe it’s incredibly important to write against [racial] stereotypes. If we give in and make sure that all black women characters are asexual, gentle, and kind we wind up with another set of stereotypes. - Justine Larbalestier
I don't know do I exist?I'm two different characters, DeYtH Banger isn't even and my name it was a character created by me. But who am I??Can I use the word "I"?, who is "I". You use "I", he use this word and she use this word, but who is "I"? - Deyth Banger
Part of the pleasure has to do with a sense of efficiency, of materials exactly allocated and completely used. Another part has to do with a sense of inevitability, the feeling that someone knew where we were headed all along, even if we and the characters did not. - Wendy Lesser
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. - Oscar Wilde
I often wonder if we were all characters in one of God's dreams. - Muriel Spark
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. - Oscar Wilde
...ending a book with a sequel in such a way that the reader still has faith in the characters and in the writer. That's finesse. - Shandy L. Kurth
Once God wrote a story that shook the heaven to the very core.Love was the only language used;You and I were the only characters. - Subhan Zein
Affect the main character or characters and you win the game. - Deyth Banger
Every man has three characters - that which he exhibits, that which he has, and that which he thinks he has. - Alphonse Karr
...stories want to be told. Stories have a power of their own ... you can't write a story until you've felt it. Breathed it in. Walked with your characters. Talked with them. - Angelica Banks
Like the 'good' characters in literature, the sane don't have any memorable lines. - Adam Phillips Going Sane
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. - Anthony Trollope
Some writers need to sink in order to feel what their characters feel; in order to write their characters with the truest feeling possible. Those closest to those writers end up feeling the effects of that process. It takes a strong person to be with an emphatic writer. - Lori Goodwin
Many of the characters are fools and they're always playing tricks on meand treating me badly. - Jorge Luis Borges
Film and novel characters are often stereotyped, but racial stereotyping in many novels or films creates & encourages labelling, discrimination & racism. ~ - Angelica Hopes
Believe in your characters with all your heart, & they will believe in you. Only then will they trust you enough to reveal themselves. -RCSJR - Robert Clifton Storey Jr.
There is a perfect rout of characters in every man—and every man is like an actor’s trunk, full of strange creatures, new & old. But an actor and his trunk are two different things - Wallace Stevens
I'm a writer. I'm a Christian. I like sex. But I haven't had it. I believe in waiting until marriage. But that doesn't mean I want my characters to. - Michelle N. Onuorah
In your Mind you live with n number of characters - Tushar Saxena
Lifting lives, 140 characters at a time. - Germany Kent
Dreams are the touchstones of our characters. - Henry David Thoreau
New characters always cause a reshuffle. - The Grinder
Characters are just extensions of my madness. - Mark Tilbury
You can't blame a writer for what the characters say. - Truman Capote
Sometimes I scare myself at how easily I slip inside my mind and live vicariously through these characters. - Teresa Mummert
The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell together, as quickly as possible. - Mark Twain
I start with a tingle, a kind of feeling of the story I will write. Then come the characters, and they take over, they make the story. - Karen Blixen
Fantasy stories will always be popular, as there are always readers who are willing to escape, freely, to the worlds that the authors create, and spend time with the characters we give life to. - Jason Ellis
Paradoxically, however, a story ceases to be like life on its last page. Life goes on, but the story does not. Its characters have no vitality outside the first page and after the last is only good as the next reader's. - Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren