Aesthetic Quote by Joyce Carol Oates

In my experience, a novel is the culmination of various thoughts and impressions collected over time, until something comes along to give them a…

— J. Courtney Sullivan

I find that a lot of my best character stuff and ideas come unwittingly from novels. In scripts, it's a lot about the outward…

— Alison Pill

The characters in a novel are made up, figments of the writer's imagination. I'm sure this won't come as a surprise to anyone, and…

— Emma Healey

I'm drawn particularly to stories that evolve out of the character of the protagonist.

— David McCullough

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…

— Ann Brashares

Characters develop as the book progresses, but any that start to bore me end up in the wastepaper basket. In real life, we may…

— Laurie Graham

“There can't be much development of action or theme in such stories, but at least there is some. By contrast, in the short short…

— Irving Howe

There are two different forms of storytelling: Novels tend to come from the inside of a character, and movies tend to look at them…

— Walter Kirn

The idea of having different characters is really just to get the storyline across, you know? Coming from one particular character makes, to me,…

— MF Doom

“To write an excellent novel, make the outcome of the story matter to the reader through the evolving relationships between well-designed characters.”

— Martin Sandforth

Character development is what I value most as a reader of fiction. If an author can manage to create the sort of characters who…

— J. Courtney Sullivan

The truth about being a writer is you do not choose the stories you tell, but stories choose you. You do not choose, therefore,…

— Rosa Montero