Character Quote by Raymond Queneau

The key for me with historical characters is they're interesting because they're human beings. A little bit of Hemingway goes a long way here,…

— Michael Hirst

A good novelist loves all of his characters, he lives in them, even in those who commit or must commit terrible acts.

— Liao Yiwu

The business of a novelist is, in my opinion, to create characters first and foremost, and then to set them in the snarl of…

— John Dos Passos

Most good fiction also has a character the writer seems to know more deeply than anyone can actually be known in life, but a…

— Nell Freudenberger

“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

Nothing detains the reader's attention more powerfully than deep involutions of distress, or sudden vicissitudes of fortune; and these might be abundantly afforded by…

— Samuel Johnson

“Good characters in fiction are the very devil. Not only because most authors have too little material to make them of, but because we…

— C.S. Lewis

I love novels where not much 'happens' but where the interest is in the ideas and analyses of characters.

— Alain de Botton

“A good fiction writer can write any character or any story that she wants to write. The importance, IMO, is a burning desire to…

— Suzanne Brockmann

Novels are one of the few remaining areas of narrative storytelling where one person does almost all of the creative heavy lifting.

— Charles Stross

There are a few writers whose lives and personalities are so large, so fascinating, that there's no such thing as a boring biography of…

— Robert Gottlieb

My view of an excellent novel was probably set in the golden age of fiction in the 19th century: narrative, character and voice are…

— Joanna Trollope