Books Quote by W. Somerset Maugham

Characters are not created by writers. They pre-exist and have to be found.

— Elizabeth Bowen

A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously.

— Albert Camus

Creating characters is like throwing together ingredients for a recipe. I take characteristics I like and dislike in real people I know, or know…

— Cassandra Clare

You have to start from a place of trying to create a character.

— Rebecca Hall

The writer by nature of his profession is a dreamer and a conscious dreamer. He must imagine, and imagination takes humility, love and great…

— Carson McCullers

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

— Ernest Hemingway

As I have pointed out before, characters are not born like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor…

— Anonymous

I believe that to create real-seeming characters, the writer must be willing to go on a voyage of self-exploration. It can be revealing and…

— Sara Paretsky

“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

The writer needs to react to his or her own internal universe, to his or her own point of view. If he or she…

— Manuel Puig

No author ever drew a character consistent to human nature, but he was forced to ascribe to it many inconsistencies.

— Anonymous

Character isn't developed when we get what we want. Character is developed when we don't get what we want.

— Joyce Meyer