Book Character Quotes

#1. I'm not a comic book character. I'm not Indiana Jones or Bond, I'm a flesh and blood guy who is ageing and changing. I don't have to do what I did in '93. I couldn't do it and thank God.

David Duchovny

#2. I feel when a writer treats a character as 'precious,' the writer runs the risk of turning them into a comic book character. There's nothing wrong with comic book characters in comic books, but I don't write comic books.

Raymond E. Feist

#3. You can't throw a rock without a comic book character falling out of a tree.

Morena Baccarin

#4. Why can't God just defeat the devil and get rid of evil? It's the same reason the comic book character can't get rid of his nemesis; then there's no story.

Bill Maher

#5. It's always been a dream for me to play a comic book character.

Celina Jade

#6. DISC is based on concepts created in 1928 by a psychologist named William Marston, who also created the comic book character Wonder Woman. That tells you pretty much all you need to know about DISC. Other

Dan Lyons

#7. The really cool thing about when you're playing a comic book character is that no one knows what he sounds like.

Josh McDermitt

#8. At a young age, I was interested in comic books, which was really how I learnt to read. The name Cage came from a comic book character called Power Man.

Nicolas Cage

#9. Spiderman was my favorite comic book character growing up. I'm a geek, so I love the fact Peter Parker is into science. And I gravitate towards short guys. I'm 5' 9" now, but in junior high, I got picked on because I was 4' 8".

Josh Keaton

#10. Show me a character totally without anxieties and I will show you a boring book.

Margaret Atwood

#11. The character's flaw will shape every other aspect of your book. The flaw is the engine that drives your entire book, from hooking your reader's interest to propelling the plot to its climax - so choose your flaw with care, and make it count.

Libbie Hawker

#12. Put simply the novel stands between us and the hardening concept of statistical man. There is no other medium in which we can live for so long and so intimately with a character. That is the service a novel renders.

William Golding

#13. There are lots of big books that have gay characters - or, more commonly, a gay character - in secondary roles, but seldom are their lives, and especially their sexual lives, on center stage.

Garth Greenwell

#14. I was about to be attacked by a Doberman pinscher. He was a leading character in an earlier version of this book. ***

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

#15. I was the biggest Harry Potter fan. I read all the books. Ron was always my favorite character, because I feel like I relate to him, like weve both got red hair, we both like sweets, weve both got lots of brothers and sisters. Ive got one brother and three sisters, and both scared of spiders.

Rupert Grint

#16. When I start, I have a feeling for the characters, and maybe the shape of the story. Sometimes I might even have the last sentence in mind. But, no book I've ever written has ever ended the way I thought it would. Characters disappear, others come forward. Once you start writing, everything changes.

Paul Auster

#17. I have always been a big fan of the character and am more of a moviegoer than a comic book guy, there is always something about the character of Batman that is very elemental. There is a great powerful myth to the character and romantic element that draws from a lot of literary sources

Christopher Nolan

#18. It's always tense when you move a character from a book to the screen. Always tense.

Lee Child

#19. The sad thing about reading the book and then watching the movie is that they have to die all over again.

Joyce Rachelle

#20. Graphic designers judge a cover by its book.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

#21. The Blood She Betrayed is unique, and Shahkara, the character, is one of the most engaging strong female role models I've seen in a long time. This girl can handle herself! The plot is full of ingenious twists, turns and surprises, and I look forward to reading the next book in the series.

L.J.Smith

#22. A book can tell you all the emotions and subtext that are so rarely aptly portrayed in film. You understand the nuances of each character. You breathe every breath with them and cry every tear.

AnnaLisa Grant

#23. When you have a book as material as it is, it's a lot easier to create a character because you have so many resources to draw upon when acting.

Asa Butterfield

#24. 'The Cape' is a really good comic! They invented the whole character, and now they've built a book of 'The Cape' for the show. When I was a kid, I used to love Batman, and I loved Spider-Man. My favorite was this guy called Judge Dredd. I know they made a movie of that in the '90s.

James Frain

#25. The question I am most often asked is how do I find my ideas? The answer is I don't. Ideas find me. A character in history will suddenly step right out of the past and demand a book. Generally, people don't bother to speak to me unless there's a good chance that I'll take them on.

Jean Fritz

#26. Whenever people say they didn't like the main character of a book, they mean they didn't like the book. The main character has to be a friend? I don't get that.

Melissa Bank

#27. There was a best-selling book in the late '60s and '70s called 'The Adventurers' by Harold Robbins. The lead character's name was Dax. Anyone that's roughly my age that's named Dax is named from that book.

Dax Shepard

#28. No one will be alive by the last book. In fact, they all die in the fifth. The sixth book will be just a thousand-page description of snow blowing across the graves ...

George R R Martin

#29. Boudicca MacDaede was not the most striking of women, but she had a wryness in character and heartiness in form that recommended her to the rough demands of a farmer's daughter and a soldier's sufferance." ~ First two lines of book 1 in the Haanta Series

Michelle Franklin

#30. Writing a novel, in an unplanned and unpredictable way, makes you engaged; it takes you into yourself, and it becomes something between you and the character for a moment, and then you move back into the structure of the book. I love those moments, because they are completely unbidden.

David Bezmozgis

#31. I discovered you can get closer to a character's thoughts and feelings in a book than in a film.

Morris Gleitzman

#32. Yeah, and the language the "we" has, and the character the "we" has. Because that was the part of the book that I didn't plan out, but the part that I was most curious about as I was writing. You know what you're doing, but you're sometimes still sort of curious as you're writing it.

Chang-rae Lee

#33. Authors have to write for their characters, for who they are, that's the strength of books. Don't worry about censors. Just write the story you need to tell and the rewards will come.

Ellen Hopkins

#34. She felt like a fictional character who'd escaped the book in which her creator had carefully and kindly trapped her, taken a pair of scissors to her outline and leaped, free ...

Kate Morton

#35. It is profound philosophy to sound the depths of feeling and distinguish traits of character. Men must be studied as deeply as books.

Baltasar Gracian

#36. I've worked out a Ninja Replacement Score for novels. It's basically the number of characters that need to be replaced by ninjas to make the book good.

Janni Lee Simner

#37. Life is a book that someone else is reading - and you, a key character - hence the need for continual conflict and resolution. We can't have any boring books.

Richelle E. Goodrich

#38. I don't think there is a single sentence in this whole book [East of Eden] that does not either develop character, carry on the story or provide necessary background.

John Steinbeck

#39. Even as I was writing 'Empire State,' I knew there were more adventures for the main character, private detective Rad Bradley, to have. I also knew that the world was far larger than what I'd presented in book one.

Adam Christopher

#40. I was approached by this guy Chris Renshaw, who had read my book and had read Leigh's book. He wanted to incorporate both characters - he probably felt Leigh wasn't famous enough and he realized Leigh [Bowery] and I were associated.

Boy George

#41. I think my biggest problem, though, at least in drafts, is not repeating myself. After eight books I get worried that a character or piece of dialog might be too much like something I've already done. So it's a challenge to keep it fresh.

Sarah Dessen

#42. The only thing that makes me put down a book is if the characters are boring, or the situations aren't fraught with the potential for some great change or I don't mind if an author torments his protagonist, but I do expect a decent payoff in the end.

Michael Boatman

#43. In playing the part of Mammy, I tried to make her a living, breathing character, the way she appeared to me in the book.

Hattie McDaniel

#44. I think I write what's interesting to me, and so if I'm reading I like to have a very thorough idea of a character in a book that's by someone else.

Curtis Sittenfeld

#45. I write my own stories. I like telling stories to little children. I think the good thing about stories is they carry you to another place which you've never been. And you feel like you're just enveloped by the book and the characters.

Georgie Henley

#46. The interesting thing is, when you play a real-life character or someone based in a book, you always come up against people's preconceptions of what they have in their heads.

Harry Lloyd

#47. When I'm writing I don't want anyone else in the room - including myself.

Jonathan Franzen

#48. If I could play any character from the book though it'd be Church. Who wouldn't want to be a cat?!

Jamie Campbell Bower

#49. It is not for nothing that Skaldin in one part of his book quotes Adam Smith: we have seen that both his views and the character of his arguments in many respects repeat the theses of that
great ideologist of the progressive bourgeoisie.

Vladimir Lenin

#50. I think the female first-person is still dismissed, demonized, especially if the book does not end on an empowering note, especially if the main character is perceived as unlikeable, or too privileged.

Kate Zambreno

#51. I like characters who are changed, often for the better, by the dark nature of their experiences. I also can become engaged by a character for whom I wish to see justice done, one way or the other. In general, I require a book to have some sort of moral center.

Thomas H. Cook

#52. It's sort of an organic process when you're adapting any book, not even just your own. You want to preserve the heart of the story and you want to preserve who the characters are, but film requires a lot of compression.

Jonathan Tropper

#53. In the first book of my Discworld series, published more than 26 years ago, I introduced Death as a character; there was nothing particularly new about this - death has featured in art and literature since medieval times, and for centuries we have had a fascination with the Grim Reaper.

Terry Pratchett

#54. For my wrap present, Colin Farrell gave me a first edition book. I got so involved with this character and I was so sad when the movie was over that when I got home and I tried to read the book I got really emotional and I started crying.

Salma Hayek

#55. Besides it's not as though the prisoner can truly die, any more than a character in a novel can. You can always flip back to the first page, can't you?

Django Wexler

#56. So research is a terribly imperfect science, and you learn an awful lot more after you've published a book, because people keep writing to you and saying, 'Oh, gosh, I was related to such and such a character and I have a letter in my possession.'

Simon Winchester

#57. I'm not 'Mr. No-By-The-Book.' I just want to make sure the character is by the book.

Michael Connelly

#58. With the story of your life, you dont get to write the whole book, just your character.

Olivia Munn

#59. When I get an idea for a book, something appeals to me, it's usually a character. I'll see a picture of a female marshal in front of the courthouse in Miami and she's got a shotgun on her hip and it goes up on an angle. And she's good-looking. And I say, 'I've got to use her.'

Elmore Leonard

#60. I don't write the same book over and over - I think if I did that, I would stop writing. I couldn't write a series with the same character, and I couldn't write a romance novel over and over again that takes place at a different beach every year. That's not who I am.

Jodi Picoult

#61. One of the best things about reading comic books, when you're a kid or an adult, is watching the characters cross-over. What happens in one book affects the other, and these shows are so tightly knit that it feels like one giant show.

Andrew Kreisberg

#62. The greatest advantage of books does not always come from what we remember of them, but from their suggestiveness, their character-building power.

Orison Swett Marden

#63. We've all read, I'm sure, a Superman book where we didn't really feel like we knew the character. Where the writer, often with the best of intentions, has tried put a personal stamp on the character, whether it be to try and make him more current, or cool, or have a broader appeal, etc.

Gary Frank

#64. Pete Rose is too rich a character to fit on a bronze plaque. He requires a good, trenchant, poignant (ah, Petey) book, and this is it.

Roy Blount Jr.

#65. The author says one character's definition of a classic is any book he'd heard of before he was thirty.

Sinclair Lewis

#66. Children are illuminated text-books, breviaries of doctrine, living bodies of divinity, open always and inviting their elders to peruse the characters inscribed on the lovely leaves.

Amos Bronson Alcott

#67. Unlike novel characters, comic book characters last an eternity. When a character is changed beyond recognition, there's no longer the merchandising aspect.

Grant Morrison

#68. By mastering character and plot, you give your book a fighting chance and without
character and plot, no book can survive.

Craig Hart

#69. I would much rather read a book about Ty Cobb, who was quite possibly a sociopath. It makes for more interesting copy. Some of the most memorable characters in literature were villains.

Jonathan Weeks

#70. I've often said the reader knows every bit as much about Thorne as I do. When I created him for 'Sleepyhead,' I was determined he should be a character who would develop, book by book, change and grow as we all do, and who - crucially - would be unpredictable.

Mark Billingham

#71. All of my characters are a little bit based on people I know in real life. You know when you do that you have to change the character a little bit in case your friend or your relative reads the book, because you don't want them to know you wrote about them ... They might get mad.

Meg Cabot

#72. Most bad books get that way because their authors are engaged in trying to justify themselves. If a vain author is an alcoholic, then the most sympathetically portrayed character in his book will be an alcoholic. This sort of thing is very boring for outsiders.

Stephen Vizinczey

#73. It feels to me like 'Shazam' will have a tone unto itself. It's a DC comic, but it's not a Justice League character, and it's not a Marvel comic. The tone and the feeling of the movie will be different from the other range of comic book movies.

Toby Emmerich

#74. Why not dream your own wonderful sequels? When you have finished a book, it can go on in your mind, the characters doing just what you want them to do.

Marguerite Henry

#75. Am I a guy who writes about himself in a comic book, or am I just a character in that book? If I die, will that character keep going, or will he just fade away?

Harvey Pekar

#76. Before I start a book, I talk over my characters with a friend who is a counselor. I like to make sure I have the right dynamics in place and understand each character's belief system, fears, coping mechanisms and things like that.

Chevy Stevens

#77. Tick is a cartoon character, I don't know if you're familiar with him. This is the third step in his evolution. Comic book to cartoon to, now, live-action.

Patrick Warburton

#78. I do believe, especially with the character of Batman, that the tone and the mood of the book is 80% of the job right there. And the more control I had over the story, the more control I had over the tone and the mood.

David Finch

#79. If you just read the book, you're taking in the narrative, you're taking in the characters, you're understanding it in a certain way. If you make a movie it's really an act of translation.

James Franco

#80. There's no way the writing staff of 'Game of Thrones' haven't read 'The Art of War.' There's definitely an influence on 'Game of Thrones' from this book in both a general way and on the character of Lord Baelish and his strategies.

Aidan Gillen

#81. When we read a book, we have a blurry image that's kind of physical but blurry. But we have an emotional image also. We have an emotional connection to the character.

Niels Arden Oplev

#82. Books opened up a whole new world to me. Through them I discovered new ideas, traveled to new places, and met new people. Books helped me learn to understand other people and they taught me a lot about myself. ... Some books you never forget. Some characters become your friends for life.

Judy Blume

#83. I put my heart and soul into my book - great story and awesome characters ... yet people are trying to pull me down.

Nick Simmons

#84. We had 1 book, the phone book, I've read it, it wasn't a great read, lots of characters, and on the end loads of polish people turn up.

Stephen K. Amos

#85. If you over-plot your book you strangle your characters. Your characters have to have enough freedom and life to be able to surprise you.

Alan Lightman

#86. If you spend long enough realizing a character in your book, congratulations, you've made a friend for life.

Michael R. French

#87. It's difficult to write a book where a character is on virtually every page of the book but you cannot refer to his or her gender. It gets rid of every his, her, she and he.

William Least Heat-Moon

#88. Books can change your life. Some of the most influential people in our lives are characters we meet in books.

David McCullough

#89. Probably every book I read influenced me in some small way. Authors like Jan Westcott, Kathleen Winsor, Catherine Cookson, Georgette Heyer, and even Barbara Cartland taught me to write character-driven stories.

Virginia Henley

#90. The difference between the world of pictures and the world of printed matter is extraordinary and hard to define. A picture is like the masses: a multitude of impressions. A book on the other hand, with its linear advance of words and characters seems to be connected to individual identity.

Don DeLillo

#91. Bob Harras' personal and creative integrity is respected and renowned throughout the comic book industry. As an editor, he provides invaluable insight into storytelling and character.

Jim Lee

#92. I'm not the protagonist of a novel or anything...
I'm just a normal college student who likes to read...
But...
If I were to write a book with me as tge main character...
It would be...
...A tragedy.

Sui Ishida

#93. Every man is an original and solitary character. None can either understand or feel the book of his own life like himself.

Richard Cecil

#94. All of the disparate books on my list contain characters, scenes or voices that linger long past the last page of their stories.

Maureen Corrigan

#95. We knew Terry Brooks' work, but we hadn't read the Shannara books. So, they sent us the book to read and we just loved the story and the characters. We thought it would make a very compelling season of television. We were like, "Someone is going to make this. Why don't we do it?"

Miles Millar

#96. I am thrilled when I read about fans using my stories as springboards to read about either the historical characters or the myths and legends in the books.

Michael Scott

#97. I can't help but think that, comic book-wise, this whole episode would probably fill nothing but a couple interlude frames; like that moment where a character has a sepia-tinted dream before crashing back into their real story.

Melissa Keil

#98. The story drove the book. That had a very seminal effect on the way I saw writing and storytelling. If you can set a character in a story that is compelling and has a backbone, you draw people in.

Dick Wolf

#99. Character, that subtle art, disappeared among them during those days and nights, existed only in a book or on a painted wall.

Michael Ondaatje

#100. I wrote three mysteries and then a contemporary spy novel that was unbelievably derivative - completely based on 'The Conversation,' the movie with Gene Hackman. Amazingly, the character in the book looks exactly like ... Gene Hackman.

Alan Furst