Quotes About Characters In Books

#1. It's funny, when I lived in Ohio, I would read about extraordinary, eccentric characters in books and plays, but I couldn't imagine them in real life. Then I came to New York.

Fiona Davis

#2. But some characters in books are really real
Jane Austen's are; and I know those five Bennets at the opening of Pride and Prejudice, simply waiting to raven the young men at Netherfield Park, are not giving one thought to the real facts of marriage.

Dodie Smith

#3. ...her dearest friends are characters in books.

Sarah J. Maas

#4. Books and characters in books, pictures and elements in pictures - they all have families and ancestors, just like people.

Margaret Atwood

#5. The best characters in books are always the difficult ones, and why would you want to fall in love with someone difficult? The ones I'd fall in love with are the ones I'd definitely keep out of a book.

Patrick Ness

#6. I think to be writer you have to enjoy being alone. I was a loner as a teenager and was always drawn to characters in books and films who were at the fringes.

Markus Zusak

#7. All the children seem to be coming out quite intelligent, thank goodness. It would have been such a bore to be the mother of morons, and it's an absolute toss-up, isn't it? If one could only invent them, like characters in books, it would be much more satisfactory to a well-regulated mind.

Dorothy L. Sayers

#8. Every reader knows about the feeling that characters in books seem more real than real people.

Cornelia Funke

#9. Unlikable characters in books are interesting. Unlikable characters in life are hell.

John King

#10. Comic book fans have loved Wolverine, and all the 'X-Men' characters, for more than the action. I think that's what set it apart from many of the other comic books. In the case of Wolverine, when he appeared, he was a revolution really. He was the first anti-hero.

Hugh Jackman

#11. I love thinking of movie stars who could play the characters in the books I write. I think Charlize Theron would make a lovely Marie Antoinette.

Kathryn Lasky

#12. 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

#13. I never try to give a message in my books. It's about living with characters long enough to hear their voices and let them tell me the story. Sometimes I would love to have a happy ending, and it doesn't happen because the character or the story leads me in another direction.

Isabel Allende

#14. I always love writing the third book in a series because you get to tie up all the threads that you put out in the first two books. You finally let people know what really happens and reveal all the secrets and bring certain characters together.

Trudi Canavan

#15. In real life, people are integrated into society. That's what happens in my books as well. Minor characters don't just walk in and spout lines, they interact and have an effect on the events. It's not an isolated universe.

Stieg Larsson

#16. I think that people who stand up for what they believe in, no matter how unpopular, should be celebrated, not cast aside.

Craig Lancaster

#17. All my early books are written as if I were Indian. In England, I had started writing as if I were English; now I write as if I were American. You take other people's backgrounds and characters; Keats called it negative capability.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

#18. A writing teacher once told me that the most successful movies and books were simple plots about complex characters. You should be able to articulate your concept in a couple of lines.

James Scott Bell

#19. You mean Piglet. The little fellow with the excited ears. That's Piglet.

A.A. Milne

#20. Ultimately, my books are not about the politics, although the toil and the struggle and the wars in Afghanistan have a significant impact on the lives of my characters.

Khaled Hosseini

#21. As you write your novel, you gradually start thinking like some of your characters in it. And at times the writer may lose himself completely in some character.

Avijeet Das

#22. The worst part of writing is meeting all these great new characters and having no one to talk about (the adventures you share with) them.

Claudia Bakker

#23. Many of us would not make terribly interesting characters in a novel.

Claire Wingfield

#24. J. K. Rowling has said that she was bullied in school. She was a daydreamer and had her nose in books all the time, much like some of her characters today.

Alexandra Robbins

#25. The characters in my books all resemble each other. They live, with minor variations, the same moments, the same perils, and when I speak of them, my language, which is inspired by them, repeats the same poems in the same tone.

Jean Genet

#26. Once I had opened a book and read its pages, those characters could never be taken away from me. Even if the books were burned, they would still live on in my mind.

Jennifer Wilson

#27. I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should accept more kindly, and even appreciate more clearly, if we simply thought of them as people in a story.

G.K. Chesterton

#28. 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

#29. When I first started writing the books in the 1980s, all of the female detectives were flawed in some way because they were based on noir characters.

Kerry Greenwood

#30. I don't live life a whole lot differently than some of the more notable characters in my books. It has been a road less traveled, but worth every step along the way.

P.S. Meronek

#31. 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

#32. I remember that feeling when I was a young reader: finding books that were set in Sydney with Australian characters was incredibly exciting.

Justine Larbalestier

#33. 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

#34. I believe in books. I believe more in 'cross-media' - how characters are adapting across mediums.

Bing Gordon

#35. My books are love stories at core, really. But I am interested in manifestations of love beyond the traditional romantic notion. In fact, I seem not particularly inclined to write romantic love as a narrative motive or as an easy source of happiness for my characters.

Khaled Hosseini

#36. 'Lord of the Rings' was a set of books in which the world had been conceived before the characters were placed within that context.

Mark Z. Danielewski

#37. 'Books had always been my best friends and all I wanted to do was lose myself in them, and better yet if the worlds and characters were of my own making.'

Fae Sutherland

#38. Nora Roberts, Stephen King, Lee Child and George R. R. Martin write wildly different books. Their writing, plotting and styles have little or nothing in common. But they all write books and characters that readers find appealing.

M.J. Rose

#39. As a kid, I always loved serialized books. It's the reason why people love 'Harry Potter.' Serialization is amazing. It works in television. It works in film and it works in books. Especially when you're a young kid, you get attached to these characters.

Mindy Kaling

#40. Good fiction often gives us characters in extremity, which ironically gives us a clearer mirror in which to see ourselves.

Sarah Van Arsdale

#41. I try to widen the horizons of every child I meet, and part of that is promoting diverse forms, be it graphic novels, stories told in a narrative voice, or more translated books, as well as more diverse writers and more diverse characters.

Malorie Blackman

#42. I've tried to be inclusive in my '2B' series. Over the course of three books, I wrote African-American characters, a paraplegic character, gay and lesbian characters, a bisexual, Jewish heroine, a multiracial hero, Korean and Chinese-American characters, and a multiracial supporting character.

Ann Aguirre

#43. Realisation danced across his face; she saw the hurt in his eyes. And a twisted, darker piece of her almost enjoyed it. The air in the room, stale with blood and sweat, and pure horror, hummed in the aftermath of her words. And finally, Ella knew what had to be done.

Shona Moyce

#44. My books often involve characters who began in some form of mental isolation, with a feeling of having died to the world. Then they become involved in some kind of action where by necessity they're forced to reengage, to get back into the game of life, as it were. You could say that about 'Chance.'

Kem Nunn

#45. I like the superhero comic books, and I like to see what the actors do creatively with the characters and how they bring these superheroes to life in the movies.

Max Charles

#46. You live like comfortable strangers. Like characters in a play.

Aryn Kyle

#47. My favourite book - 'The Good Soldier' by Ford Madox Ford, which I have read about 20 times - is different from my favourite author, who is Iris Murdoch. I find her books exciting and unputdownable. Her characters are so carefully studied and in-depth; I love that.

Ruth Rendell

#48. I thought about writing the character as male, but then I would be forced to portray him as a woman in a man's body.

Christopher Stocking

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

David McCullough

#50. Of course I consider myself a Jewish writer - I am one! All of the protagonists in my five books have been Jewish, and I wouldn't be surprised if all my future main characters were as well.

Lauren Weisberger

#51. The female characters in my books tend to be independent, frisky, spunky, witty, emotionally strong, erotically daring, spiritually oriented and intellectually generous; in short, the kind of women I admire in real life.

Tom Robbins

#52. [When under stress I thought of] the books I had read [and applied] them to myself. I [imagined I was] one of the characters [and soon found myself] in made-up circumstances which were most agreeable to my inclinations.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#53. 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

#54. Main characters never die in books. If they did, the story would be ruined, or over."
"Everybody is a main character to someone. There are no minor characters.

Amy Harmon

#55. I do like to explore evil characters in my books.

Thomas Perry

#56. I'm one of those writers who, when writing, believes she's god-and that she hasn't bestowed free will on any of her characters. In that sense there are no surprises in any of my books.

Lynn Abbey

#57. Sure, I'll have characters drop in and out of books but the main cast of characters always changes. Maybe I'm wrong but I think if had the same joe detective guy or gal, I wouldn't write them as well; I wouldn't do as good a job.

Carl Hiaasen

#58. You leave the previous book with idea's and themes - characters even - caught in the fibers of your clothing - and when you open a new book, they are still with you.

Diane Setterfield

#59. I care more about the people in books than the people I see every day.

Jo Walton

#60. I have an idea for a story, and if the idea is going to work, then one of the characters steps forward, and I hear her voice telling the story. This is what has happened with all the books I've written in the first person.

Laurie Graham

#61. 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

#62. You can't have too much dog in a book.

Gail Honeyman

#63. The only thing that I discovered very early on is that, even though we might change schools and cities and towns and states, the books in the library were the same. They had the same covers. They had the same characters. I could go and visit those people in the library as if I knew them.

J. Michael Straczynski

#64. We don't want to create a literary ghetto in which black writers are only allowed to write black characters and women writers are put on 'girl books.'

G. Willow Wilson

#65. He let the hours go by lost in the magic of words, shedding his skin and his name, feeling like another person. He allowed himself to be carried away by the dreams of shadowy characters, the only refuge left for him.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#66. I write what I want to write. Period. I don't write novels-for-hire using media tie-in characters, I don't write suspense novels or thrillers. I write horror. And if no one wants to buy my books, I'll just keep writing them until they do sell
and get a job at Taco Bell in the meantime.

Bentley Little

#67. 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

#68. Heart is what drives us and determines our fate. That is what I need for my characters in my books: a passionate heart. I need mavericks, dissidents, adventurers, outsiders and rebels, who ask questions, bend the rules and take risks.

Isabel Allende

#69. I want readers turning pages until three o'clock in the morning. I want the themes of books to stick around for a reader. I'm always trying to find a way to balance characters and theme.

Guy Gavriel Kay

#70. What I like writing about are people's relationships, not necessarily great big dramatic things but the smaller things in life and how they affect characters and challenge and change the people that they are. I do like a happy ending, so my books have to have a happy ending.

Penny Jordan

#71. Most of these wild animals depart in autumn when the sun changes their behavior and they feel the urge to migrate or go off alone. While they are with us, however, they become characters in my books, articles, and stories.

Jean Craighead George

#72. People focus on the darker female characters in my books, but for every one of those, I can also show you an equally screwed up man that no one ever comments about, or a nicer woman that no one comments about.

Gillian Flynn

#73. It [the Harlem Renaissance] was a time of black individualism, a time marked by a vast array of characters whose uniqueness challenged the traditional inability of white Americans to differentiate between blacks.

Clement Alexander Price

#74. 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

#75. Please,Tana,please.' -lots of characters in The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Holly Black

#76. I always think that it's wrong to put images of my protagonists on the cover of my novels because readers can identify with characters only if they are given the chance to imagine them independently.

Orhan Pamuk

#77. Unlike other books or TV shows or sometimes life, my narrative worlds are stripped of implicit moral centers. There is only what you bring. That makes the characters risky in every way and the narrative, a journey of change for the reader. But I make the journey as fun as I can.

Chris Abani

#78. I'm a feminist. The women in my books in recent years have been powerful characters and I love to see a woman with a cute bottom walking past.

Wilbur Smith

#79. Speaking as a writer, I'm not interested in trends, I want to write books that are honest, with characters as true to the inner world of the story as I can make them.

Susan Patron

#80. He sits at the table and reads novels, old favorites of his, the words and plots and characters comforting and lived-in and unchanged.

Hanya Yanagihara

#81. Real teenage boys aren't like characters in the books you read. They smell funny and are obsessed with video games and say dumb things. They're still learning, just like you.

Stacey Jay

#82. Of all the characters I've played, I relate the most to Isabel in Hugo. She's so adventurous and fun. She just loves reading books and those are her adventures. Isabel is a heightened version of my personality.

Chloe Grace Moretz

#83. I hope that when the characters in my novels dream beyond their current circumstance, it inspires the reader to do the same.

Kristine Scarrow

#84. I've lived the lives of all the characters in all my books, and all their mighty wisdom thunders in my head.

Eliezer Yudkowsky

#85. 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

#86. My books are based on emotions, feelings, relationships. In these areas women are experts, so it's not strange that the main characters of my novels are females.

Isabel Allende

#87. I started as a playwright. Any sort of scriptwriting you do helps you hone your story. You have the same demands of creating a plot, developing relatable characters and keeping your audience invested in your story. My books are basically structured like three-act plays.

Suzanne Collins

#88. In a book, even the real bastards can't hurt you. And you can never loose a friend you make in a book. When you get to a sad part, no one's there to see you cry. Or wonder why you don't cry when you should.

Dean Koontz

#89. Getting all emotionally wrapped up in made-up people's lives gives me a chance to take a break from my own life [ ... ].

Arlaina Tibensky

#90. I'm a huge comic book collector. When I was a kid, I had both Marvel and DC. I was my own librarian. I made card files. I had origin stories of all the characters, and cross-referenced when they appeared in other comic books. I was full on.

James Mangold

#91. I spend many hours in conversation with wonderful characters from fantastic books.

Patti Roberts

#92. I have always loved and avidly read the novels of Jack London, Jules Verne and Ernest Hemingway. The characters depicted in their books, who are brave and resourceful people embarking on exciting adventures, definitely shaped my inner self and nourished my love for the outdoors.

Vladimir Putin

#93. In other people's books, I tend to love the really daredevil-y characters. I love Finnick from 'The Hunger Games.' And I think, probably, my favorite character of all time is Sherlock Holmes.

Cassandra Clare

#94. The distinguished dead are clay in the hands of writers, and chance determines the shapes that their characters assume in the books written about them.

Janet Malcolm

#95. Whether a character is good or evil depends on your perspective.

Steve Jones Snr

#96. What I've always tried to find in my books are points at which the private lives of the characters, and also my own, intersect with the public life of the culture.

Salman Rushdie

#97. All the characters in my books are imagined, but all have a bit of who I am in them - much like the characters in your dreams are all formed by who you are.

Alice Hoffman

#98. In fiction, I tend to write fairly realistic dialogue-not always, and it tends to vary
from book to book. But in many books, there is a colloquialism of address. The characters will speak in a quite idiosyncratic way sometimes.

Don DeLillo

#99. Most of the books that feature supernatural characters blending with the modern world and are usually set in big cities.

Charlaine Harris

#100. I usually dislike second books in series. The only second installment I ever loved was 'The Empire Strikes Back,' and I think that was wonderful because it evolved the characters while not seeming like a bridge.

Pierce Brown