Characters In Books Quotes

“You might get to know characters in books, Ollie thought, but getting to know a human was an entirely different thing.”
― Katherine Arden, Small Spaces

“In the books I find the thrum of everything unsayable. The characters weep the way I want to, love the way I want to, cry, die, beat their breasts, and bray with life.”
― Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir

“She had a way about her that spoke of homemade bread, and caring for people, and the kind of patience that women have when they help a ewe birth a lamb, or stay up in the night with a baby calf bawling for its momma.”
― James Aura, When Saigon Surrendered: A Kentucky Mystery

“The best stories come from deep within us and are of us. Either our inner child comes out to play and makes all things possible, or we mold our characters and events from our own experiences, or our dreams of wanting to experience.”
― Judith Kohnen, One Chance, One Moment

“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, The Innocence of Objects

“Perhaps this is what Henry James meant when he talked about the “irresponsibility” of characters. Characters are irresponsible, art is irresponsible when compared to life, because it is first and foremost important that a character be real, and as readers or watchers we tend to applaud any effort made towards the construction of that reality. We do not, of course, indulge actual people in the world this way at all. In real life, the fact that something seems real to someone is not enough to interest us, or to convince us that that reality is interesting. But the self-reality of fictional characters is deeply engrossing, which is why villains are lovable in literature in ways that they are not in life.”
― James Wood, The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel

“Vladimir stood next to one of the beams on the back porch of our new home, leaning on his back. He reached in his pocket and grabbed a pack of cigarettes, Marlboro Reds which were his favorites, and he lit one up. He was dressed all in black; black skinny jeans, black studded belt, black tennis shoes, black v neck shirt and he had the hood of his black jacket up over his head. He looked cool and collected, and somewhat villainous.” -Nina Jean Slack, Once Lost, Forever Found (Vol. #1)”
― Nina Jean Slack, Once Lost, Forever Found

“You mean Piglet. The little fellow with the excited ears. That's Piglet.”
― A.A. Milne, Christopher Robin Gives Pooh a Party

“Whether a character is good or evil depends on your perspective.”
― Steve Jones Snr

“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, Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

“Experience-taking changes us by allowing us to merge our own lives with those of the characters we read about. It doesn’t happen all the time. It only occurs when people are able, in a sense, to forget about themselves and their own self-concept and self-identity while reading.You have to be able to take yourself out of the picture, and really lose yourself in the book in order to have this authentic experience of taking on a character’s identity.”
― Lisa Libby

“You live like comfortable strangers. Like characters in a play.”
― Aryn Kyle, Boys and Girls Like You and Me: Stories

“I floundered over job listings and career discussions with headhunters, none of them appealing to me, the idea of going back to a nine-to-five job, crammed into subway cars like cattle, staring at spreadsheets all day with Micromanaging Marks and Type-A Taras hovering around me a soul-crushing prospect.”
― K.A. Tucker, Wild at Heart

“The reality I submerse myself in when writing, is far greater than the physical reality surrounding me at work!”
― D.P. Hall

“Some characters touch your heart, then tear it apart.”
― Dasha Levitsky

“He was an angel. He was better than an angel—he was an archangel. He was a saint. He was going to get so much karma for this. Buddha was going to love him.”
― Nash Summers, Maps

“Leah Catherine Burke is an actual genius, and we should never ever doubt her music taste.”
― Becky Albertalli, Leah on the Offbeat

“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

“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, Blood's Veil

“My problem as a writer is that—whenever I meet someone for the first time—I immediately invent for them a personality and background that are invariably more interesting than the ones they possess. And confirming this character to be uninteresting after a few minutes of conversation, I decide that they are unnecessary to my story and begin devising ways to kill them off.”
― James Rozoff

“I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing - that it all started with a mouse”
― Walt Disney

“The peculiarly intense sense of drama and 'eventness' that rivets the attention of Dostoevsky's readers results from their intuitive sense that the author is learning about the characters as much as they are.”
― Gary Saul Morson, Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter