Fictional Characters Quotes

How many of us count fictional characters, or those we've never met, among our closest friends? My hand's up. ~ Richard Bach

The choice of the point(s) of view from which the story is told is arguably the most important single decision that the novelist has to make, for it fundamentally affects the way readers will respond, emotionally and morally, to the fictional characters and their actions. The story of an adultery, for instance - any adultery - will affect us differently according to whether it is presented primarily from the point of view of the unfaithful person, or the injured spouse, or the lover - or as observed by some fourth party. Madame Bovary narrated mainly from the point of view of Charles Bovary would be a very different book from the one we know. ~ David Lodge

Real people are made out of a whole lot of things - flesh, bone, blood, nerves, stuff like that. Literary people are made out of words. ~ Thomas C. Foster

By the way, the best place to find names for fictional characters, if you are ever foolish enough to write a novel, is in a Bradshaw or an ABC. All the nicest people always sound like railway stations. ~ Beverley Nichols

A plot, I used to remind my students, is not merely a sequence of events: "A" followed by "B" followed by "C" followed by "D." Rather, it's a series of events linked by cause and effect: "A" causes "B," which causes "C," and so on. True, a person's (or a fictional character's) destiny may be more than the sum of his choices
fate and luck play a role as well
but only scientists (and not all of them) believe that free will is a sham. People in life
and therefore in fiction
must choose, and their choices must have meaningful consequences. Otherwise, there's no story. ~ Richard Russo

Amanda herself couldn't understand why her writing was so different from her own personality. Her pen seemed to take on a life of its own when she sat before a sheaf of blank parchment paper. She wrote about characters unlike any people she had ever known... sometimes violent, brutal, always passionate; some who came to ruin and some who even triumphed in spite of their own lack of morality. Since she had no actual pattern on which to base these fictional characters, Amanda realized that their feelings, their passions, could only have come from inside herself. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Why bother with fictional characters and plots when the world was full of more marvelous stories that were true, with characters so fresh, so powerful, so new, that they stepped from into the narratives under their own power? ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

I love working fictional characters into a piece of history. It plays to my strengths, which are characterization and dialogue, and assists me in my admitted weakness, plot. ~ Laurie Graham

The genealogy of fictional characters can become an obsession, like train-spotting, and should be firmly resisted. ~ Tariq Ali

The world is a stage we walk upon. We are all in a way fictional characters who write ourselves with our beliefs. ~ Louis Theroux

Look seeker, if you love a character, you give them pain, ruin their lives, make them suffer. Maybe even throw in a heroic death! ~ Varric Tethras

The language fictional characters use is chosen for effect, at least if the author is concentrating. ~ John M. Ford

If you ever meet someone who thinks they are so special, the best thing to do is smile. You don't have to say anything. Be friendly and then go do
your best. That will make you special, too! ~ Jeff Hutchins

I love fictional characters ... they can't break your heart. ~ Julia Hall

Talking out loud to fictional characters is just the tip of the iceberg. ~ Jodi Picoult

Sometimes, authors' descriptions of unique fictional characters are like mirrors that reflect the readers image back. ~ Ben Abix

Heavy is the head that holds the pen of creation. We construct these characters from nothing, molding them from our imaginations. We give them hopes and dreams and unique personalities until they feel so real you're mind believes it must be so. We watch them grow by our hands, not always knowing the paths they will choose with the obstacles we throw at them. They take on a life of their own and often surprise even us by their actions we couldn't have imagined before it poured out of us onto the paper. We could change it if we really wanted to, but it would be forced and not be true to the characters. And when something tragic happens and one is lost, we feel that loss even though we know they were not a friend, a family member or even ourselves. It can be a hard thing to voice sometimes, to give tribute to the one's left behind with the real sadness over something not so real. But we find the words and press on to the next challenge, because that's what good writers do. ~ Jennifer A. Marsh

My previous outlook could be summed up as follows: Life is shit. Math makes sense. Fictional characters are superior to real people because real people are equal parts pitiful and predictable. ~ Penny Reid

A writer often wants to change a reader's perception about the world, which is a political act. But we have to work through character, so helping the reader to feel close to fictional characters is the gate through which we have to usher the reader. ~ Caryl Phillips

I quote fictional characters, because I'm a fictional character myself! ~ Carrie Fisher

But I have always believed that stories, too, have a similar effect on us. I am not saying that fiction has the magnitude of an earthquake, but when we are inside a good novel we leave our cozy, small apartments behind and, through fictional characters, find ourselves getting to know people we had never met before, and perhaps had even disliked as Our others. ~ Elif Shafak

Oh god, Anabeth," Ellie muttered. "Your whole life is based around sex." "So?" she shot back. "It's better than having sex with fictional characters!" Ellie shot up out of my desk chair. "I do not have sex with fictional characters!" "Oh puh-lease, I've seen the books you read, all big muscley men and virginal women and steamy sex. Why else would you read that crap if not to get off? ~ Madeline Sheehan

Fictional characters exert a great deal of influence over our choices in love by representing inaccessible ideals to which we try to make others conform, usually without success. But more subtly, too, the books we love offer a sketch of a whole universe that we secretly inhabit, and in which we desire the other person to assume a role. ~ Pierre Bayard

I write fiction not for my readers and not for myself. I write fiction for the sake of those odd heroic characters that are contained therein. They are counting on me as much as I am counting on them. ~ Nicholas Trandahl

There are only two things you'll ever need to know about me, Farin - and you should know them well. I'm very smart, and I'm very rich. ~ Heather O'Brien

I take writing very seriously. There's a lot of responsibility in putting blood in the veins of fictional characters. ~ Brooklyn Hudson

Isn't that dangerous?" I objected. "What if somebody used it on people - what if they put it on replace and turned us all into fictional characters?"
"How do you know they haven't?" asked Marc. ~ Polly Shulman

What does it say about me that I'm jealous of the lives of fictional characters? ~ Alyssa Goodnight

Fictional characters also evolve, the way human being do in real life. ~ Saumya Kaushik...

It is difficult when reading the description of certain fictional characters not at the same time to imagine the real-life acquaintances who they most closely, if often unexpectedly, resemble. ~ Alain De Botton

I'm not normally one to take advice from my fictional characters, but there comes a point in every girl's life where she reaches a crossroads: a night alone with her sweatpants and her favorite television show, or a party with real, live, breathing people. ~ Francesca Zappia

Fictional characters soon take on a life of their own. They run with the bit between their teeth. ~ Jay Parini

One likes to think that there is some fantastic limbo for the children of imagination, some strange, impossible place where the beaux of Fielding may still make love to the belles of Richardson, where Scott's heroes still may strut, Dickens's delightful Cockneys still raise a laugh, and Thackeray's worldlings continue to carry on their reprehensible careers. Perhaps in some humble corner of such a Valhalla, Sherlock and his Watson may for a time find a place, while some more astute sleuth with some even less astute comrade may fill the stage which they have vacated. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I do believe that characters in novels belong to their writers and their readers pretty equally. I've learned a lot of things about the characters I write from people who read about them. Readers expand them in ways I don't think of and take them to places I can't go. ~ Ann Brashares

Nerd Girl Problem # 235
That unexplainable crush you have on fictional characters. ~ Ella Frank

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

Is the writer cruel that makes his characters suffer only to bring them to triumph or tragedy in the end? ~ Johnny Rich

I laughed. It was just like Owen to make excuses for someone else's shortcomings. Even fictional characters. Owen found my tendency to speak my mind "refreshingly honest," and hailed Marc's temper as "a deep protective instinct." He said Ethan "thoroughly enjoyed life," and that Parker "really knew how to have a good time." According to Owen, we were all doing just fine, and all was right with the world. ~ Rachel Vincent

It is always sad to write about prejudice, but sometimes when we see it being played out in the lives of fictional characters, we can recognize it in our own lives. ~ Katherine Paterson

Writers are magpies, and we collect details about people and we use them for fictional characters. ~ Caroline Leavitt

I'd said to them that when we read fiction, we pour our own paricular store of emotions - say, the sense of loss we feel for those disappeared from our lives - into the characters set before us. We take the few words with which the writer sketches these characters, the thing he said, the pain she felt, where they were, and our own emotional stockpile magically creates people. As the human eye fleshes out the pixilated image. Fictional characters are highly sophiticated Rorschach blots, and we, along with their author, are their authors. When you read a fictional character, you too are creating her. ~ Chandler Burr

And yet, for a writer of fiction, part of the heart remains that of a stranger, for what we are trying to do is to understand those others who are our fictional characters, somehow to gain entrance to their minds and feelings, to respect them for themselves as human individuals, and to portray them as truly as we can. The whole process of fiction is a mysterious one, and a writer, however experienced, remains in some ways a perpetual amateur, or perhaps a perpetual traveller, an explorer of those inner territories, those strange lands of the heart and spirit. ~ Margaret Laurence

If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats. ~ Richard Bach

The world is full of fictional characters looking for their stories ~ Diane Arbus

They were ... no ordinary group, gathering together to kill an evening, to seek refuge from critical husbands and demanding children while idly discussing their new best-seller. They met because literature was their shared passion. Books were as important to them as breath itself. They shared the ability to immerse themselves in the lives of fictional characters, to argue passionately about the development of plots, about decisions taken, dilemmas resolved. ~ Gloria Goldreich

I'm a blank canvas that I can paint however I desire. For the first time ever, I get to be the character in my own fantasy land. ~ E.K. Blair

We referenced fictional characters as if they were people to learn from. As if real-life people were too nebulous, too private and unreal for us to understand. ~ Miguel Syjuco

Some very eminent critics writing in the decades immediately after the novel's publication felt that Eliot failed to maintain sufficient critical distance in her depiction of Ladislaw
that she fell in love with her own creation in a way that shows a lack of artistic control and is even unseemly, like a hoary movie director whose lens lingers too long on the young flesh of a favored actress. Lord David Cecil calls Ladislaw 'a schoolgirl's dream, and a vulgar one at that,' while Leslie Stephen complained 'Ladislaw is almost obtrusively a favorite with his creator,' and depreciated him as 'an amiable Bohemian. ~ Rebecca Mead

Well, the thing about great fictional characters from literature, and the reason that they're constantly turned into characters in movies, is that they completely speak to what makes people human. ~ Keira Knightley

You can have a very intense relationship with fictional characters because they are in your own head. ~ J.K. Rowling

Meaning, yes
I don't really exist except on the page or in the back of your brain. But if you think it's weird a fictional character's telling this story, you ain't seen what happened, yet. ~ Kyle Michel Sullivan

Even fictional characters sometimes receive unwarranted medical opinions. Doctors have diagnosed Ebenezer Scrooge with OCD, Sherlock Holmes with autism, and Darth Vader with borderline personality disorder. ~ Sam Kean

Leave me alone to mourn the deaths of fictional characters I have become overly attached to. ~ Your Ecards

There are no such things as fictional characters. ~ Matthew Quick

As you read deeper into the novel, you must modify your representations of the folk psychological representations that each character has. But since the metarepresentational load here increases dramatically with the complexity of the portrayal of the characters and their relationships to one another, it is no surprise that even partial expertise typically involves knowing how to find one's way about in the novel. It involves knowing how to locate and identify the folk psychological representations that respective characters have, and the signs of these in the novel itself. Here the representations that are the object of your own representations are located somewhere other than in your own head. In short, this understanding involves constructing a representational loop that extends beyond the head and into the minds of the fictional characters - and perhaps the narrator or even the author - with which you are engaged. ~ Robert Andrew Wilson

Old bookworms never die, they just go to be with their favorite fictional characters. ~ Random

My shows and books are an instant mood adjuster. They're my drugs of choice. And the fictional characters I love are like my friends. ~ Susane Colasanti

Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off. ~ John Banville

I feel like these characters, these places, these beings and plots, and even these inanimate objects are counting on me for survival. It's my responsibility to reveal them to the world, to show my readers the names of these things, to show them their histories and stories. ~ Nicholas Trandahl

And I am not one of these long-living fictional characters who prays for death as a release from the captivity of eternal life; not for me the endless whining and wailing of the undead. ~ John Boyne

For four days straights, I sit at my typewriter in my bedroom. Twenty of my typed pages, full of slashes and red-circled edits, become thirty-one in thick Strathmore white. ~ Kathryn Stockett

Eliot was scornful of idle women readers who imagined themselves the heroines of French novels, and of self-regarding folk who saw themselves in the most admirable character in a novel, and she hoped for more nuanced engagement from her own readers. Even so, all readers make books over in their own image, and according to their own experience. ~ Rebecca Mead

The proverb, "Where there's a will.." sums it up for a writer who had just started in his writing life; for himself, the fictional characters and the audience of his works. It's a trinity of perspectives; one of his struggle, another of the story character which he writes about and the last one of the reader's expectation of his protagonists. ~ Lucas Michael

Writing historical novels can be dangerous. We need to be as accurate and as fair about the historical record as we can be, at the same time as creating our fictional characters and, hopefully, telling a good story. The challenge is weaving the fiction into the history. ~ Edward Rutherfurd

I'm trying to listen to my past, listen to what's most deeply going on inside myself, my creative set of fictional characters, a fictional world - to listen to that world, to search. ~ Frederick Buechner

But people do the same thing with the Bible. They memorize all the fictional characters, the parameters and the rules of the game and think it's important, but I can't get excited about that myself. ~ Brad Warner

Some fictions become fixtures in the real city. Their stories are so powerful that they leap off the page on to the streets, irreversibly altering the place where they were set. ~ Henry Eliot

I don't think there is a fictional character who resembles me because fictional characters are not real! ~ Ruth Rendell

Much of the joy in falling in love with fictional characters comes from being able to envision new stories from them. ~ The Atlantic Monthly

There are threads of fiction intricately woven into our muscles. Fictional characters such as Superman, Black Panther, Wonder Woman etc., are birthed from something struggling to come alife from deep within us. ~ Nike Thaddeus

I love to have real people of history interact with my fictional characters. History gives me the plot. I research the period meticulously, and then I blend in a romantic and sensual love story to give it balance. The heavier the history, the more romantic the couple must be. ~ Virginia Henley

Fictional characters exist in only two places, neither of which is on the printed page. They exist, first, in the mind of the writer and, second, in the mind of the reader. ~ Maren Elwood

In my older songs, I used to hide behind fictional characters to deflect attention away from myself. ~ Mika.

Just because we're fictional characters doesn't mean you can pick us up and move us anywhere you want.
the people of Lake Woebegon ~ Garrison Keillor

Laurent wanted to make sure you never came near me again. He just did not know that as time went on, the world would start to romanticize vampires - fictional characters or not. ~ Inger Iversen

There's power in stories, though. That's all history is: the best tales. The ones that last. Might as well be mine. ~ Varric Tethras

I believed in fictional characters as if they were a part of real life. Poetry was important, too. My parents had memorized poems from their days attending school in New York City and loved reciting them. We all enjoyed listening to these poems and to music as well. ~ Alice McDermott

We only reveal what we want other people to know, right? It's like we create fictional characters for the public. And inside we're somebody totally different. ~ Matt De La Pena

Each week the machine is spitting out a number for a new person or a new world within New York that you get to know. And the idea from the beginning was that some of the characters would stick around and become part of the lives of the show, and the world of the show itself will continue to grow. ~ Jonathan Nolan

Suffering is nature's way of indicating a mistaken attitude or way of behavior, and to the nonegocentric person every moment of suffering is the opportunity for growth. People should rejoice in suffering, strange as it sounds, for this is a sign of the availability of energy to transform their characters. ~ Rollo May

Michael Bohn provides a rare opportunity to experience the American sporting scene in the Roaring Twenties. A constant stream of legendary characters marches across these pages. You'll meet them all: The Babe, The Four Horsemen, The Manassa Manassas Mauler, The Wheaton Iceman, Bill Tilden, Gertrude Ederle, and Grantland Rice, the sportswriter whose purple prose made them all come alive. ~ Peter Golenbock

Making up characters and places and plots, unlike fixing your plumbing or doing dishes, is anything but practical or rational. I write what needs to be written the way that seems genuinely right. ~ Etgar Keret

I want things to be characters and not me. Why would I want to play me? ~ Anton Yelchin

I love it when characters surprise you, just like real people. When I write a scene I just try to make the characters behave in a way that feels natural to them. Sometimes that means they make a left turn and do something unexpected. Those are always the best scenes in my opinion. ~ Brad Falchuk

The best characters are always wretchedly flawed ~ Danai Gurira

We had this party in New York, and there were a lot of gay men there dressed up as the characters. I showed up just looking like myself, but it was a real case of shame. They looked so fantastic. We could never quite live up to it. ~ Jennifer Saunders

I want to try everything I can; I want to push my boundaries and experiment with characters and genres that I have yet to try. ~ Georgia Groome

Sometimes you characters give me a pain in the back of my lap," said Manuel abruptly. "I hang around with you and listen to simple-minded gobbledegook in yard-long language, if it's you talking, Dran, and pink-and-purple sissification from the brat here. Why I do it I'll never know. And it goes that way up to the last gasp. So you're going to leave. Dran has to make a speech, real logical. Vaughn has to blow out a sigh and get misty-eyed." He spat.
"How would you handle it?" Dran asked, amused. Vaughn stared at Manuel whitely.
"Me? You really want to know?"
"This I want to hear," said Vaughn between her teeth.
"I'd wait a while - a long while - until neither of you was talking. Then I'd say, 'I joined the Marines yesterday.' And you'd both look at me a little sad. There's supposed to be something wrong with coming right out and saying something. Let's see. Suppose I do it the way Vaughn would want me to." He tugged at an imaginary braid and thrust out his lower lip in a lampoon of Vaughn's full mouth. He sighed gustily. "I have felt …" He paused to flutter his eyelashes. "I have felt the call to arms," he said in a histrionic whisper. He gazed off into the middle distance. "I have heard the sound of trumpets. The drums stir in my blood." He pounded his temples with his fists. "I can't stand it - I can't! Glory beckons. I will away to foreign strands."
Vaughn turned on her heel, though she made no effort to walk away. Dran roared with laughter.
"A ~ Theodore Sturgeon

What do you do in a novel? You take recognizable characters from your own life, and you fantasize about what they're really like. ~ Joe Klein

Big picture, it's amazing to create characters and see them brought to life in the art. And to love that art. But I especially enjoy writing a character with heightened powers that aren't especially useful to him. ~ Cynthia Leitich Smith

Madeline (said the Countess in a solemn voice), in my concern for your father, I spoke unguardedly; and I already repent having done so from the situation I see you in: but, as some atonement for doing so, I will take this opportunity of cautioning you against all imprudent curiosity; let no incentive from it ever tempt you to seek an explanation of former occurrences; be assured your happiness depends entirely on your ignorance of them: was the dark volume of your father's fate ever opened to your view, peace would for ever forsake your breast; for its characters are marked by horror, and stained with blood. ~ Regina Maria Roche

When you adapt a book to a film, you take all the best parts and put them into an hour and 15 minutes and have to compromise on the characters. ~ Channing Tatum

In what we think of as bad dialogue, the characters talk directly to each other. ~ Diane Johnson

Monkey Beach is a moody, powerful novel full of memorable characters. Reading it was like entering a pool of emerald water to discover a haunted world shivering with loss and love, regret and sorrow, where the spirit world is as real as the human. I was sucked into it with the very first sentence and when I left, it was with a feeling of immense reluctance. ~ Anita Rau Badami

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

Wonderful characters rotate around and through bookshops on a daily basis, competing with and possibly even triumphing over fiction when it comes to entertainment, strangeness and inspiration. ~ Sarah Hall

The problem with being a writer is that some readers tend to think that anything that comes out of a character's mouth is you talking. ~ Mark Billingham

When people do love our show [Heroes] and they put on the costumes, they know everything about our characters. And it is overwhelming at the same time. But you know, it's something that we're grateful and that's the reason why our show's continued to succeed. ~ Hayden Panettiere

It's sad that women characters have lost so much ground in popular movies. Didn't 'Thelma and Louise' prove that women want to see women doing things on film? Thelma and Louise were in a classic car; they were being chased by cops; they shot up a truck - and women loved it. ~ Robin Quivers

But, while Starkfield is modeled on a fairly specific place (New England), we can also think of it as any place that a person gets stuck in, any place where it seems impossible to stay, and impossible to leave. This can be a geographical location, a state of mind, a building or a city, or tiny kitchen on a broken down farm.

When we notice that there is also a "Springfield" in the story, we realize that Starkfield (stark meaning, hard, bare, difficult) really is supposed to be the place of eternal hardship. Springfield is the place Zeena goes to visit doctors and get medicine. This is perhaps to emphasize that Starkfield has the absolute worst kind of winters you can imagine. This also emphasizes that spring (and health) is always a false promise for the characters ~ Unknown