Erik Larson Quotes

Part of being a fiction writer is being able to imagine how someone else is thinking and feeling. I think I've always been good at that.

Yes, of course it's fun to play evil, but it's simply fun to play any different characters.

Writing fiction is an act of imaginative empathy.

I just try to put myself in the minds of all the characters.

As a writer, it is always fun to imagine yourself in someone else's shoes.

The story is a machine for empathy. In contrast to logic or reason, a story is about emotion that gets staged over a sequence of dramatic moments, so you empathize with the characters without really thinking about it too much. It is a really powerful tool for imagining yourself in other people's situations.

One of the amazing things about writing fiction is that you do get to be other people.

You have to have empathy, knowledge and compassion for your characters if you're a writer.

When I write, I'm constantly putting myself in the position of someone else as I write using myriad voices; I think that's a life skill all people should learn.

I don't have to live the lives of my characters to write about them. It's about really putting yourself in their shoes.

The great thing about fiction is you can fix things and make things better.

What I love about my work is that I'm forced to look through my character's eyes.

One of the great things about fiction is you can use an issue and describe it in human terms.

Good history is good story-telling. And good story-telling demands empathy; it requires understanding different actors, differing motivations, competing goals.

I don't want to draw from my own experiences in life. I first like to become the character and then think from her point of view.

I was an actor for a little bit. That's when I started to understand fiction - and that one of the great things about fiction is that you're dependent on the characters as much as they're dependent on you.

There are aspects of writing that require you to image yourself in various roles and guises, to stand in the shoes of others, to 'act' on an inner stage.

The joy of writing drama is putting yourself into different people's heads.

What I do in the writing of any character is to try to enter into the mind, heart and skin of a human being who is not myself. It is the act of a writer's imagination that I set the most high.

What I try to do in writing any character is to put myself in his position.

In all my characters, I try to find an iota of myself, and in Castle, I found a lot. He gets away with a lot, so that's fun.

I like to play people that are real, a real person, and then something that's interesting with that person. I think it's a lot more challenging to do that than something that's extremely fantasy-like.

When you write fiction, you have an ideal reader in your mind who's sort of you but smarter.

What interests me in writing a novel is taking really remote voices, characters, and stories and beginning to create some kind of web.

Literature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you'll behave to other people.