Jennifer Egan Quotes

I always find stuff in my characters to relate to.

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

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.

As a writer, it's a great narrative tool to have that character who is slightly detached but at the same time observant of his reality, because I think that's pretty much what being a writer is - being there, watching and internalizing.

The great thing about writing is that you always put yourself in the shoes of the character. If you're doing it right, you can see into the heart of all your characters. Usually, when there's a writing problem, it's because you aren't doing that.

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

There are technical tricks that may help you create more effective characters. My approach to characterization is not at all technical. I can't really analyze how I do it, but I am sure of one thing. To write convincing characters, you must possess the ability to think yourself into someone else's skin.

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.

I want to have compassion for my characters - I feel like I am the characters when I'm writing them.

When I'm writing a book, sentence by sentence, I'm not thinking theoretically. I'm just trying to work out the story from inside the characters I've got.

To write convincingly, I think you must be able to relate, in some way, to what a character is experiencing.

I identify in some measure with each of my characters.

I do feel like that's what a writer does, is he goes into other people's heads.

As you become acquainted with a character you are creating, you add parts of yourself that are pertinent to that character.

There are bits of me in all my characters.

When I'm writing fiction, I'm sort of interested by the fact that somehow or other I can have the feeling of actually seeing things through someone else's eyes.

I guess I see a part of myself in everyone I write about. I tend to write about kids who are obsessed with something, and even though I have never been good with machines the way Hugo is, I did love miniature things when I was a kid.

I wrote my first play at the age of 10, 55 years ago, and I've always found it a fantastic relief to imagine I know what things would be like from the point of view of other individuals and to send out signals from where I actually am not. Playwrights never need to write from the place where they are.

The characters in my stories all have quite loud lives in my head. It's a relief to get them on the page. Often they come from people I've noticed or overheard - but that is only a part of them. It's only by writing that I discover who these people really are.

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

As authors, most - most authors, our art is portraying the human condition. Trying to show you what it's like to be somebody else, trying to make you feel for somebody else. That means you have to have a high degree of empathy.

I think the moment you're writing about somebody who's not exactly you, then the challenge is all equal.

Once I started to value and respect my characters, I could really hear them. I just let them start talking.

When I write a book, characters come to life for me somewhere at the back of my head. I strive to make them flesh and blood in an abstract way, in words.

You can start imagining all kinds of things characters would feel, but you have to have a sense of whether those imaginings might be right.