Dakota Fanning Quotes

One of the things about writing fiction is that you create people that you feel, more or less, as though you know.

Most good fiction also has a character the writer seems to know more deeply than anyone can actually be known in life, but a few unusual writers can make something great without that.

I love to evoke the bones and meat and thoughts of characters.

I don't tend to picture my characters as actors and actresses.

As writers, we are sketching people all the time when we write fiction.

I love... What's gratifying to me is when you make/create a character and a human being, a person who lives entirely and who has their own existence, just merely from the words on a page.

The hardest thing is to write about people. First and foremost, you have to encounter their humanity. That is the only way you can make them live as characters on the page.

My first job is to write the characters as full and authentic people as well as I can.

It's hard to know whether certain characters come to life or not, they either come to have their own life or they don't. I've written many things in which the characters just remain inert.

I love making characters real and believable, through my own experience and choices.

One has to be able to twist and change and distort characters, play with them like clay, so everything fits together. Real people don't permit you to do that.

You can't judge your characters or otherwise; it's not about you, it's about them.

Characters are an extension of your imagination.

I suppose it's possible that a writer would have feeling for his characters, but I can't see how, because writing is such a meticulous, intricate, technical business. I wish I could say that I love my characters and that frequently they take over the book and run away with the plot and so on. But they don't exist.

I always have a contract with a character. Even when he's unappealing. The contract is to give him his due. To tell his story. And to keep his secrets.

My characters are fictional. I get ideas from real people, sometimes, but my characters always exist only in my head.

I always say I write my own novels and the characters don't take control of me, but in fact, I look at the characters in the early stages and I think, 'What is he or she like,' and they slowly come together and they become the person they are.

I treat all my characters as if they were real, and I am scrupulous about the details of their lives.

Once you start writing a character visually, you're in trouble.

All the great writers root their characters in true human behaviour.

What I look for in any character, good or bad, is whether I can hear him speak. If I can imagine him that clearly, then I can write about him.

To me, my characters are more real than most people I meet.

All characters come from people I know, but after the initial inspiration, I tend to modify the characters so they fit with the story.

You can write and write, but if you don't have someone who can nail that character, it's never going to live.

I suppose it's easier for most writers to create and vivify characters of their own gender.