Thomas Perry Quotes

I prefer to be a villainess. There's something a bit more delicious about their wickedness.

I wouldn't like to be a character in one of my books!

I love reading for a character I have no business reading for.

In the best works of fiction, there's no mustache-twirling villain. I try to write shows where even the bad guy's got his reasons.

There are some characters in 'The Names' who are very much heroes and others who can only be called villains. But generally, as we get to know them, we see most of the characters are, or at least become, quite nuanced.

I have never played a role in which someone's dark side shouldn't be explored.

Whether writing fiction or nonfiction, I've never had the sense I was 'making up' a character. It feels more like watching people reveal themselves, ever more deeply, more intimately.

As for an authentic villain, the real thing, the absolute, the artist, one rarely meets him even once in a lifetime. The ordinary bad hat is always in part a decent fellow.

I can't help slightly falling in love with every character I write about. And I quite like writing about people who are vilified.

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.

If you're going to make a movie about a character who is a supervillain, it's fantastic to have a core sense of empathy for that character.

Villains are far more interesting to play than nice people.

I'm a villain at heart. I'm a born villain.

I try to create new characters in each book I write. That's what makes writing fun and interesting for me.

I have found that the characters in my novels stay with me after a book has ended. I know them in some sense. I never map anything out. I just think until I am secure in the voice of one of them, and then let the character unfold.

My characters, I find them as I'm writing. It's quite incredible how fully realized they are in my mind, how many details I know about each of them.

I find the characters in my head and the more I write about them, the better I get to know them.

Maybe I'm perverse, but the question of "rooting" for a character, or setting out to write a character for whom other people will root, has never had anything to do with why I read or write fiction. As long as the writing and story remain alive, intense, invigorating, provoking, the characters can be as demonic or saintly as the author wants.

I think my characters are all fairly fundamentally decent, even if they have negative characteristics.

I separate myself from my characters as much as possible, but I have these books that I create which are interactive diaries/timelines/memory books/pictures of the character's entire world.

Somebody - and I'm going to guess it was Hitchcock - once said that everyone has their reasons. If you remember that, as a writer, you'll write better than average villains.

The book says, 'Vanity Fair - a story without a hero.' Becky is effectively the protagonist, the hero we follow. But she is flawed. Becky is a subject of her own time.

After writing several chapter books, I found my true passion: historical fiction.

Even the best novelists are rarely congratulated on the quality of their observations about contemporary life.

Sometimes I worry that people who read my fiction think that I am making some kind of thesis statement.