Paul Auster Quotes

In some ways, I don't consider a single Hap and Leonard novel the best, but I consider them my best characters.

Also, as an author, character has always been what I'm most interested in - much more so than plot or setting, although those are good things too.

The people I write are real to me, and basically, they tell me about their environments on a need-to-know basis.

Let your characters talk to each other and do things. Spend time with them - they'll tell you who they are and what they're up to.

When you get into individual characters certainly there's been things that have been updated .

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.

All that matters to me as a reader are characters. I want characters to be real, authentic, and rounded. I will be digging into characters for at least a month. Who they are. What they are like. Outside of the story.

You can never know enough about your characters

Never argue with your characters; they know themselves better than you do.

Any author of fiction will tell you that characters don't need to be told what to do.

My stories are character driven.

I don't write a whole lot about one person that exists in reality; it's usually characteristics of different people that I combine into a character. I tend to think through and try and make characters behave in a natural way. I follow the character and think about what they would do, what decisions they would make.

A new character is like bringing a new human being into your life.

My characters aren't chess pieces. I don't move them around some big board. I actually care about these fictitious people.

It doesn't matter whether characters are real people or not; if they're not vivid on the page, then the reader doesn't care about them that much, and, if the reader doesn't care about them that much, then they don't care what happens to them.

I remember when I was a kid, I loved Sherlock Holmes. I thought Arthur Conan Doyle was one of the greatest writers, because I felt I knew Sherlock Holmes. He existed to me. When I went to England the first thing I did was go to Baker Street to look for his house. I think you've got to try to make all of your characters as empathetic and realistic as possible.

I think "honest" sometimes gets used to describe a real depiction of real life. I don't think that's necessarily what we're doing. We created these fake characters and we're just trying to figure out what they would do in situations they enter into.

Sometimes I'll be fifty, sixty pages into something and I'll still be calling a character "X." I don't have a very clear idea of who the characters are until they start talking. Then I start to love them. By the time I finish the book, I love them so much that I want to stay with them. I don't want to leave them ever.

You try to make characters you care about, and I think realism helps. Even though this is a high concept, the characters have got to be real.

Once you have your character sitting right there in your head, all you really need to do is wind them up, put them down, and simply write down what they do, say, or think.

If there is a connection between Harry Potter and my new novel, it's my interest in characters.

That's not the part of the story that I'm interested in, anyway. The part that I'm interested in is all the personal stuff. I tried to base the powers on family archetypes.

Unlike life, you've got more or less complete control over what's going on in your stories. That's not to say you can make characters do whatever you want them to - they usually have a life of their own if you've done your job properly.

A lot of people have asked me about some of the characters that appear in 'Clockwork Prince,' like Aloysius Starkweather and Woolsey Scott. A lot of people like Woolsey Scott, which I was really happy about because he's very fun to write.

You can really help support a character if you understand the setting. So for that reason I generally write about Philadelphia.