Marilynne Robinson Quotes

I love all the characters I write.

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.

Cool? Am I cool? I don't know, but I hope my characters are cool, in the sense of iconic. That's my job, at its very essence.

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

You establish a technique on how to develop characters. Everyone does it their own way, and that's what makes it fun.

Most of the time, when I'm writing, I'm writing for myself. I'm thinking, 'What will my character say at this time? What will come out of her mouth?' I create individuals so real to me, I sometimes start talking to them. Then I let them loose on the page.

I admit I do develop characters from little parts of things I've seen others do.

Characters are not created on paper or laptop alone.

A character takes shape in the act of writing. You start with something, and you add or subtract.

I don't ever really know where I get my characters from.

Your source material is the people you know, not those you don't know, but every character is an extension of the author's own personality.

Writers often say that characters begin to write themselves, and I never used to believe that. I always thought that was complete hogwash.

It's usually easier for me to begin writing in a character's voice if that person is different from me in some significant way.

You spend so much time writing a character the way I did with Buddy Baker and then Green Arrow that you start to care about them. And you almost think of them as people, you know?

One of the ways I think I gain fodder for characters is by watching people.

I always believed in my characters. I lived them.

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 never base characters on real people. There are people who do that but I really don't know how to do it.

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.

That's the way it happens - some characters you set out to use, some are happy accidents. As long as it works, it doesn't really matter how you got them.

I usually don't find myself reacting to my characters. I just create them ... And let the audience decide whether they're empathetic or scared or compelled to cheer me on.

After a while, the characters I'm writing begin to feel real to me. That's when I know I'm heading in the right direction.

I'm not one of these 'the characters write themselves; the story just fell out of me' kind of writers. Wish it was like that.

To create characters, one must build background. And one of the tools we use is improvisation.

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.