Wally Lamb Quotes

As I write, I try to be the character.

When one is writing a novel in the first person, one must be that person.

Part of me becomes the characters I'm writing about. I think readers feel like they are there, the way I am, as a result.

I strongly believe that the art of the novel works best when the writer identifies with whoever he or she is writing about. Novels in the end are based on the human capacity, compassion, and I can show more compassion to my characters if I write in a first person singular.

Keats himself spoke about how Shakespeare was capable of erasing himself completely from the characters he had created. As an actor, that is what I'm trying to do.

I try to have something in common with my protagonists, especially when I'm writing in the first person.

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.

You can escape into a character.

I've written short stories from male perspectives before, and I've never had a problem with it as long as I've understood the character's emotions and motivations.

I get inhabited by a character and then you mourn it. There's a period of mourning for me, definitely.

I'm very comfortable writing in the first person; it dives into the character in a way that's difficult if you're writing in the third person.

I normally write in the first person, and my narrators are as real to me as any of the people I have worked with. They live and breathe in my imagination.

I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.

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.

It's great fun if you get a good piece of writing and you can pretend to be someone else, tell a story that needs to be told, make some kind of connection. I've always fancied myself as a leading man, but I really doubt whether anyone else sees me that way.

I have an affinity for writing in the first person. I love the intimacy of being dropped inside the character.

I put a lot of myself into my characters when I write.

I think that you have to find a piece of yourself in every role you play. If you don't believe what you're doing, you cannot expect anyone else to believe it.

If I don't fall in love with my characters, I cannot shoot.

I go straight from thinking about my narrator to being him.

I can't just say the words, do a lot of one-liners. I love each person I play; I have to be that person. I have to do him true.

Because I write fiction, I don't write autobiography, and to me they are very different things. The first-person narrative is a very intimate thing, but you are not addressing other people as 'I' - you are inhabiting that 'I.'

I couldn't give 'Vikings' away - I mean, I love these people. And I'm not sure anyone else writing it would necessarily have the same feeling towards the characters that I do.

When you pick up a book, everyone knows it's imaginary. You don't have to pretend it's not a book. We don't have to pretend that people don't write books. That omniscient third-person narration isn't the only way to do it. Once you're writing in the first person, then the narrator is a writer.

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