Jim Davis Quotes

I love using my imagination. I love writing about animals.

Characters I create are just mixtures of the people I know.

Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.

When you're traveling constantly, every day you become inspired, and it shows in my work, sonically, lyrically, visually. Conversations with women with different accents and stories told in those accents. I like to create characters based on different people I've met, and relationships. I like to tell stories loosely based on real-life events.

I'm constantly surprised by human nature and humanity. And I think that's why I love what I do: because I love to story-tell and bring new characters to life.

As a result of my life on the road and the increasing number of rainy afternoons in cinemas, I began to get the idea that I might write a film.

There's no game plan when it comes to thinking up new characters; inspiration can come from anything - from a wig I've seen to an expression I've heard someone use.

I sort of love reading the scripts and going, 'Oh wow, what a great idea. I never would have thought of that.'

Kids often ask me if characters are real or made up - and I always tell them, 'I hope they're real but I made them up.'

You have to have heart's passion to write a novel.

There is a plethora of topics to explore. I sometimes think I may never live long enough to explore all of the unique story lines I have either in my head or waiting in my computer file.

Everyone has early fiction fantasies, but it wasn't until my second child Betsy was born that I allowed the urge to write a novel bubble up.

Storytelling is what lights my fire.

When I see things in the world that leap out at me, I want to make use of them in fiction. Maybe every writer does that. It just depends on what you claim or appropriate as yours.

You can draw inspiration from anything. If you're a good storyteller, you can take a dirty look somebody gives you, or if a guy you used to have flirtations with starts dating a new girl, or somebody you're casually talking to says something that makes you so mad - you can create an entire scenario around that.

When I started out, I was definitely writing about experiences that I hadn't had yet. The songs were just based on my influences, songwriters that had written songs before me and that were more experienced and 20, 30 years older than me.

People inspire me to write, the good ones and the bad ones.

There was a time when I read a script and I just got excited about the possibilities.

I think that writers of literary fiction would do well to read more books for children.

Most writers spend their lives standing a little apart from the crowd, watching and listening and hoping to catch that tiny hint of despair, that sliver of malice, that makes them think, 'Aha, here is the story.'

Stories develop from things I read and also from my own experiences and experiences of people I know.

One day I had an idea for a movie. Everything came after that.

I got into writing because books and stories were always a big part of my life. I loved listening to them and then reading them, and I loved making them up.

One of the qualities essential to writing exciting stories, whether for page or screen, is an ability to abandon one's morality. We simply cannot be good writers and good people. One must be able to access one's darkest self, one's venality and pettiness and murderousness.

Rowling is a luminous storyteller. I love her sense of humor and the intricate wizarding world she built around Hogwarts. I think all writers aspire to be like her, to capture readers like she does. But I didn't think about 'Harry Potter' when I wrote 'The Bone Season.'