John Searles Quotes

I try to talk about things I know about. But my characters are more of a combination of people or how I imagine people would feel.

Characters are not created on paper or laptop alone.

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

I just love to be able to actually build a character.

I started improvising the Cliff character, based on someone I grew up with.

My characters are fictional. I get ideas from real people, sometimes, but my characters always exist only in my head.

So much of what I do... is coming up with new characters and trying to invent voices for them, and to have people fully fleshed out in my head and to know who can say what in the scene and who these characters are... I love it.

People are always thinking that I'm the main character in my books, but each one has been different, and sometimes they've been men.

What do you do in a novel? You take recognizable characters from your own life, and you fantasize about what they're really like.

A lot of times characters are combinations of people I come across in life. I people-watch a lot.

I wrote a story about a character who looks like Harry Styles. But it has nothing to do with Harry Styles at all.

Outside books, we avoid colorful characters.

Mike Leigh encourages you to choose a person that you know to base your character on. You write a whole list of people that you know and you go through that list in great depth with him. And then he chooses one of those people from your list.

Sometimes a character is really based on research that you do. Other times it's just based on your imagination or perhaps your conversation with the director. Or sometimes all of the above. It depends on the movie and character.

When you write, you hear the characters speaking to you as you take dictation from what they say. And obviously, they had particular personalities when you hear them.

I like to build a character, trying to stretch my imagination as far to the walls of my brain as I can to come up with something that feels truthful and feels real - as close to the skin as I can get it.

The characters in my stories, whether historical or fictional, usually prove to be a compilation of influences taken from differing sources, but never drawn from one model.

I find it easier to play someone who is so far from me because you create someone - you build this person based on the story and the script, with the director.

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.

I'll often dream about characters before I start writing their stories.

I create fictional narratives, but it's based on literal people.

When I'm writing a story, which takes me a year or more, I can feel my character living with me - they're responding to whatever funny, familial, or social situation I'm in, and I think about their responses constantly.

I find it very hard to sit down and create an idea or especially a new character on command. Usually my characters evolve by accident out of some story context.

I think the idea of creating a character from scratch, one that has not been done in a novel or an existing story, is immensely exciting, terrifying and ultimately rewarding.

I don't base any character on a real person, and really don't do composites either. I make them up.