Joe R. Lansdale Quotes

I don't think about the stories so much, as the characters themselves. They live on, and they are almost as real as I am.

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 treat characters like people you meet in life-friends or mentors.

My stories are character driven.

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

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

I quite like some of the movies that have many characters in them.

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

You just play what a writer writes, in terms of what a character chooses to do and how a character chooses to deal with their various relationships.

I'm tired of playing freaking cha-chas, the sassy CIA agent, the best friend homegirl. I'm tired of that!

Stories are great, but at the end of the day, you remember that moment and that moment and that moment. 'The Avengers' had all of this great, giant action, but for all of the clever dialogue, it's the moments.

I try to create characters that I am fascinated by on some level or intrigued by or can't stand.

I'm about my characters.

One of the things you have to be acutely aware of when shooting episodes out of order is your character's relationship with the other characters.

Everyone likes a bit of variety. I'm sure none of my readers only want to read about anti-heroes or villainous protagonists any more than they only want to read about square-jawed heroes doing the right thing. I just write characters than entertain me and hope they'll be ones that other people want to read about, too.

The producers felt that 24 would be good for the audience, to really get to know who these 12 and 12 are.

I always look for interesting, complex characters. You know, interesting, well-written material.

It's necessary to track characters all the way through an opera. If you're dealing with more than one or two characters, it's very easy to forget that the others have lives of their own that feed into the story.

Given what I do to my characters, I'm not sure I'd want to meet any of them.

Dialogue is something I don't get a lot of on 'Game of Thrones.'

You don't go around thinking about how characters in a movie, in the stories you make up, relate to people in general.

Any important series like 'Game of Thrones' or 'The Walking Dead' base their product around the characters and their background.

This may sound strange, but although I feel like I know everything about my characters, the brand of shampoo they use, how many cavities they have, their greatest fear, I don't actually see their faces.

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

Movies are about people; there're not about ideas. It's like great novels. Great novels are not about ideas. There's never been a great novel about ideas.