Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes

Some of my characters are a mixture of various aspects of people I have met. others are pure invention.

Writers are magpies, and we collect details about people and we use them for fictional characters.

Sometimes after a compliment about my characterization skills, I'm asked if I model my characters on real people. Emphatically, no. And sort of, yes.

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 often draw from people in my own experience to base a character on, going back to my days with Mike Leigh.

The movies I make tend not to be quite reality but the characters are inspired by real people and they're always very personal.

I sometimes use some personality traits to fashion part of a character. Most of my characters are composites of either people I know or people in the public eye.

I never base characters on real people - you can get into so much trouble that way!

I've had people appear in my life that have helped me. I had more fun. I approached it thinking how would Jack Nicholson, "How would he do it?" So that's really what I did was I created this Gremlin character. So now people come up and they say 'Oh The Exorcist!'.. and I'm like "Did you see Repossessed?" They say either no or yes or whatever, and I say look at this, have a laugh, and then go back and look at a masterpiece.

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

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

I don't really base any of my characters on specific people that I know, although my characters are informed by the kind of people who live in my community.

I've never purposefully based a character on any one person I know, but I'm certain there are amalgamations that exist.

... characters are not born like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility that the author thinks no one else has discovered or said something essential about.

That's been my main interest for the last 15 years, is to really make sure the story and the characters take precedence over everything else, and that I give them everything I can to make them exist as actual people.

I try to be true to the characters that I've created and sometimes I disagree with them, but their opinions about the story and the characters really matter to me.

Most characters are composed of snippets here and there of people I've known, and all rolled into the character I've created. They do become like their own people.

Everything can inspire me. I know that sounds like a cop-out answer, but I find inspiration in literally just about everything. As an actor, I have to watch people and observe their behaviors - this is how I create characters. My daily surroundings feed my work, whether it's something I'm working on right now or it's something down the road. Music, art, landscape - these are all things I draw inspiration from.

Are my characters copies of people in real life? ... Don't ever believe the stories about authors putting people into novels. That idea is a kind of joke on both authors and readers. All the readers believe that authors do it. All the authors know that it can't be done.

It's very rare that a character comes to mind complete in himself. He needs additional traits that I often pick from actual people. One way you can cover your tracks is to change the sex.

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

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

Creating characters is like throwing together ingredients for a recipe. I take characteristics I like and dislike in real people I know, or know of, and use them to embellish and define characters.

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

I think every character I've ever come up with has been based on someone or something I've known.