Philip Kerr Quotes

I suppose it's easier for most writers to create and vivify characters of their own gender.

I always talk about my characters like they're real people.

I think the moment you're writing about somebody who's not exactly you, then the challenge is all equal.

It's usually easier for me to begin writing in a character's voice if that person is different from me in some significant way.

I love... What's gratifying to me is when you make/create a character and a human being, a person who lives entirely and who has their own existence, just merely from the words on a page.

I always have a contract with a character. Even when he's unappealing. The contract is to give him his due. To tell his story. And to keep his secrets.

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.

You can write and write, but if you don't have someone who can nail that character, it's never going to live.

My job is to allow the character to live and breathe - and become as real to the reader as he or she is to me.

I love to evoke the bones and meat and thoughts of characters.

I want to have compassion for my characters - I feel like I am the characters when I'm writing them.

You can't judge your characters or otherwise; it's not about you, it's about them.

To write convincingly, I think you must be able to relate, in some way, to what a character is experiencing.

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

When you're writing fiction, you're in every character 'cause you can't help it.

I like to write characters that feel like people that I would know.

When I write, I try to become different characters.

I used to say I wasn't interested in writing about characters.

If there is any secret to my success, I think it's that my characters are very real to me. I feel everything they feel, and therefore I think my readers care about them.

As a writer, it's a great narrative tool to have that character who is slightly detached but at the same time observant of his reality, because I think that's pretty much what being a writer is - being there, watching and internalizing.

I suppose it's possible that a writer would have feeling for his characters, but I can't see how, because writing is such a meticulous, intricate, technical business. I wish I could say that I love my characters and that frequently they take over the book and run away with the plot and so on. But they don't exist.

A good journalist, as you know, is a great listener. And so's a good writer. And I got to listen to people for almost 20 years. That serves me well, I hope, when I try to understand how a character might be feeling, or how they might react.

The great thing about writing is that you always put yourself in the shoes of the character. If you're doing it right, you can see into the heart of all your characters. Usually, when there's a writing problem, it's because you aren't doing that.

My first job is to write the characters as full and authentic people as well as I can.

There is always going to be a little bit of me in each character.