Joanne Harris Quotes

If you read literature, you put yourself in somebody else's shoes. You learn from great figures in literature.

I learned to write from different points of view and not just something I would say.

As a writer, it is always fun to imagine yourself in someone else's shoes.

In the ongoing celebration that is literature, we are asked to imagine ourselves as other selves, for better or worse.

It doubles your perception, to write from the point of view of someone you're not.

One of the amazing things about writing fiction is that you do get to be other people.

When I try to understand somebody, create a character, I fall into them. When I think writers are telling me what to think, I get harrumphy.

The myth of writer as, like, Asperger-style misanthrope, or, like, the Jack Nicholson, 'As Good As It Gets' - it just doesn't work, because writers, in order to write good characters, need to understand people. You need to understand your audience. You need to have so much empathy you could almost encourage empathy in others.

To imagine yourself inside another person... is what a storywriter does in every piece of work; it is his first step, and his last too, I suppose.

The more you know about the world, the more resources you have in terms of things that can inform your character or the circumstances that surround your character.

As a writer, you always try to imagine, 'What if I were in a situation like this? How would I react?'

I don't want to draw from my own experiences in life. I first like to become the character and then think from her point of view.

I just try to put myself in the minds of all the characters.

There are aspects of writing that require you to image yourself in various roles and guises, to stand in the shoes of others, to 'act' on an inner stage.

Some people say, 'Well you're a man; how do you write about women or girls when you don't know about them?' Well, I've got my imagination, and I can write about women. Yes, I'll never be pregnant and give birth to children, but I can imagine a bit of what it's like. When you create characters, it's just about making them really real to people.

The joy of writing drama is putting yourself into different people's heads.

To try and imagine that I'm another person is always going to be hard - whether I'm writing about a truck driver or someone who is gay, who's trans, who is of a different ethnicity or creed. But it would be boring if I always had to write about myself and my limited viewpoint.

What I try to do in writing any character is to put myself in his position.

In all my characters, I try to find an iota of myself, and in Castle, I found a lot. He gets away with a lot, so that's fun.

Literature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you'll behave to other people.

Fiction is a particular kind of rhetoric, a way of thinking that I think can be useful in your life. It asks you to image the world through someone else's eyes, and it allows you to try to empathize with situations that you haven't actually experienced.

You get to be wiser by storying the world and seeing it through other forms of consciousness than your own.

In terms of the characters I think are really fun to play, a lot of times it's someone in my head saying 'I know that woman.'

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.

I want to see children curled up with books, finding an awareness of themselves as they discover other people's thoughts. I want them to make the connection that books are people's stories, that writing is talking on paper, and I want them to write their own stories. I'd like my books to provide that connection for them.