Guillermo del Toro Quotes

With my writing, what I want to do is humanize the young people I write about.

Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.

Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger.

Everyone loves characters that are relatable or who have unique quirks or tragic flaws.

The best strategy for making people care about what happens is if they empathize with both sides. If you just have a Villain with a capital V, it becomes very two-dimensional.

You can't play a guy who's just a snake, because what do you draw on?

I made Tony a person. For me, Tony was real. I made him become a human being, and that affected the animation and everything.

Because I'm a filmmaker at heart, I know a villain can't be too humanized and the audience can't empathize with him too much.

In a film, if you can capture what's going on underneath, you can begin to make a connection between the character and the people watching it.

I want us to organize, to tell the personal stories that create empathy, which is the most revolutionary emotion.

One of the most interesting things for me in playing another species is that you want to make them different enough to be alien but have enough human qualities to be relatable. This really forces you to look at what it is to be human from a totally new perspective!

The great art of writing is the art of making people real to themselves with words.

Novels are . . . an unsurpassed form to understand people.

Writing fiction is a good way to inhabit other minds, if not other lives.

Character is half the reason we read. We're excited because of the plot, but we care because of the characters.

I really become the characters when I'm writing them. I'll become one or two of them more than others, I'm consistent that way.

I believe in characters that can be tangible, and that you can actually relate to.

I think one of my big skills is making unlikable characters likable or real in some way. No matter how hateful people are, there's always something vulnerable about them, or something that you can understand or relate to. I think that's my job as an actress - to find those.

Comedy and drama are different sides of the same coin. And the thing about comedy and drama is about likability. It's about character first. It's about story. And for me, it's about empathy, and I think the realer someone is, the further you can go either way with them.

Television series always have a lot of characters because you want people to identify with someone on the show, who will be your eyes.

To hold the reader's attention, you have to bring the person who's reading the book inside the experience of the time: What was it like to have been alive then? What were these people like as human beings?

There's a kind of acting that goes on in my head when I'm writing a character where I put myself in their place.

The best books come from someplace deep inside.... Become emotionally involved. If you don't care about your characters, your readers won't either.

The purpose of fiction is to combat loneliness.