Patrick Rothfuss Quotes

What I do in the writing of any character is to try to enter into the mind, heart and skin of a human being who is not myself. It is the act of a writer's imagination that I set the most high.

Well-written novels make you more empathetic towards other people. You can identify with someone who isn't you. You can change your identity. A 14-year-old boy can become Anna Karenina. It is a miracle.

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

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

If I write a character, instead of looking from the outside, like maybe a journalist would, trying to describe them physically and figuring out what kind of things they might be interested in or have in their house, I don't really do it that way. I try to feel what it would be like to be inside this person, to be them.

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

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

The story is a machine for empathy. In contrast to logic or reason, a story is about emotion that gets staged over a sequence of dramatic moments, so you empathize with the characters without really thinking about it too much. It is a really powerful tool for imagining yourself in other people's situations.

You have to have empathy, knowledge and compassion for your characters if you're a writer.

I don't have to live the lives of my characters to write about them. It's about really putting yourself in their shoes.

A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.

Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger.

Part of being a fiction writer is being able to imagine how someone else is thinking and feeling. I think I've always been good at that.

Studying acting has been personally enriching because it has taught me to take the time to imagine what someone else's life experience might be like. To look deeply at how our pasts and the circumstances of our early childhoods mold us as people.

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

It helps to be more interested in other people than you are in yourself. Inhabiting other characters is what I do.

I don't understand why people aren't a little more generous with each other.

Writing about people helps us to understand them, and understanding them helps us to accept them as part of ourselves.

A novelist is a person who lives in other people's skins.

Writing fiction, like reading fiction, is a practice in empathy.

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

Having a kind heart, you care about everybody else. You don't eat everything. Don't be a big. People in the community, be nice. As coaches, we want to see guys develop those kind of things, take those things with them when they leave our programs.

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.

If you want anybody to have a different voice, you really have to visualize and hear the voices of all these people. Sometimes when I write with specific actors in mind, it helps.

I often tease young people about their concern for how they look; more important is inner beauty - compassion, affection and respect.