Literary Personas Quotes

Who is more real? Homer or Ulysses? Shakespeare or Hamlet? Burroughs or Tarzan?

I am often asked why I use a variety of pen names. The answer is that this way readers always know which of my three worlds they will be entering when they pick up one of my books.

Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players. ... I have 10 or so, and thats a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.

All great writers are schizophrenics, you know what I'm saying? 'Cause they switch up. They become the person when they write.

You read about somebody, and it doesn't really matter whether or not they really exist - the point is that you get into them like real characters.

There are characters in some short stories who exist as people, and there are other characters in different short stories who exist as purely literary constructs. You know, the young man in "Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire" - I probably got that right - is a literary construct, and enjoys being a literary construct. He has no life off stage, whereas the young men in "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" were as near to being real human beings as I could possibly get them.

There are two kinds of writers: hustlers and sanctimonious hustlers.

It's better not to know authors personally, because the real person never corresponds to the image you form of him from reading his books.