Quotes Tagged "characters"

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.

I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should accept more kindly, and even appreciate more clearly, if we simply thought of them as people in a story.

When writing, there are some scenes that are emotionally overwhelming. They completely overcome the author, and only when they do this can they cause a similar reaction in the reader. Through this, the author gets to experience multiple lives. If a character's life flashes before their eyes, it flashes before the author's eyes too, and he or she remembers it as his or her own. With reading, we get to live other lives vicariously, and this is doubly so with writing. It is like a lucid dream, where we guide the outcome. In this, we don't merely write *about* a character -- we momentarily *become* them, and walk as they walk, think as they think, and do as they do. When we return to our own life, we might return a little shaken, likely a little stronger, hopefully a little wiser. What is certain is that we return better, because experiencing the lives of others makes us understand their aims and dreams, their fears and foils, the challenges and difficulties, and joys and triumphs, that they face. It helps us grow and empathise, and see all the little pictures that make up the bigger one we see from the omniscience of the narrator.

I don't know where people got the idea that characters in books are supposed to be likable. Books are not in the business of creating merely likeable characters with whom you can have some simple identification with. Books are in the business of creating great stories that make you're brain go ahhbdgbdmerhbergurhbudgerbudbaaarr.

Politeness is the first thing people lose once they get the power.

Be a worthy worker and work will come.

Great losses are great lessons.

Take care of your costume and your confidence will take care of itself.

The job of feets is walking, but their hobby is dancing.

All worries are less with wine.

Music shouldn't be just a tune, it should be a touch.

War is not just the shower of bullets and bombs from both sides, it is also the shower of blood and bones on both sides.

Father has a strengthening character like the sun and mother has a soothing temper like the moon.

If you can't impress them with your argument, impress them with your actions.

The decision is your own voice, an opinion is the echo of someone else's voice.

Health is hearty, health is harmony, health is happiness.

If thinking should precede acting, then acting must succeed thinking.

In your name, the family name is at last because it's the family name that lasts.

You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them peril, you find out who they really are.

A novel must show how the world truly is, how characters genuinely think, how events actually occur. A novel should somehow reveal the true source of our actions.