'Lord of the Rings' was a set of books in which the world had been conceived before the characters were placed within that context. Mark Z.Danielewski
All fiction is about people, unless it's about rabbits pretending to be people. It's all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that's what we call 'the plot'. Margaret Atwood
All of my characters are a little bit based on people I know in real life. You know when you do that you have to change the character a little bit in case your friend or your relative reads the book, because you don't want them to know you wrote about them... They might get mad. Meg Cabot
Also, it's risky to try to duplicate earlier success. Magician had a certain charm to it, mostly due to my choice of lead characters, that I would be hard put to duplicate. Raymond E.Feist
As a writer, I challenge myself not to tell the same story - to tackle different characters with different issues. Eric Jerome Dickey
As an author you hope your characters have sparks but truly in the end they have minds of their own! Melissa de la Cruz
At the core, I try to write characters who are real people with real insecurities, fears, hopes, and dreams, which is why hopefully readers can identify with them. Ally Carter
Clean living is the cardinal principle in the lives of the world's greatest athletes, as the phenomenal performances of these outstanding characters will obviously show. Major Taylor
Completely committed to adapting 'Fifty Shades of Grey'. This is not a joke. Christian Grey and Ana: potentially great cinematic characters. Bret Easton Ellis
Creating characters is like throwing together ingredients for a recipe. I take characteristics I like and dislike in real people I know, or know of, and use them to embellish and define characters. Cassandra Clare
Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire. Christian Nestell Bovee
For some reason, all my characters come to me with their names attached to them. I never have to search for the names. Paul Auster
From wrestling to my hip-hop thing, I've just been able to do so much and meet so many crazy characters. Randy Savage
I believe the most intricate plot won't matter much to readers if they don't care about the characters, especially in a series. So I try to focus hard on making each character, whether villain or hero, have an interesting flaw that readers can relate to. Jeff Abbott
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. Oscar Wilde
I do tend to play characters that have a lot of costume and hair change. I sort of like the change of physicality thing. Katey Sagal