A Quote by Allan Massie

All a writer's characters are imaginary, no matter whether they are based on real people or not. They are people as one imagines them to be.

Allan Massie

Quote Topics

Based Characters Imaginary Matter People Real Real People Them Whether Writer

Quote Author

Allan Massie
Scottish - Novelist

For any artistic person who creates imaginary people, the art is like inhabiting the life and mind of a seven-year-old child with imaginary friends and imaginary events and imaginary grace and imaginary tragedy. Within that alternate universe, the characters do have quite a bit of free will. I know it's happening in my mind and my mind alone, but they seem to have their own ability to shape their destinies. So I'm not shooting for anything. If the characters are vulnerable it's simply because they're very human.

Bob Shacochis

When I do a voiceover now, there are always a few people I've borrowed bits off, whether it's their hats or facial hair, who'll say: 'That's so funny; it's obviously based on this guy.' You think, 'It ain't: it's you.' Actors never think characters are based on them.

Matt Berry

With fiction, you are creating an imaginary world. And it can be a very mechanical process. In a fictional film, you create the characters who become "real people" when facing the camera. When you stop shooting, they change their costumes and become someone else. And people tend to believe in documentary more than fiction. Even if the fiction is based on a true story, everybody will say, "Oh, they're only actors."

Mano Khalil

I was very moved to see that the name of the boat was Hamlet - an imaginary character becomes so important to people, we think about them so much that we name a ship after them. The imaginary lives on in the real.

Paul Auster

I like characters. I like spirited characters whether they exist in fiction or real life. Whether they're the invention of artistic people or directors, musicians. I think music and art and fashion designers inspire me and I like characters.

Marc Jacobs

I like to mix the real and the imaginary. Sometimes it is characters inspired by real people I know or know of. Sometimes it is a named person from the common cultural dreamscape. And it is tricky, because they have a lot of associated ideas that come with them, and a lot of actual facts.

Dana Spiotta

It's queer how ready people always are with advice in any real or imaginary emergency, and no matter how many times experience has shown them to be wrong, they continue to set forth their opinions, as if they had received them from the Almighty!

Anne Sullivan

All of the characters in my films, they share one commonality. It doesn't matter whether they are good or bad, it doesn't matter whether they are smart or stupid, these characters all take responsibility for their own behavior. I'm much the same.

Park Chan-wook

It doesn't matter whether characters are real people or not; if they're not vivid on the page, then the reader doesn't care about them that much, and, if the reader doesn't care about them that much, then they don't care what happens to them.

Salman Rushdie

I've found I can plunge the characters into whatever absurd, awful situation, and readers will follow as long as the writer makes them seem like 'real people.'

MaryJanice Davidson

My characters surprise me constantly. My characters are like my friends - I can give them advice, but they don't have to take it. If your characters are real, then they surprise you, just like real people

Laurell K. Hamilton

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

John Hartford

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.

John Hartford

You have to always try to think about them like real people first, and not just heroes. They have to be real characters. As people do more and more superhero stuff, the characters are what distinguish it, just like in cop shows.