A Quote by J. M. DeMatteis

Ultimately, any character you write - no matter how fantastic or alien - is an extension of yourself. When our characters reflect the truth of our souls and psyches, they become real and compelling. The wonderful paradox is that the characters then take on lives of their own, separate from their creators. That's where the magic comes in.

J. M. DeMatteis

Quote Topics

Alien Any Become Character Characters Compelling Creators Extension Fantastic How Lives Magic Matter Our Own Paradox Real Reflect Separate Souls Take Then Truth Ultimately Wonderful Write Yourself

Quote Author

J. M. DeMatteis
American - Writer
Born: December 15, 1953

I'd say that any character or setting can be given a bit of an otherworldly sheen and be the better for it. The one thing I insist on with my own writing is that I won't let magic solve my characters' real world problems. The solutions have to come from the characters themselves.

Charles de Lint

What I do is give Ennio Morricone suggestions and describe to him my characters, and then, quite often, he'll possibly write five themes for one character. And five themes for another. And then I'll take one piece of one of them and put it with a piece of another one for that character or take another theme from another character and move it into this character.... And when I have my characters finally dressed, then he composes.

Sergio Leone

For Marvel, we've never looked at any of our characters in terms of gender, race, or religion. It truly is about, who is the best character for the story? If that character happens to be a woman, fantastic.

Jeph Loeb

Since the purpose of reading, of education, is to become good, our most important task is to choose the right books. Our personal set of stories, our canon, shapes our lives. I believe it is a law of the universe that we will not rise above our canon. Our canon is part of us, deeply, subconsciously. And the characters and teachings in our canon shape our characters--good, evil, mediocre, or great.

Oliver DeMille

The first act of insight is throw away the labels. In fiction, while we do not necessarily write about ourselves, we write out of ourselves, using ourselves; what we learn from, what we are sensitive to, what we feel strongly about--these become our characters and go to make our plots. Characters in fiction are conceived from within, and they have, accordingly, their own interior life; they are individuals every time.

Eudora Welty

There are characters in movies who I call 'film characters.' They don't exist in real life. They exist to play out a scenario. They can be in fantastic films, but they are not real characters; what happens to them is not lifelike.

Philip Seymour Hoffman

I always say I write my own novels and the characters don't take control of me, but in fact, I look at the characters in the early stages and I think, 'What is he or she like,' and they slowly come together and they become the person they are.

A. S. Byatt

Which people take the time to care for their souls, these days? I reckon not many. But...hear this: I think that maybe in our lives - in our scrabbling for food, in the washing of our bodies and warming of them, in our small daily battles - we can forget our souls. We do not tend to them, as if they matter less. But I don't think they matter less.

Susan Fletcher

It helps to regard soul as an active intelligence, forming and plotting each person's fate. Translators use "plot" to render the ancient Greek word mythos in English. The plots that entangle our souls and draw forth our characters are the great myths. That is why we need a sense of myth and knowledge of different myths to gain insight into our epic struggles, our misalliances, and our tragedies. Myths show the imaginative structures inside our messes, and our human characters can locate themselves against the background of the characters of myth.

James Hillman

It is always sad to write about prejudice, but sometimes when we see it being played out in the lives of fictional characters, we can recognize it in our own lives.

Katherine Paterson

I think at some level, it's just alchemy that we, as writers, can't explain when we write the characters. I don't set out to create the characters - they're not, to me, collections of quirks that I can put together. I discover the characters, instead. I usually go through a standard set of interview questions with the character in the beginning and ask the vital stuff: What's important to you? What do you love? Hate? Fear? .. and then I know where to start. But the characters just grow on their own, at a certain point. And start surprising me.

Rachel Caine

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

Characters take on life sometimes by luck, but I suspect it is when you can write more entirely out of yourself, inside the skin, heart, mind, and soul of a person who is not yourself, that a character becomes in his own right another human being on the page.

Eudora Welty

Ultimately, if the character is interesting and you said that before: It doesn't matter if it's likable. That's really what it is. If they interest you. If the context in which the characters are set interests you then I think then you're pulled in by it.