Rana Daggubati Quotes

To me, characters are at the heart of great literature.

The most fascinating powers don't mean a thing if the guy's poorly motivated or dull, and the most generic powers won't hurt a well-motivated character. Personality and motivation are what make Magneto, Magneto and not Cosmic Boy. The powers work for him, but it's his motivation that makes him the character he is.

I do not choose characters because I think, 'Wow, that woman is so strong.' I chose these characters with utmost conviction because I think they were realistic enough to exist, and I really liked the scripts.

I try to distinguish my characters from each other.

'Push' had a story, 'The Paperboy' story you could just throw up in the air and shoot holes through the book because the story wasn't as strong. But I felt the characters were stronger in 'The Paperboy'; they were vivid.

I have tried very hard as a novelist to say, 'Novels are about individuals and especially larger than life individuals.'

I create each character as an individual, coming from a certain place, sounding a certain way, having been introduced to things a certain way.

With an interesting character, there's always something to say.

In 'Poster Boys,' every character is well defined.

I want to give my characters nuance.

It's always fun to layer a character, to make the character a little bit more dynamic than it is on paper.

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

Outside books, we avoid colorful characters.

What makes characters real are details, and if you're crafting a person from scratch, you're probably not going to pay as much attention to a question like, 'Does this person bite their nails?'

I tend to spend a lot of time building characters that the reader will believe in and sympathize with.

And I have the support of the writers: I have a great relationship with the creative team, and they have a good hold of my character and my personality, and they come up with some great stuff, and I'm forever trying to change it up, keep it fresh.

My first job is to write the characters as full and authentic people as well as I can.

It's hard to know whether certain characters come to life or not, they either come to have their own life or they don't. I've written many things in which the characters just remain inert.

When you're writing a book, with people in it as opposed to animals, it is no good having people who are ordinary, because they are not going to interest your readers at all. Every writer in the world has to use the characters that have something interesting about them, and this is even more true in children's books.

I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.

I'm not interested in the heroes or the villains. I'm interested in playing people.

I treat all my characters as if they were real, and I am scrupulous about the details of their lives.

There's a bizarre insistence on how a story should be. 'The protagonist must be sympathetic!' they say. Whatever that means. I never engage in that discussion. I never use that word, 'sympathetic.' I just know 'interesting.'

I think the main thing to remember when writing a novel is to stay true to the characters.

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.