Art Alexakis Quotes

I take stuff from real life and try to make a character out of it. And I try to live the world of the characters a little bit.

When you write, you hear the characters speaking to you as you take dictation from what they say. And obviously, they had particular personalities when you hear them.

Finding the voice of a character, no matter who it is - from Black Widow to Han Solo - is the first and most important hurdle for me to cross in any work of fiction.

I don't ever really know where I get my characters from.

Whichever character I'm using and wherever I am in my mind dictates what kind of story I'm going to tell.

So much of what I do... is coming up with new characters and trying to invent voices for them, and to have people fully fleshed out in my head and to know who can say what in the scene and who these characters are... I love it.

When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him.

I don't base any character on a real person, and really don't do composites either. I make them up.

As a writer of fiction, I spend my days inventing real lives for make-believe people; what I create can only seem real.

No I don't really write thinking about specific actors because it can get in the way a little bit.

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

There are so many characters whizzing around inside my head, it's like Looney Tunes. But as soon as I've finished writing about them, I completely forget who they are.

My characters are all made up of pieces of people I have known, their backstories pieces of mine.

I don't really base any of my characters on specific people that I know, although my characters are informed by the kind of people who live in my community.

The way I write my shows, every character is its own organic thing. No character has a life at all until I see it played by somebody.

The interesting thing about fiction from a writer's standpoint is that the characters come to life within you. And yet who are they and where are they? They seem to have as much or more vitality and complexity as the people around you.

As an author you hope your characters have sparks but truly in the end they have minds of their own!

I'm a novelist, so I can't write about ideas unless they're attached to people.

Outside books, we avoid colorful characters.

I just love to be able to actually build a character.

Sometimes a character is really based on research that you do. Other times it's just based on your imagination or perhaps your conversation with the director. Or sometimes all of the above. It depends on the movie and character.

I never base characters on real people. There are people who do that but I really don't know how to do it.

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.

The characters in my stories, whether historical or fictional, usually prove to be a compilation of influences taken from differing sources, but never drawn from one model.

I usually don't find myself reacting to my characters. I just create them ... And let the audience decide whether they're empathetic or scared or compelled to cheer me on.