Rick Yancey Quotes

It takes me three or four years to research and write each book and the individual stories stay with you for a long time afterwards.

'The Rose Society' was definitely the hardest book I've ever written, because it's so difficult to stay in that dark space.

There have been many days when I have had to work up to writing 'Irredeemable' because I just didn't feel like wallowing in that world, feeling those emotions... but that's the process.

When I write, I try to capture one of those pivotal moments. If I succeed, I have shifted the reader's view of the world, just a little. The character is not the only one to experience change. That is my job, shifting perceptions, one story at a time. The trouble is, I don't like writing. But I love having written.

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

For some reason, all my characters come to me with their names attached to them. I never have to search for the names.

I discovered that writing was very nice indeed when I was very young, and I never changed. I don't think my style has changed very much at all - though I hope what I say is a bit more interesting. It's about getting to know a character and loving them, I think.

I get very involved in my characters. Sometimes I have a very hard time separating my characters from my life.

You spend so much time writing a character the way I did with Buddy Baker and then Green Arrow that you start to care about them. And you almost think of them as people, you know?

I loved writing 'Two Brothers' more than anything else I have written. It's the first book I've written that I've always known I wanted to write. Having said that, it also kept me awake at nights.

Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.

The character I created, 'Commissario Brunetti,' who appears in all my books, shares similar reading, artistic and musical tastes with me. Subconsciously, I knew that if I was to spend however long it would take to write this book with him, this man would have to be someone I'd like to have dinner with.

There are bits of me in all my characters.

Every pilot I've ever written, I've fallen deeply and madly in love with. It's the only way I work.

'The Secret Life of Bees' was my first novel, so I had no process. I was flying by the seat of my pants, as they say, trying to understand how I, as a novelist, would work with story.

When you create a show, and create characters, these people are like children to you.

When I create characters, I create a world to inhabit and they begin to feel very real for me. I don't belong in a psych ward, I don't think, but they become very real, like my own family, and then I have to say goodbye, close the door, and work on other things.

I put a lot of myself into my characters when I write.

Each book has been different and has been challenging in its own way to write.

Finishing books - and leaving the world you've created - is always a kind of emotionally wrenching experience. I usually cry.

I had been a reporter for 15 years when I set out to write my first novel. I knew how to research an article or profile a subject - skills that I assumed would be useless when it came to fiction. It was from my imagination that the characters in my story would emerge.

I have a huge emotional attachment to characters I've created, especially the viewpoint characters.

I like that it's challenging - that when I'm writing, I feel as if I'm pouring everything I have into the story until there's nothing left and I have to begin thinking about a new world and set of circumstances to research and explore.

I want to have compassion for my characters - I feel like I am the characters when I'm writing them.

I can't help slightly falling in love with every character I write about. And I quite like writing about people who are vilified.