Joaquin Phoenix Quotes

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

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.

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

Characters are not created on paper or laptop alone.

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

One of the ways I think I gain fodder for characters is by watching people.

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

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.

Very few of my characters are based on people I've known. It is too constricting.

I love making characters real and believable, through my own experience and choices.

I think every character I've ever come up with has been based on someone or something I've known.

One of the things about writing fiction is that you create people that you feel, more or less, as though you know.

A lot of times characters are combinations of people I come across in life. I people-watch a lot.

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

What I'm really trying to do is create unique characters.

The point of my explanation is I'm very subjective when it comes to describing my characters: they are all a little bit a part of me from the outside in or the inside out - but to put your mind at ease, I built Paul Snider from the outside in.

Sometimes after a compliment about my characterization skills, I'm asked if I model my characters on real people. Emphatically, no. And sort of, yes.

My characters live inside my head for a long time before I actually start a book about them. Then, they become so real to me I talk about them at the dinner table as if they are real. Some people consider this weird. But my family understands.

A lot of my characters are born out of a small grain in a person that I heighten and take to that next level. They're not based on anyone I've ever met, but they are these extreme versions of something.

There is no creative process to come up with a character of Dean Ambrose.

I see people sometimes who remind me of my narrators.

It's usually easier for me to begin writing in a character's voice if that person is different from me in some significant way.

I don't like to analyze what I do too much, but I certainly never meet a single person and say, 'You're the next character.' People think that's what I do. They also think that I sit down and observe and try to imitate random people. I've never done that at all.

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.

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