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

Fiction's about what it is to be a human being.

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.

This is the beauty of fiction. We may not like these characters, but we inhabit them.

The fact is fiction is always a representation of life, sometimes the lives of famous people.

I think a lot of drama, nowadays, is character-based and development-based, but 'True Blood' is very plot-oriented.

I think, above all, the characters in my novels feel universal to the readers.

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

In 'There Will Be Blood,' my character was someone who was an actor himself almost. He had a rehearsed quality about him. He was a performance artist in a way.

We writers of series fiction tend to idealize ourselves in our characters, giving them attributes we wish we possessed and ever more interesting lives.