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As the character talks and moves, the world around him is slowly revealed, just like dollying a camera back for a wider look at things. So all my stories start with a character, and that character introduces setting, culture, conflict, government, economy... all of it, through his or her eyes.

The climate informs the character.

I think all our characters are an amalgam of people we know in our world and ourselves.

In the extremity of war, character is revealed.

I think anybody would be hard pressed not to relate to at least one of the characters, because there's so many different multifaceted people populating this crazy world.

I tend to gravitate toward conflicted characters, and a character who is exploring chaos theory and population control and the difficulties of love and family is pretty rich.

The greatest heroes are those who do their duty in the daily grind of domestic affairs whilst the world whirls as a maddening dreidel.

People seem to need a likable protagonist more than ever.

You can have the greatest characters in the world and write beautifully, but if nothing's happening, the story falls on its face pretty quickly.