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I think that with everything I've done, in the end, whoever the central character is, they would find a way to forgive, because that's really important to me.

Readers of novels often fall into the bad habit of being overly exacting about the characters' moral flaws. They apply to these fictional beings standards that no one they know in real life could possibly meet.

Characters have changed my mind about some very fundamental moral issues, and that's the real satisfaction in the way I write - the ultimate learning experience.

I've found I can plunge the characters into whatever absurd, awful situation, and readers will follow as long as the writer makes them seem like 'real people.'

You have to respect who the character is. It has its own internal truth, and you can't betray that. And if you don't betray that, it will not betray you.

The truth is, everything ultimately comes down to the relationship between the reader and the writer and the characters. Does or does not a character address moral being in a universal and important way? If it does, then it's literature.

I think if you find that you're making a judgment on the character, than your audience will make a judgment on the character.

I think the key is to give the reader characters they not only care about, but identify with, and to never take away all hope.

Sometimes I'll get a premise, you know, for a book. In fact, I get those quite often. And I don't commit to it until I really know the voice of that character. It's almost as if the character is speaking to me.