Quote

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.

I think people throughout the world identify with my characters.

I'm not in the business of meddling with people's destinies - and yes, my characters are real people to me. They have histories and thoughts and yearnings and hurts and misgivings and pleasures that don't belong to me.

All the characters in my books are imagined, but all have a bit of who I am in them - much like the characters in your dreams are all formed by who you are.

My characters are fictional. I get ideas from real people, sometimes, but my characters always exist only in my head.

To me, my characters are more real than most people I meet.

Some characters think more like me than others; some think more like my dad or someone else. It certainly is made up of my experiences, things I've heard, things I think are funny, things I think are sad. There's sort of a strange, blurry version of yourself in there.

All characters come from people I know, but after the initial inspiration, I tend to modify the characters so they fit with the story.

I don't think anyone can do any character that doesn't have at least some ounce of themselves in it. You are who you are, and your brain is drawing on things that you've experienced.

I try to talk about things I know about. But my characters are more of a combination of people or how I imagine people would feel.