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I would like to think that I'm more different from my character than I am.

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.

An absolutely different and distinctive character.

A character is as much about what you do as what you say.

The biggest research of all when I do a character is self-examination. You look at yourself and you ask, 'How am I similar to this person and how am I different?'

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.

I try to write characters that are as real, emotionally and psychologically, as I can make them; I feel the same way about setting. This often means that I'm drawing from my experiences and observations.

For me, character comes from a specific condition or situation. I cannot really define a character outside that situation.

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.

Your image isn't your character. Character is what you are as a person.