The only virtue a character needs to possess between hardcovers, even if he bears a real person's name, is vitality: if he comes to life in our imaginations, he passes the test.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
If you play a real character who's famous and still alive, it makes things easier if you have the luck to have a good relationship with them.
For some of us, books are intrinsic to our sense of personal identity.
Every reader knows about the feeling that characters in books seem more real than real people.
One of the fantastic things about books, fiction or non-fiction, is the way they give you a chance to look into different lives.
Whether you're choosing for yourself or for a character - or for a child - names have baggage of their own.
When a character bears the same name as the author it's just an invitation to have some fun.
It's hard to know whether certain characters come to life or not, they either come to have their own life or they don't. I've written many things in which the characters just remain inert.
I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.
If modesty and candor are necessary to an author in his judgment of his own works, no less are they in his reader.
Sadly, I don't think books ever sell based on your name alone - the minute we make an assumption like that is the minute it all goes horribly wrong!