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I don't have a problem if someone else were to say that one of my characters is a good one and another one is not and is a bad one. I try myself not to have any judgment towards my characters, but certainly the audience might.

I'm very drawn to characters who are very flawed. I'm less interested in characters who are just good or bad, because to me then they're not real people.

It seems to me that most characters, in anything, are flawed in some way, just like most people. You look for the good in the flawed people and vice versa, and then try and make them appealing in some way.

I've spent my entire career being a satirist.

I think I am a pretty good judge of character in general and try to surround myself with the best people I can.

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

You can't judge your characters or otherwise; it's not about you, it's about them.

I saw novelists as being admirable people and I thought... I thought... maybe, one day, I could be one of them.

Well, I always try to look at my characters as being better than I am. That's one of the reasons I guess I became an actor - because you get to create a persona that's bigger or better or more interesting than your own.

Some critics of my work took the view that a satirist should defer to the finer feelings of his readers and respect widely held beliefs.