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In general, I think writing characters, no one is 100 percent good or bad, and certainly, the bad characters never think they're bad themselves. Even the worst characters don't feel like they're bad guys on the inside.

There are good characters and bad characters.

Only bad writers think they're good.

Whenever I have tried to make a character bad, they end up being good in some way.

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 think a good story's a good story and a good character's a good character.

I'm not one of these 'the characters write themselves; the story just fell out of me' kind of writers. Wish it was like that.

I think all characters are facets of the writer. In a way, they have to be if you're going to write them convincingly.

I don't believe novels should carry an obvious message. I don't want to write characters you can immediately say are good or bad; as in life, most people are a mixture.