Quote

The key for me with historical characters is they're interesting because they're human beings. A little bit of Hemingway goes a long way here, but journalists and writers should honestly look at their material and have a real interest, a real passion in what they want to write, and they should also have a lot of knowledge as well.

Most good fiction also has a character the writer seems to know more deeply than anyone can actually be known in life, but a few unusual writers can make something great without that.

I like to write stories that read like historical fiction about great, world-changing events through the lens of a flawed protagonist.

I love novels where not much 'happens' but where the interest is in the ideas and analyses of characters.

Novels are one of the few remaining areas of narrative storytelling where one person does almost all of the creative heavy lifting.

In some ways, writing a novel, especially a novel set in the past and about characters who once lived, is about amassing enough details and arranging them properly in order to offer the reader a verisimilitude that satisfies his or her curiosity about the story at hand.

There are a few writers whose lives and personalities are so large, so fascinating, that there's no such thing as a boring biography of them - you can read every new one that comes along, good or bad, and be caught up in the story all over again.

To me, characters are at the heart of great literature.

My view of an excellent novel was probably set in the golden age of fiction in the 19th century: narrative, character and voice are of equal importance.

The characters are always the focal point of a book for me, whether I'm writing or reading. I may enjoy a book that has an intriguing mystery or a good plot, but to become one of my real favorites, it has to have great characters.