Literary Characters Quotes

A poem is a small machine made of words. . .Its movement is intrinsic, undulant, a physical more than a literary character.

So the fact that there's someone who's planning what happens to the characters, writing it down, means that the characters always have a fate. And when we think about fate, we tend think of it as the thing we would have if we were literary characters, that is, if there were somebody out there, writing us.

A writer often wants to change a reader’s perception about the world, which is a political act. But we have to work through character, so helping the reader to feel close to fictional characters is the gate through which we have to usher the reader.

We can be reluctant to recognize how much of our culture was literary, particularly now that so many of the institutional purveyors of literature happily have joined in proclaiming its death. A substantial number of Americans who believe they worship God actually worship three major literary characters: the Yahweh of the J Writer (earliest author of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers), the Jesus of the Gospel of Mark, and Allah of the Koran.

Literary characters, like my grandmother's apparitions, are fragile beings, easily frightened; they must be treated with care so they will feel comfortable in my pages

Theres always an anxiety about playing literary characters because one of the great joys of reading books is that you can create your own vision of things.