Quotes to inspire and reflect

I don’t like to throw characters into a plot as though it were a raging torrent where they are swept along. What interests me are the complications and nuances of character. Few of my characters are described externally; we see them from the inside out.

If you’re silent for a long time, people just arrive in your mind.

That trite little whimsy about characters getting out of hand; it is as old as the quills. My characters are galley slaves.

A character has his own logic. He goes his way, one goes with him; he has some perceptions, one perceives them with him. You do him justice; you don’t grind your own axe.

Naming your characters Aristotle and Plato is not going to make their relationship interesting unless you make it so on the page.

When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away—even if it’s only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.

The characters have their own lives and their own logic, and you have to act accordingly.

The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.

A character, to be acceptable as more than a chess piece, has to be ignorant of the future, unsure about the past, and not at all sure of what he’s supposed to be doing.

The bad novelist constructs his characters; he directs them and makes them speak. The true novelist listens to them and watches them act; he hears their voices even before he knows them.

A novelist’s characters must be with him as he lies down to sleep, and as he wakes from his dreams. He must learn to hate them and to love them.

You can never know enough about your characters.

It is a psychological trait in human nature that interest is established in the persons whom the playwright introduces at the beginning of his play so firmly that if the interest is then switched off to other persons who enter upon the scene later, a sense of disappointment ensues.

Begin with an individual and you find that you have created a type; begin with a type and you find that you have created—nothing.

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people, not characters. A character is a caricature.

Wherever magistrates were appointed from among those who complied with the injunctions of the laws, Socrates considered the government to be an aristocracy.

He who eats with most pleasure is he who least requires sauce.

Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything.

Excess of grief for the dead is madness; for it is an injury to the living, and the dead know it not.

There is small risk a general will be regarded with contempt by those he leads, if, whatever he may have to preach, he shows himself best able to perform.

The true test of a leader is whether his followers will adhere to his cause from their own volition, enduring the most arduous hardships without being forced to do so, and remaining steadfast in the moments of greatest peril.

Men create the gods in their own image.

The sweetest of all sounds is praise.

No human being will ever know the Truth, for even if they happen to say it by chance, they would not even known they had done so.

It isn't right to judge strength as better than good wisdom.

All men begin their learning with Homer.

God is one, greatest of gods and men, not like mortals in body or thought.

Hope is the only good that is common to all men; those who have nothing else possess hope still.

Nothing is more active than thought, for it travels over the universe, and nothing is stronger than necessity for all must submit to it.

The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself.

Man is not constituted to take pleasure in the same things always.

Whoever thinks that he alone has speech, or possesses speech or mind above others, when unfolded such men are seen to be empty.

There is a point at which even justice does injury.

Fortune cannot aid those who do nothing.

I would rather miss the mark acting well than win the day acting basely.

A wise doctor does not mutter incantations over a sore that needs the knife.

Despair often breeds disease.

Not all things are to be discovered, many are better concealed.

The gods plant reason in mankind, of all good gifts the highest.

If one begins all deeds well, it is likely that they will end well too.

Enemies' gifts are no gifts and do no good.

To live without evil belongs only to the gods.

A fearful man is always hearing things.

A day lays low and lifts up again all human things.

It was my care to make my life illustrious not by words more than by deeds.

What house, bloated with luxury, ever became prosperous without a woman's excellence?

Evil counsel travels fast.

Look and you will find it - what is unsought will go undetected.