“Authors only write what their characters tell them. Which mean we are scribes, and the characters are the author.”

“Sometimes your imagination is more like you than yourself”

“Great characters tell their own stories. The author just writes it down for them.”

“She was like a heroine in a novel that she herself was writing the character kept protesting that she was too strong for love and yet the narrator went on describing her desire.”

“The rituals surrounding vacations among Manhattan's wealthiest and best-connected citizens are strange and specific. By vacations I don't mean country houses, which are part of the regular ebb and flow of life and which are frequently subjects for complaint - The kids never want to go! The caretaker missed the roof leak! The pipes froze! - as though having a six-thousand-square-foot, cedar-shingled cottage on five acres overlooking the ocean is nothing more or less than a constant test of character.”

“When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him.”

“She will be busy writing novels. As soon as she had has gotten far enough away from this frighteningly puritanical country, her mind will be set free, and she will be able to turn all of her observations in richly drawn characters and intricately themed stories.” “But what will she eat, dear Grass?” Barnard leaned against the wall, his arms crossing his chest skeptically. “Baguette and red wine, pure art, filthy air. Look at her, she is made of rose petals, and the world will take good care of her. And if it does not, we will have our hearts moved by such an exquisitely gorgeous tragedy.”