“Character is plot, plot is character.”

“Action is Character.”

“Sometimes I don't know if Zelda isn't a character that I created myself.”

“Sometimes I don't know whether I'm real or whether I'm a character in one of my novels.”

“I have lived so long within the circle of this book and with these characters that often it seems to me that the real world does not exist but that only these characters exist, and however pretentious that remark sounds... it is an absolute fact-- so much so that their glees and woes are just exactly as important to me as what happens in life.”

“The strongest should come first in comedy because once a character is really established as funny everything he does is funny.”

“He tries to go to life. So does every author except the very worst, but after all most of them live on predigested food. The incident or character may be from life, but the writer usually interprets it in terms of the last book he read. For instance, suppose he meets a sea captain and thinks he's an original character. The truth is that he sees the resemblance between the sea captain and the last sea captain Dana created, or who-ever creates sea captains, and therefore he knows how to set this sea captain on paper”