“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.”

“Silar's problem is something I, as an author, am constantly faced with. I have to predict the actions of my characters as they enter different situations. But there's always that element of chaos when they lose their sanity or when the less-probable occurs, which works against whatever fate I have in store for them. Just to complicate things further, it's almost inexcusable for an author to have characters acting... um... out of character in a book unless it's warranted by some other event. Therefore, as reasonable readers and authors, we all have our own ideas of deterministic behaviour and frequently balk at actions/decisions that seem odd.”

“We have already seen that when positive authority suggests a change in behavior, the recipient will accept it provided he is capable of doing so and provided it does not require drastic modification of belief or frustrate important needs. By carrying out the suggestion, one can simultaneously reduce dissonance and preserve intact one's relation to positive authority. But what can reasonably be expected when the suggestion to change is beyond the recipient's capability or frustrates his deep needs or predispositions? In such a situation, a conflict arises between his desire to comply with authority and the abilities or needs which make compliance impossible.One way to resolve such a conflict situation (or to reduce the dissonance) is to change one's conception of authority. If a suggestion emanating from positive authority is unacceptable, the conflict may be removed by becoming disaffected with the authority and transforming it either into a negative authority or into a nonexistent one. This is exactly what Leon and Joseph did.”

“His unrivaled genius as an ideological novelist was this capacity to invent actions and situations in which ideas dominate behavior without the latter becoming allegorical. He possessed what I call an eschatological imagination, one that could envision putting ideas into action and then following them out to their ultimate consequences. At the same time, his characters respond to such consequences according to the ordinary moral and social standards prevalent in their milieu, and it is the fusion of these two levels that provides Dostoevsky's novels with both their imaginative range and their realistic grounding in social life.”

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

“A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much, and an action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all.”