Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved. - Helen Keller

Your worldbuilding is unique, yes, but your characters are what will really sell your story. - Moriah Richards

Costello: And you don't know the fellows' names?Abbott: Well I should.Costello: Well then who's on first?Abbott: Yes.Costello: I mean the fellow's name.Abbott: Who.Costello: The guy on first.Abbott: Who.Costello: The first baseman.Abbott: Who.Costello: The guy playing...Abbott: Who is on first! - Abbott and Costello

“You still blush too easily when confronted,” Jasnah noted.“I’m sorry.”“And apologize too easily as well.”“I’m… uh, indignant?”- The Stormlight Archive

People with happy families don't become spies. A bad childhood is the perfect background for covert ops. You don't trust anyone, you're used to getting smacked around, and you never get homesick. - Michael Westen, Burn Notice

Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them ― in order that the reader may see what they are made of. ― Kurt Vonnegut

I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose. - Stephen King

Character is plot, plot is character. - F Scott Fitzgerald

I craft everything in the beginning. I know where the characters are going before I start writing the book. - Ann Patchett

My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play in it, for good or evil, before this is over. The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many. - J.R.R. Tolkien

I must be cruel, only to be kind; Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind. - William Shakespeare

Whatever these forces are that make people do dumb things, they are powerful, they are often invisible, and they lurk even in the best of environments. - Ed Catmull

Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down. - Hector Berlioz

Magic happens between the notes. - Linda Bott

Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. - F. Scott Fitzgerald

The librarian, the warrior, the free spirit… archetypes are a great jumping off point to help clarify where we want to go with a character. - Kristan Higgins

You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them peril, you find out who they really are. - Joss Whedon

In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations! - Anton Chekhov

People - and characters - are made up of their past experiences. When crafting a character, one of the most important aspects we consider is her past. - Sky Fairwin

One brain’s blueprint may promote joy more readily than most; in another, pessimism reigns. Whether happiness infuses or eludes a person depends, in part, on the DNA he has chanced to receive. - Thomas Lewis