“I find that the only way to make my characters really interesting to c...” — Roald Dahl Quote

“I find that the only way to make my characters really interesting to children is to exaggerate all their good or bad qualities, and so if a person is nasty or bad or cruel, you make them very nasty, very bad, very cruel. If they are ugly, you make them extremely ugly. That, I think, is fun and makes an impact.”

“A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.”

“The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it.”

“All Norwegian children learn to swim when they are very young because if you can't swim it is difficult to find a place to bathe.”

“I never get any protests from children. All you get are giggles of mirth and squirms of delight. I know what children like.”

“When you're writing a book, with people in it as opposed to animals, it is no good having people who are ordinary, because they are not going to interest your readers at all. Every writer in the world has to use the characters that have something interesting about them, and this is even more true in children's books.”

“I like to hide behind the characters I play. Despite the public perception, I am a very private person who has a hard time with the fame thing.”

“It was a different job in that, because it's a 'Star Wars' movie and I'm a droid in a 'Star Wars' movie, people have a reverence for those characters that have come before me.”

“The important thing is for the characters to feel real, and to be given the humanity they are due. That granting of humanity is what separates a full portrait from a stereotype.”

“There are too many souls of wood not to love those wooden characters who do indeed have a soul.”

“A lot of times, gay characters are represented in unrealistic or stereotypical ways.”

“I'm always determined that as a novelist I'm going to go out there and research my characters very thoroughly before I start writing.”