“We are all potentially characters in a novel--with the difference that characters in a novel really get to live their lives to the full.”

“When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.”

“Axiom: Novel must have either one living character or a perfect pattern: fails otherwise.”

“I do not use profanity in my novels. My characters all go to church.”

“A good novel is one that shows the complexity of individuals, and creates enough space for all these characters to have a voice; in this way a novel is called democratic — not that it advocates democracy but that by nature it is so.”

“This isn't a particularly novel observation, but the world is full of people who think they can manipulate the lives of others merely by getting a law passed.”

“Life is a shitstorm, in which art is our only umbrella."
(spoken by character in a novel by Mario Vargas Llosa)”

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

“These are all novels, all about people that never existed, the people that read them it makes them unhappy with their own lives. Makes them want to live in other ways they can never really be.”

“The really great novel tends to be the exact negative of its author's life. "The characters crowd onto the page", writes Mauriac, "there to accomplish all those things which the personal destiny of the author has kept at bay.”