“When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.”
Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 16
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Ernest Hemingway 501
American author and journalist 1899–1961Related quotes

“Characters in novels are all fiction like the world they live in.”
Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse (2013)
Context: Characters in novels are all fiction like the world they live in. Of course Vivien Lash has things in common with me but if she actually was me I wouldn’t have been able to invent her. And I’m not plotting to murder my husband!
The closest connection between me and my characters is that we live in a city that’s recognisable as London, but it’s a version of London that came out of my head.

“In every man's writings, the character of the writer must lie recorded.”
Goethe (1828).
1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)
“All people live in a fantasy in which they are the main character.”
Source: Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World

On how she formulates her characters in “An Interview with Tracy Chevalier” https://fictionwritersreview.com/interview/an-interview-with-tracy-chevalier/ in Fiction Writers Review (2019 Sep 23)

A Battle For Life (July 1958)
Context: Later the assistant chief surgeon told people that he had been a surgeon for eleven years, had seen not a few patients die and consequently had become quite cold and indifferent. He was interested only in diseases as such and had no feelings for his patients as people. But what Chiu Tsai-kang had said impressed him deeply. Even after he left the patient's room he thought it over for quite a long while. Here was a man awaiting death who had to clench his teeth to endure the searing pain of his whole body, but who constantly had the nation's steel production on his mind and who wholeheartedly desired to return to his furnace. In the past, he had read of people with such public spirit and unselfish character only in novels. He had regarded them as nothing but ideal, imaginary creations of literary writers. Now he has seen such a hero in the flesh with his own eyes.

“Axiom: Novel must have either one living character or a perfect pattern: fails otherwise.”
Source: Commonplace Book (1985), p. 6