characters

Respect cannot be inherited, respect is the result of right actions.

It [the Harlem Renaissance] was a time of black individualism, a time marked by a vast array of characters whose uniqueness challenged the traditional inability of white Americans to differentiate between blacks.

Anger gets you into trouble, ego keeps you in trouble.

Arrogant men with knowledge make more noise from their mouth than making a sense from their mind.

With discipline, you can lose weight, you can excel in work, you can win the war.

There__ no such thing as a good or bad person: there are just people who have each been or seem to have been good or bad to you, someone, or some people, thus far.

Politeness is the first thing people lose once they get the power.

Just me, my music, and the voices in my head.

If you can't impress them with your argument, impress them with your actions.

I miss the days when I was alone with my characters and no one else knew them except me.

The worst part of writing is meeting all these great new characters and having no one to talk about (the adventures you share with) them.

When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away - even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.

By the end, you should be inside your character, actually operating from within somebody else, and knowing him pretty well, as that person knows himself or herself. You're sort of a predator, an invader of people.

This isn't the road home. This is a road littered with questions that will inevitably lead to an answer.

It is my deepest desire to share the worlds of people we don__ often see or read about in media. With my writing I seek to introduce you to the worlds I__e always known existed around me and within me.

Delicious days ahead for solitude and writing and, oh yes, the holiday meal with family. Live with my characters until term starts in 2012!

The driver, a black silhouette upon his box, whipped up his bony horses. Icy silence in the coach. Marius, motionless, his body braced in the corner of the carriage, his head dropping down upon his breast, his arms hanging, his legs rigid, appeared to await nothing now but a coffin; Jean Valjean seemed made of shadow, and Javert of stone.

Outside Styx's apartment was not the first time Rochester and I had met, or would it be the last. We first encountered each other at Haworth House in Yorkshire when my mind was young and the barrier between reality and make-believe had not yet hardened into the shell that cocoons us in adult life. The barrier was soft, pliable and, for a moment, thanks to the kindness of a stranger and the power of a good storytelling voice, I made the short journey--and returned.