Characterization is not divorced from plot, not a coat of paint you slap on after the structure of events is already built. Rather characterization is inseparable from plot.

You think intelligence and grit can succeed by themselves, but I'm telling you that's a pretty illusion.

You must learn to be three people at once: writer, character, and reader.

Anything said in upper-crust British automatically sounded intelligent.

What characters do must grow out of who they are, and who they are is, in turn, influenced by what you make happen to them.

Every paragraph should accomplish two goals: advance the story, and develop your characters as complex human beings.

Religious reverence for one's own job, even if the job is worth doing, is a sexual turnoff.