“A propos of dreams, is it not a strange thing if writers of fiction never dream of their own creations; recollecting, I suppose, even in their dreams, that they have no real existence? I never dream of any of my own characters, and I feel it is so impossible that I would wager Scott never did of his, real as they are.”

— Charles Dickens, letter to C.C. Felton, Sept. 1, 1843

“The great characters of fiction live as truly as the memories of dead men. For the life after death it is not necessary that a man or woman should have lived.”

— Samuel Butler, Notebooks

“Only a few isolated figures in letters stand out as real; Sir Roger de Coverley, I suppose, Mr. Pickwick certainly, and, of course, Sherlock Holmes … Such characters, I mean, as create a real illusion; so that a man attaining Heaven might look round him and say, ‘And now, where’s Pickwick? Oh, no, I forgot; of course, he’s only a character in a book.'”

— Ronald Knox, “A Ramble in Barsetshire,” Essays in Satire, 1928