Are quotes from a character technically quotes from the author?

Question

I was recently browsing for some quotes from a few of my favorite authors, and I noticed that in all the lists of "Top Quotes by..." were quotes from characters within the story.

I understand that yes, of course, the author came up with and published those words, but whom should the quote be attributed to?

Example:

The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution.

Should the attribution go to Albus Dumbledore or J.K. Rowling?

I am not asking from "formal usage" point-of-view (which this post covers nicely), I am not writing an academic paper or anything like that... I am more interested in it as literary concept. To that end why would online stores be selling posters, coffee mugs, etc. with the quote attributed to the author, rather than the character?

Answer 1

In answer to the title: Not at all

Let's take a quote from Dickens' novel A Christmas Carol:

“If I could work my will,every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas’ on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.”

This quote was of course from the Christmas hating Ebenezer Scrooge.

However, if we quote this as coming from Dickens, someone not familiar with his book may assume that Dickens hated Christmas, which we have no evidence for. He may have written the words, but it isn't his quote. He is giving the words to a character.

But if we quote it to Ebenezer Scrooge, again someone not familiar with the name may assume they are a real person. So it seems we can't just quote one or the other. Someone made the point that if the character is really famous we can just quote their name, but that's not true. Not everyone will have heard of a character, and someone else made the point they won't be as famous in a couple of hundred years.

There have been discussions similar on English.SE and Writing.SE, but none give a definite answer.

However, one of the answers gives a link to this site. It reaches the conclusion at the bottom that:

The fair, honest and ethical way to quote a fictional character is to note the speaker first, then the book, play or movie, and finally the author.

This isn't an official guideline, but it seems good advice. So in the case of my example, like this:

“If I could work my will,every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas’ on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.” - Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

The character deserves to be connected to words they say, it defines who they are as a character. But we don't want to give the idea that they aren't fictional.

But a character usually does not express the ideas of the author. So we can't just say the author.

The best, and in my opinion fairest way to say both, and the novel.

In your example, the quote should go as follows:

"The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution." - Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter by JK Rowling

There is no definite answer, but I think this makes the most sense.

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EDIT

After some comments, I'm going to clarify and expand on a couple of different contexts.

If all the audience know the character

If the audience definitely knows the character (e.g. If someone goes to a book meeting after everyone's read a book) then you can probably just quote the character. The audience will know they are a fictional person.

If you are quoting multiple times

The first time I would go with character, book, author. After that, the reader will know that the character isn't real, and you can just quote the character.

If the character is used as the author's 'mouthpiece'

Sometimes authors write a sort of biography, but use a character instead of themselves. In this case, and if you have to be absolutely sure this is the case, it would probably be best to quote the author, as that is their thought, not the character's.

In all other situations

Include all the information, author, character and book. If one person doesn't know the character is fictional, then you need to include all information, at least the first time.

Sources, and examples of sites that agree with the character, book, author format:

Reddit

It depends on the context in which you're giving the quote, I would generally quote the character, if I wasn't sure that everybody would know who I was talking about I would go on to cite the book title and author. The problem with just quoting the author on the matter when it's a character saying whatever it is you're quoting is that it might suggest that the character's opinion is the author's opinion. But that doesn't make any sense. It's not that Shakespeare loves Juliet, but rather he wrote about Romeo loving Juliet.

I agree with this, especially where it says 'if I wasn't sure that everybody would know who I was talking about I would go on to cite the book title and author.' and the Shakespeare/Juliet example

Yahoo

One answer:

I'm pretty sure it goes "Quote." Character. Work (title underlined). Author.

Another gives an alternate way:

As [character] said in [Book] by [Author], "QUOTE."

fansofrealitytv

I would think "Quote" - character in title by author. You have to credit the author of the words.

Here is a guide to citing fiction by Monmouth University. It doesn't say anything about quoting characters, but it does say the following:

A WORK OF FICTION BY A SINGLE AUTHOR:
Author’s Name. Title of Work. Publisher, Year.

TWO WORKS OF FICTION BY THE SAME AUTHOR:
Author’s Name. Title of Work. Publisher, Year.
Title of Work. Publisher, Year.

And I imagine it would include the character's name if it said about quoting a character.

Answer 2

Yes, absolutely. The quote in question is from a book by JK Rowling, so the quote is attributable to her. Not just "technically", as you ask; it is without qualification a quote from Rowling.

The question of whether the quoted remark reflects what she herself feels is a different one altogether. To assume it does so is a categorical error. In fiction or drama, what a character says is part of the author's depiction of that character, not a straightforward expression of the author's viewpoint.

A claim such as: "When Dumbledore says X, he represents what Rowling really thinks, but when Voldemort says Y, that's not what Rowling really thinks" can be justified only through evidence, either internal or external. Internal evidence would be something like: "The plot of the entire Harry Potter series is constructed in such a way that it reinforces the truth of what Dumbledore says here, so Rowling must have meant us to agree with it." External evidence could be something like an essay or opinion piece written in Rowling's own name and voice that reiterates Dumbledore's sentiment; or a historical analysis of Rowling's life and times that includes a discussion of the prevalent attitudes toward truth and how Rowling's work intersects with those attitudes.

Even if the words in a creative work aren't spoken by a character, but in the first person (as in, say, Shakespeare's sonnets), literary analysis attributes those words to a persona: "a character established by an author, one in whose voice all or part of a narrative takes place". It's naïve to read Shakespeare's sonnets and assume that they are a straightforward depiction of autobiographical incidents. As with fictional characters, any claim that the first person speaker in the sonnets is actually Shakespeare needs to be supported using internal and external evidence.

That doesn't make the actual works themselves any less Rowling's or Shakespeare's. It would be downright silly to say "All the world's a stage" isn't a quotation from Shakespeare. Yes, it's Jacques in As You Like It who actually says it. And yes, the play gives every indication that Jacques isn't a character we're supposed to find particularly reliable. But when asked, "who said 'All the world's a stage?'" it's ridiculously pedantic to object to the answer "Shakespeare."

The discussions about how a quote-within-a-quote should be cited, or how one should indicate that this might not represent the writer's view, etc. are good ones to have, but the basic point remains: if I write something, and you quote from that something, you're quoting me. It does not follow that you're representing me fairly and objectively.

So yeah, the other answers are all wrong and/or miss the point.

Answer 3

This is only a partial answer and is admittedly rather incomplete, but I think you really have to look at the context to determine if the character is saying something the author is likely to agree with.

I once read a (laughably absurd) article during the brief moral panic over the Harry Potter series (believe it or not, such a moral panic did, in fact, exist in certain circles) that claimed that the message of the series is summed up in the following quote (from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone):

There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it.

Unfortunately for the author of the article, the quote is from Voldemort, the arch-villain of the book. That being the case, it's safe to assume that the author completely disagrees with the sentiment; you could quote this as an example of something that the author does not believe.

There are numerous other examples of quotes from characters that the author would almost certainly disagree with.

Point being that just because a character in a book said something doesn't mean that the author agrees with the sentiment; there are just too many counterexamples for that to even be a serious idea. (I don't think that that's what you were suggesting in your question, just wanted to throw that out there).

With regards to the specific quote you mention, a lot of times Albus Dumbledore is, in fact, a "mouthpiece" for the author. Just as there are cases where a character (like Voldemort) delivers stuff that the author clearly disagrees with, there are also cases where characters are clearly serving as "mouthpieces" of the author in a sense. For example, it's pretty clear that C. S. Lewis would agree with anything that Aslan says in the Chronicles of Narnia. He's an "unrestricted"/unqualified "mouthpiece" for the author in the sense that anything Aslan says C. S. Lewis also says.

A character can also serve as a "mouthpiece" in specific circumstances or on particular topics. For example, in Harry Potter, Hermoine Granger is often a "mouthpiece" for the author in terms of factual information about the in-series universe (e.g. the properties of the Sword of Gryffindor), so we can assume that she's speaking for the author on factual questions. We can't necessarily assume that she's speaking for the author on other topics, though.

Albus Dumbledore may be such a character. When he's speaking on topics like, for example, morality or philosophy, he generally says stuff that the author seems likely to agree with. I'm sure you can find counterexamples, but it seems relatively safe to assume that the character's generally speaking for the author on those topics (obviously subject to the context).

So, the extent to which the author is likely to agree with a character is determined by the context as well as the author's statements on the topic.

Answer 4

I think the problem here lies in the distinction between an aphorism and a quotation. An aphorism is a pithy saying meant to express a general truth. We assume that the author of an aphorism believes what they are saying. What we commonly call "quotes" are in fact generally aphorisms.

All aphorisms are quotations, of course, but not all quotations are aphorisms.

• If you are quoting the work of an author, you should always credit the author, and you should cite the work you are quoting from so that the reader can retrieve the context is they want to.

• If you are quoting an aphorism of an author (or anyone else) you should credit the author, but you need not necessarily cite the source.

• If you are quoting the aphorism of a character in a work of fiction, you should attribute the quotation to the author as a quotation, but make it clear that the aphorism is the aphorism of the character, not the author. This can often be done easily enough by extending the part you quote to capture the attribution of the words.