They suggested I should introduce an element of reincarnation in the story. At first, I thought that was silly. But then, this whole time dimension began to fascinate me.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I think I can see more clearly now - about how the pattern of past experiences has shaped who I am and the characters I have played - and I'm grateful for that.
I wish there was such a thing as reincarnation.
I think what I was after was a unifying story that could bring everything together, that could give me a sense of the whole of history.
I loved all ghost stories. So I guess it was only a matter of time before I wrote one.
In 'A Likely Story,' I wanted to recreate the events, the mood, and the imagery of my life as a teenager. I was thirty-seven when I wrote it.
I try to push a single idea to its absolute limit. So for all of those ideas that existed in the story, you attempt to find a physical realisation in the space.
It was such a paradox for me that the only thing I know how to do is act, but that the first thing I abandoned while writing were the characters.
What I had to do was keep the story within certain limits of what was, of course, plausible.
The reason why time plays a great part in so many of my tales is that this element looms up in my mind as the most profoundly dramatic and grimly terrible thing in the universe.
I've always been fascinated by the concept of reincarnation. I learned that many brilliant people were interested in reincarnation, including Carl Jung. I'm a big Jungian. So I began writing novels involving theories integrating past and present, even if the past element in the novel took place 500 or 1,000 years ago.