It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I like extreme situations: people pushed out of their comfort zones; the civil veneer stripped off.
I think you have to find the humanity in the character and then the deterioration is a part of the process - the journey of the character. It's like playing King Lear. You can start off as a nice old man who finishes up crazy.
As a writer, I have this compulsion to take characters who appear formidable and bombard them with adversity until they crumble. What's interesting is watching them rise again, and seeing how they've changed and grown, if indeed they have.
Character is much easier kept than recovered.
The essence of my character is an inability to get used to things. This, in fact, is the one thing I have grown accustomed to: an inability to get used to things.
The walls of that grand edifice called a good character have to be worked at during life.
Vanity dies hard; in some obstinate cases it outlives the man.
I'm going to do the old 'plaster removal' technique and just get the pain over with in one go: 'Life's Too Short' isn't funny to me.
It could be argued that every age gets the comfort savagery writer it deserves.
My mother enjoyed old age, and because of her I've begun to enjoy parts of it too. So far I've had it good and am crumbling nicely.