I used to think that identity as a person is easily defined. Now I believe that it is an indeterminate art; perhaps a science for fools; or a hobby for the wise.
In a novel, well it gets worse. Here are people you really cannot control, whose extremes and eccentricies are beyond the scope of the most determined psychoanalysis. I often conclude that writers live out their inner selves in their characters; but here is the but to that: as much depth as we possess, I believe we express. Or, to put it another way: people are only as deep as the person who created them. The imagined world that convinces me of its reality is the one that has deeply satisfying expressions of those people who habitually invade a writer's dreams...sleeping or awake. They are the ones that others love and remember for the rest of their lives. I always think of a little girl called Lucy. She refused to stop believing in what she knew she saw and forgave her brother for a terrible betrayal.
You know who I mean don't you?
In falling through doorways to other worlds we should take out the best of those people and let them speak, and breathe, and become real in our hearts.
