Does history repeat itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce? No, that's too grand, too considered a process. History just burps, and we taste again that raw-onion sandwich it swallowed centuries ago.
Though I'm happy with the response to the film, I've been hearing the feedback that 'Yennai Arindhaal' has traces of my earlier films. It was meant to be like that. Since it's part of a trilogy, hence the reference to the other two films in the franchise.
I think any writer keeps going back to some basic theme. Sometimes it's autobiographical. I guess it usually is.
History repeats itself. So you might wanna pay attention.
History repeats the old conceits, the glib replies, the same defeats.
All poetry comes from repetition.
I'm a storyteller; that is what I do. And I'm particularly interested in history; and in history of a certain era. But what is interesting for me is how many, how many things you see repeated.
Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don't know that I'm doing it, usually.
Everything's been said, but it needs saying again.
I tend to describe recurring themes as being part of a writer's DNA - something so deeply embedded in us that even we don't notice it until we've written three or four books.
The story being told in Star Wars is a classic one. Every few hundred years, the story is retold because we have a tendency to do the same things over and over again.
One is constantly trying to figure out what came together in one's childhood. Lots of people spend significant portions of their lives in therapy - especially in the States - trying to work out who they are. I'm certain there is a little of that in the business of writing. That would explain why certain images and themes recur.
There are perennial stories like 'Alice in Wonderland' and 'Sherlock Holmes' and those sorts of things, which have been around since almost as long as film, and 'Frankenstein' is another one. They're perennial favorites, which get remade every 20 years, and that's OK.
The only thing that's new is the internet! But the problems and issues that all the kids go through now, it's nothing different! It's funny how your kid can come home and tell you something and you can tell them almost how it's going to play out. It's crazy, I be like 'Wow, am I that old?' But you've seen it before, and it's the same thing.
They say history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.
My life goes in four-year cycles. The World Cup is every four years and the Olympics are every four years.
I've always been into 1939 and the New York World's Fair. And I lived on 39th Street and on the 39th floor. Once you pick a number that means something to you, then you notice it everywhere.
We write in ways that, we generally hope, reflect real life, or at least look familiar to humans. And in life, recurring themes are a recurring theme. We never quite conquer a pet vice or a relationship pattern or a communication habit. We're haunted by our particular demons.
It's true, we tend to write about the same thing over and over again because this is our trauma. If I had been in World War II, I might have been writing about D-Day over and over again.
Not to be a Bible-thumper, but there really is nothing new under the sun.
I reread a lot. I must have read 'The Once and Future King,' 'Watership Down' and Mary Renault's 'Theseus' books at least a dozen times each.
If the present be compared with the remote past, it is easily seen that in all cities and in all peoples there are the same desires and the same passions as there always were.
...the characters in my books all resemble each other. They live, with minor variations, the same moments, the same perils, and when I speak of them, my language, which is inspired by them, repeats the same poems in the same tone.
Thus I rediscovered what writers have always known (and have told us again and again): books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told.
History is fractal. The closer you look, the more complicated, yet always repeating patterns.
