The Past Is What Makes Now Like

In A Very Real Way, One Writes A Story To Find Out What Happens In It. Before It Is Written It Sits In The Mind Like A Piece Of Overheard Gossip Or A Bit Of Intriguing Tattle. The Story Process Is Like Taking Up Such A Piece Of Gossip, Hunting Down The People Actually Involved, Questioning Them, Finding Out What Really Occurred, And Visiting Pertinent Locations. As With Gossip, You Can't Be Too Surprised If Important Things Turn Up That Were Left Out Of The First-heard Version Entirely; Or If Points Initially Made Much Of Turn Out To Have Been Distorted, Or Simply Not To Have Happened At All.

Now For Me, You're The Irreplaceable One: I've Never See You Up So Close Before, And I Do Not Understand You At All. You Say Sometimes I Act Like I Don't See You? I Don't Even Know Where To Look! Living With You Around Is Like Is Like Living With A Permanent Dazzle. The Fact That You Even Like Me, Or Look At Me, Or Brush By Me, Or Hug Me, Or Hold Me, Is So Surprising That After It's Over I Have To Go Back Through It A Dozen Times In My Head To Savor It And Try And Figure Out What It Was Like Because I Was Too Busy Being Astounded While It Was Happening.

The Pleasures Of Love Are Really Quite Wonderful--though I Suspect They Are Rather A Luxury And Require A Certain Level Of Socioeconomic Stability To Be Anything Other Than A Mode Of Suffering.

I Think Of Myself As A Very Lazy Writer, Though Other People See It Differently.

Historically, I Guess That's How Science Fiction Works: You Start By Using Aliens To Think The Unthinkable — And Then, Eventually, Another Writer, Having Grown A Little More Comfortable With The Earlier Notion, Brings It Into The Human.