Scientists will forever have to live with the fact that their product is, in the end, impersonal.

In fiction writing ideas have to be handled extremely carefully. You can't let your characters just be mouthpieces for your ideas. They have to live and breathe on their own.

In fiction writing, I would say there are several different strands that have been woven through my own writing, and each influenced by a different group of writers.

Time is the clarity for seeing right and wrong.

Each time is true, but the truths are not the same.

In a world of fixed future, life is an infinite corridor of rooms, one room lit at each moment, the next room dark but prepared. We walk from room to room, look into the room that is lit, the present moment, then walk on. We do not know the rooms ahead, but we know we cannot change them. We are spectators of our lives.

That's the fine balance of a fiction writer...to be able to give your characters enough freedom to surprise you and yet still maintain some kind of artistic control.