Can anyone alter fate? All of us combined... or one great figure... or someone strategically placed, who happens to be in the right spot. Chance. Accident. And our lives, our world, hanging on it.

But an artist, he realized. Or rather so-called artist. Bohemian. That's closer to it. The artistic life without the talent.

Reality denied comes back to haunt.

Writing is a lonely way of life. You shut yourself up in your study and work and work.

On some other world, possibly it is different. Better. There are clear good and evil alternatives. Not these obscure admixtures, these blends, with no proper tool by which to untangle the components.

Truth, she thought. As terrible as death. But harder to find.

That is the artist's job: take mineral rock from dark silent earth, transform it into shining light-reflecting form from sky.