And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is gift and a privilege, not a right. We must earn life once it has been awarded us. Life asks for rewards back because it has favored us with animation. So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.

How do you get so empty? Who takes it out of you?

You've been put on the world to love the act of being alive.

See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream.

They whispered to Caesar that he was mortal, then sold daggers at half-price in the grand March sale.

He knew what the wind was doing to them, where it was taking them, to all the secret places that were never so secret again in life.

The only science fiction I have written is Fahrenheit 451. It's the art of the possible. Science fiction is the art of the possible. It could happen. It has happened.