The first stories I wrote when I was 12 were about Mars and landing on Mars.

When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die.

I was doing a terrible thing in using the very books you clung to, to rebut you on every hand, on every point! What traitors books can be! You think they're backing you up, and then they turn on you. Others can use them, too, and there you are, lost in the middle of the moor, in a great welter of nouns and verbs and adjectives.

All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It's my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset, I've won or lost. At sunrise, I'm out again, giving it the old try.

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.

When I finished [writing it], I was crying. I knew at long last, after ten years of trying, I had written something good.

And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again.