The solitude of writing is also quite frightening. It's quite close to madness, one just disappears for a day and loses touch. - Nadine Gordimer

Since humans became self-regarding they have sought, as well, explanations for the common phenomena of procreation, death, the cycle of seasons, the earth, sea, wind and stars, sun and moon, plenty and disaster. With myth, the writer's ancestors, the oral story-tellers, began to feel out and formulate these mysteries, using the elements of daily life — observable reality — and the faculty of the imagination — the power of projection into the hidden — to make stories.

I was evidence of the theory that books are made out of other books . . . But I did not remain so for long, nor do I believe any potential writer could.

There were two soldiers in front of her, blocking her off by their clumsy embrace(how do you do it, how do you do what you've never done before) and the embrace opened like a door and took her in -- a pink hand with bitten nails grasping her right arm, a black hand with a big-dialled watch and thong bracelet pulling at her left elbow. Their three heads collided gaily, musk of sweat and tang of strong sweet soap clapped a mask to her nose and mouth. They all gasped with delicious shock. She put up an arm around each neck, the rough pile of an army haircut on one side, the soft negro hair on the other, and kissed them both on the cheek. The embrace broke.