However you envisage your role in life, all you can do is perform it as best you can. - Brian Aldiss

He began talking to an imagined woman, achieving an eloquence that was never his when he was face to face with anyone else.

The ambition of the original Frank had not died; it had grown subtler. It had become a wish to sample everything. The more bodily habitations there were with which to sample, the more tantalizing the idea seemed: for many experiences, belonging only to one brief era, are never repeated, and may be gone before they are perceived and tasted.

Science fiction is no more written for scientists than ghost stories are written for ghosts.