I never knew anybody . . . who found life simple. I think a life or a time looks simple when you leave out the details. - Ursula K. Le Guin

While we read a novel, we are insane — bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices... Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.

O foolish writer. Now moves. Even in storytime, dreamtime, once-upon-a-time, now isn’t then.

He explained to Atro that he now understood why the army was organized as it was. It was indeed quite necessary. No rational form of organization would serve the purpose. He simply had not understood that the purpose was to enable men with machine guns to kill unarmed men and women easily and in great quantities when told to do so. Only he still could not see where courage, or manliness, or fitness entered in.