I have an interest in the outsider…In fiction you’re not often writing about the typical, you are interested in outliers, the points of interest. Par… - Celeste Ng

Here is a prayer: As you gain power, may you never forget what it’s like to not have power.

It would disappear forever from her memory of Lydia, the way memories of a lost loved one always smooth and simplify themselves, shedding complexities like scales. (p271)

Fiction says, I believe that this could happen. It is prospective, focused on possibilities. It opens us to the possible, the hypothetical, rather than binding us to the actual. And this, more than anything, is why true stories alone aren’t enough, why we should recognize fiction and read it, why fiction is valuable. Without fiction, we might end up like the woman on the bus, unable to muster interest in anything that isn’t a True Story, that doesn’t come with shocking photographs. We would have no what ifs, only what dids. We would have nothing but the actual. And if we believe only in the actual, how small our lives would be, how limited and mean our humanity, to demand proof before we believe or conceive of suffering, loss, or strangeness.