It's The Platonic Philosophy In The Republic

That Has Been The Great Achievement Of Our Age: To So Thoroughly Flood The Planet With Megabits That Every Image And Fact Has Become A Digitized Disembodied Nothingness. With Magnificent Determination, Our Species Has Advanced From Stone Age To Industrial Revolution To Digital Emptiness. We've Become Weightless, In The Bad Sense Of The Word.

Sadness Is No More Than A Bit Of Acid Transfixed In The Cerebellum.

For Me, Spirituality Includes The Belief In Things Larger Than Ourselves, An Appreciation Of Nature And Beauty, A Sensitivity To The World, A Feeling Of Shared Connection With Other Living Things, A Desire To Help People Less Fortunate Than Ourselves. All Of These Things Can Occur With Or Without God. I Do Not Believe In The Existence Of God, But I Consider Myself A Spiritual Person In The Manner I Have Just Described. I Call Myself A Spiritual Atheist. I Would Imagine That Many People Are Spiritual Atheists.

That's The Fine Balance Of A Fiction Writer...to Be Able To Give Your Characters Enough Freedom To Surprise You And Yet Still Maintain Some Kind Of Artistic Control.

I Have Too Many Friends Who Tell Me That They Spend The First Hour Of Every Morning Going Through Their E-mail Messages. I'd Like To Use My Time More Carefully.