When I Finish A First Draft, It's

He Took A Step Toward Her, Than Another, Tentatively, Gathering All His Strength, As Though About To Throw A Heavy Switch That Would, If His Calculations Were Correct, Bring Light To A Hundred Cities And Ten Thousand Darkened Rooms. He Was Going To Ask Her To Dance - That Was All.

I Feel That In The Past, My Style Has Shown Itself To Be Capable Of Handling Dark And Light In The Same Paragraph, Or Even In The Same Sentence. That's Something I Almost Take For Granted. I Think It Was More A Concern To Get The Details Right And Persuasively Recreate The World I Was Trying To Write About.

There Was A Sort Of Irony In The Fact That These [superhero] Characters - Many Of Whom In That Period, The Golden Age, Had Been Evolved To Fight The Nazis - Were Themselves Very Much In The Nazi Ideal. The Idea That You Can Solve Problems Through Physical Strength, By Being Stronger And More Dominant And More Powerful - That Is Fascism. I Mean, That's It, That's The Essence Of Fascism. I Don't Think The Creators Of The Superheroes Or The Kids Who Were Reading Them At The Time Were The Slightest Bit Aware Of It.

There Are No Moments More Painful For A Parent Than Those In Which You Contemplate Your Child's Perfect Innocence Of Some Imminent Pain, Misfortune, Or Sorrow. That Innocence (like Every Kind Of Innocence Children Have) Is Rooted In Their Trust Of You, One That You Will Shortly Be Obliged To Betray; Whether It Is Fair Or Not, Whether You Can Help It Or Not, You Are Always The Ultimate Guarantor Or Destroyer Of That Innocence.

All Novels Are Sequels; Influence Is Bliss.