Time Is Not A Line But A

There Were No Men In This Painting, But It Was About Men, The Kind Who Caused Women To Fall. I Did Not Ascribe Any Intentions To These Men. They Were Like The Weather, They Didn't Have A Mind. They Merely Drenched You Or Struck You Like Lightning And Moved On, Mindless As Blizzards. Or They Were Like Rocks, A Line Of Sharp Slippery Rocks With Jagged Edges. You Could Walk With Care Along Between The Rocks, Picking Your Steps, And If You Slipped You'd Fall And Cut Yourself, But It Was No Use Blaming The Rocks.

It's A Critical Fallacy Of Our Times ... That A Writer Should 'grow,' 'change,' Or 'develop.' This Fallacy Causes Us To Expect From Children Or Radishes: 'grow,' Or There's Something Wrong With You. But Writers Are Not Radishes. If You Look At What Most Writers Actually Do, It Resembles A Theme With Variations More Than It Does The Popular Notion Of Growth.

I've Never Bought Into Any Sort Of Hard And Fast, This-box/that-box Characterization. People Are Individuals. Yes, They May Be Expected To Be A Particular Way. But That Doesn't Mean They're Going To Be That Way.

The Prospect Of His Future Life Stretched Before Him Like A Sentence; Not A Prison Sentence But A Long-winded Sentence With A Lot Of Unnecessary Subordinate Clauses, As He Was Soon In The Habit Of Quipping During Happy Hour Pickup Time At The Local Campus Bars And Pubs. He Couldn’t Say He Was Looking Forward To It, This Rest-of-his-life.

All It Takes,” Said Crake, “is The Elimination Of One Generation. One Generation Of Anything. Beetles, Trees, Microbes, Scientists, Speakers Of French, Whatever. Break The Link In Time Between One Generation And The Next, And It’s Game Over Forever.