Geoffrey Wolff

“To learn something, to master something, anything, is as sweet as first love.”

I took aim at a high turret, and my eyes were indifferent to the background of my target till I pulled the trigger, and saw what I had just done. The bullet dusted away the sand turret, and thucked into the log six inches from my father’s thigh. He didn’t confiscate my rifle. He didn’t beat me. He didn’t shout at me. He comforted me, but he also let me know something consequential had just happened; this did not upset the balance between us, but affirmed it. For several years after I pulled that trigger I did not argue with my father’s judgments.

It was my father, though, who taught me that we should distinguish in this life between what we feel and what we feel we should feel. That if we can distinguish between these things we may have access to some truths about ourselves.

Suppose for a moment, thinking back to your fictions, that you could will them to be true. Would this make you happy?

“Every fictioneer re-invents the world because the facts, things or people of the received world are unacceptable.”