And Then The Man Reminded Max, With

My Saturday Night. My Saturday Night Is Like A Microwave Burrito. Very Tough To Ruin Something That Starts Out So Bad To Begin With.

I Smoked And Looked Down At The Bottom Of Pittsburgh For A Little While, Watching The Kids Playing Tiny Baseball, The Distant Figures Of Dogs Snatching At A Little Passing Car, A Miniature Housewife On Her Back Porch Shaking Out A Snippet Of Red Rug, And I Made A Sudden, Frightened Vow Never To Become That Small, And To Devote Myself To Getting Bigger And Bigger And Bigger.

The Two Dozen Commonplace Childhood Photographs - Snowsuit, Pony, Tennis Racket, Looming Fender Of A Dodge - Were An Inexhaustible Source Of Wonder For Him, At Her Having Existed Before He Met Her, And Of Sadness For His Possessing Nothing Of The Ten Million Minutes Of That Black-and-white Scallop-edged Existence Save These Few Proofs.

I Took Comfort, As A Kid, In Knowing That Things Had Always Been As Awful And As Wonderful As They Were Now, That The World Was Always On The Edge Of Total Destruction.

Most Science Fiction Seemed To Be Written For People Who Already Liked Science Fiction; I Wanted To Write Stories For Anyone, Anywhere, Living At Any Time In The History Of The World.