What I realized was how difficult an hour show is and how miserable you can be if you're not happy doing it.
People are really stuck on their ideas about themselves.
I'm always reading. And I keep a whole list of stories, often unusual stories. There are a hundred some-odd ideas on that list.
I am in communication with almost everybody I've done a story about. I have a fantasy that if I ever strike it rich, I'll have a big party and fly all of these people there, and they'll be roaming around the party - Billy Mitchell, Master Legend, Santa Tim, Rio DiAngelo, Mr. Romance circa 2007, and so on.
You exist in the minds of other people.
I don't think that the people in my stories are lying to themselves. Well, some of them are - everybody is at some level. But there is something about how they all inhabit a narrative of their own making.
I was really struck by all these people who had committed suicide. There are videos of all of them talking about why they're so happy to shed their human existence and exit their "vehicles" and I thought, "Why is that?"
The best ideas are the honest ones. Ones born out of personal experience. Ones that originated to help a few but ended up helping many.
They put arsenic in his meat And stared aghast to watch him eat; They poured strychnine in his cup And shook to see him drink it up.
It would take me years of reading, thought, and experience to learn again that in this world limits are not only inescapable but indispensable.
The passive master lent his hand, To the vast Soul which o'er him planned.