misapprehension

Well,_ Harry said, __ook at it this way: Suppose you were an intelligent bacterium floating in space, and you came upon one of our communication satellites, in orbit around the Earth. You would think, What a strange, alien object this is, let__ explore it. Suppose you opened it up and crawled inside. You would find it very interesting in there, with lots of huge things to puzzle over. But eventually you might climb into one of the fuel cells, and the hydrogen would kill you. And your last thought would be: This alien device was obviously made to test bacterial intelligence and to kill us if we make a false step.__ow, that would be correct from the standpoint of the dying bacterium. But that wouldn__ be correct at all from the standpoint of the beings who made the satellite. From our point of view, the communications satellite has nothing to do with intelligent bacteria. We don__ even know that there are intelligent bacteria out there. We__e just trying to communicate, and we__e made what we consider a quite ordinary device to do it.

The worst mistake a writer can make is to assume everyone has an imagination.

Not all light is good. There is negative light, that can cast bad shadows.

I am a tourist of the emotions, visiting only the most well-worn spots. It is romantic, that is, a distortion, to imagine whole lives from the barest observation.