Kim Stanley: Glorious but Impossible

You cannot be afraid of anything that another human might do or think or become, because this is your autobiography in another time or through some fluke of nature or attitude. You cannot be a decent human being or an artist if you cannot bring yourself to an understanding of all that we can be, good or bad. Right when you think you understand people or literature or art or music, you come to see that it is impossible. Glorious but impossible. We need all of these fractures of achievement--science and art and philanthropy--to contain and to spread all that is within us. The multitudes, as Whitman put it. There is so much, too much, to understand, and this is wonderful, and this is what you must begin to study: All that humanity can do and can be, and come to an understanding of it. You may or may not become an artist, but you will, I think, become fully human.

 Kim Stanley/In Interview with James Grissom/1992.