Journalism allows its readers to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it.

At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning, on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and was turning her head to speak to the girl at the next desk.

Events are less important than our responses to them.

Journalism allows its readers to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it.