I love journalism for the way a vast, unyielding surface of facts, personalities, and situations becomes, in time, a softer, less opaque volume. It's akin to repeating arcane ritual gestures that make a solid wall become an undulating membrane. And then in an instant, finding that one has passed through the membrane without rupture to the other side, at that point where I develop intuitions about what I hear and see.

Then, when you finish a story, you come back through the membrane, which slowly seals itself up and hardens. It's like dying a little.