Ray Palmer

“There are people out there who have x-ray vision. They can see through my walls, armor and scrims and filters right down to the real me. And the saddest thing in the world? I haven't forgotten who that person is. She's on there and waiting. Like sleeping beauty locked high in a tower, she's been patient and aware of the coma I've been in all these years. I realise the one hitch in having x-ray glasses is that I'm utterly exposed to him. It's one thing to want someone to keep looking, to swim over moats and dodge flaming arrows to find you. It's quite another when you ask yourself, really ask yourself, if you're finally ready to come out into the open. No matter what.””

“Leta will manage. She’s tough. But Tate is going to learn some things that will hurt him badly. I think he should hear it from his mother.” He sighed angrily. “So I called her up on a pay phone and told her I knew everything, and that she should tell Tate the truth before he hears it on the evening news. After thirty-six years of silence, she suddenly became very vocal. She called me a name I won’t repeat, told me what she thought of me and my career and hung up. When I rang back, she wouldn’t pick up the phone.” He ran his hands through his hair. “What do I do?”“Suppose I invite her here to stay with me, for a visit,” she suggested. “Then you can talk to her again…”“There’s no time, Cecily.” He spread his hands on his thighs and a look of torment lined his broad, strong face. “I’m going to have to tell him myself.”She winced. “I’m sorry.”He sighed. “I’m sorry, too. He’s going to hate all of us for a little while, even Leta. I told her that. It made her furious, but it’s the truth. We’re going to have a bad thunderstorm that will last for a few weeks, and then there will be a ray of sunshine.”She smiled. “We may have a tornado instead.””

“Writers, by their very nature,  live a thousand lives and die a thousand times.  They experience loss each time a character dies.  They revel in exquisite pain and fear the writer's block that comes with finding happiness.  In all my time,  I've never met an author who didn't have a tortured soul or a personal demon””