"I tried to tell you, but words will not convey it. One has to be inside it to comprehend the magnitude. … It was the beginning. It's the only thing there is. But it was haphazard for so many aeons that it spooks me to think about it. There were always three or four maintaining it, but there was no one person strong enough to take it all over. "Somewhere there must be someone strong enough to take it all over," I said to myself in a direful moment, but the strongest person I could think of was myself. I've been doing it ever since. … By my attention I hold it all in being. Nothing exists unless it is perceived. If perception fails for a moment, then that thing fails forever. … I hate to be misjudged. They say that I bear it all on my shoulders, as though I were a stud or a balk. It's not on my great shoulders, it is amazing head on my great shoulders that maintains all."
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Fantasy authorsScience fiction authors from the United StatesAbsurdistsNovelists from the United StatesShort story writers from the United States
Original Language: English
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Atlas, on bearing the burden of maintaining the worlds, in Ch. 4
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/R._A._Lafferty
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R. A. Lafferty
Raphael Aloysius Lafferty (7 November 1914 – 18 March 2002) was an American science fiction and fantasy writer, famous for his humorous use of metaphor, narrative structure, and language in his very peculiar forms of etymological wit.
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