Your Face Tomorrow: Poison, Shadow and Farewell - pg. 424

I had spent a long time passing judgment on a daily basis and with ever greater ease and unconcern, listening to voices and looking at faces, in the flesh or hidden in the station-studio or on video, saying who could be trusted and who could not, who would kill and who would allow himself to be killed and why, who would betray and who would remain loyal, who would lie and who would meet with failure or with only average success in life, who irritated me and who aroused my pity, who was a poseur and who I warmed to, and what probabilities each individual carried in his veins, just like a novelist who knows that whatever his characters say or tell, whatever is attributed to them or what they are made to do, will go no further than his novel and will harm no one, because, however real they may seem, they will continue to be a fiction and will never interfere with anyone real (with anyone in his right mind, that is).