“…what he was trying to get across was not that he was the Soldier of a Power that was fighting across all of time to change history, but simply that we men were creatures with imaginations and it was our highest duty to try to tell what it was really like to live in other times and places and bodies. Once he said to me, ‘The growth of consciousness is everything… the seed of awareness sending its roots across space and time. But it can grow in so many ways, spinning its web from mind to mind like the spider or burrowing into the unconscious darkness like the snake. The biggest wars are the wars of thought.'”
— Fritz Leiber, “The Oldest Soldier” (1960)
“And that’s the snake.” — Jill Clayburgh in “It’s My Turn” (1980)
Backstory — “For Daedalus,” May 26, 2009.
For a more up-to-date look at Burroway, see a
Chicago Tribune story of March 21, 2014.