“She was funny. Yet despite my feelings for her, I realised that I would have preferred a letter to her presence. Is this pathology due to the predominance of written correspondence in my life? Rare are those whose physical presence is preferable to one of their letters – assuming, of course, that they have a minimum of letter-writing talent. For most people such a realisation would mean an admission of weakness, a lack of energy, an inability to confront the ‘real’. People have said to me ‘You don’t like people in real life’. I retort ‘Why are people necessarily more real if they’re standing in front of you? Why is their reality not better, or just different, in a letter?’ [...] ‘There are people I know only via their letters. Certainly, I’d be curious to see them, but it’s far from indispensable.’
Amélie Nothomb, Une forme de vie (my translation)
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Nice. I wonder what she thinks of Social Media, which facilitates contact with non-met people, but also shortens individual interactions.