"Get it? They're playing a part. And what makes me think there's something to it is, I know that's what I do when I get up on a stage. I play a part. I'm not me, the fellow who lives in Rumson, New Jersey, and keeps parakeets. I'm The Incredible Art. If you look at it one way, I'm sort of hypnotizing myself into behaving, what do they call it, counterfactually. And not just me. All actors. They get up there night after night. The corns don't hurt, the cough doesn't hack, whether they're exhausted or not the step is spry -- until the curtain comes down, and that glorious, radiant creature schlumps away to the dressing room and the Bromo-Seltzer and the Preparation H." -- The Incredible Art, in The Cool War by Frederik Pohl (1979, Del Rey / Ballantine Books, New York)