Alexandr Korol

I always know it in advance. But the point isn’t that people are primitive. Why? What are they doing wrong here? The issue, I think, lies in my sensitivity, in my attentiveness. Probably because my mind isn’t cluttered with all sorts of external thoughts and worries, I’m able to notice these kinds of things. I believe that anyone could easily notice them. You actually feel it yourself. Seriously. When you want to ask someone something silly or make a foolish suggestion, and you start to hesitate — that hesitation isn’t even yours. You’re already beginning to sense that it’s a foolish idea. You’re not just feeling that for no reason, so why don’t you trust those feelings? If you already know they’ll say it’s nonsense, why are you asking them? If, the moment the thought occurs to you, you can already see their reaction — well, that means you already know it. You already know their reaction in advance, you know exactly what someone will agree to, what they’ll reject, what they’ll react sharply to. Yes, there were times when a friend would even ask me, “Alex, what should I write to this person?” And I’d say, “Well, if you write this, they’ll answer that; if you write it this way, they’ll tell you to get lost; if you write it like this, they’ll ask you this follow-up, and then you should reply with this.” And when they followed my suggestions word for word in the chat, all the replies came exactly as I predicted — almost to the letter. And I don’t even need to know who the person is — I just feel them. One photo is enough, and that’s it. I don’t need to know their name, where they live — it doesn’t matter. In fact, it’s worse if I do. If I know something about them, it can mislead my mind. So actually, it’s better not to know anything — just a photo is enough, and then I can feel them completely. If someone tells me the person is sick, or poor, or rich, or a foreigner, or something else, it distorts everything. I’ll start adjusting my perception to that distortion, and that’s not right. That’s why, when I don’t know anything about someone and just see a photo — well, it’s so unusual that I can practically become them. Someone shows me a photo, and it’s like I instantly start being that person. I can walk around the apartment and immediately say, “He likes this, he doesn’t like that.” I know exactly what he’s worried about — everything. I even know what he feels like when he sits down on a chair at a table. That’s the kind of thing it is — empathy, sensitivity, attentiveness. But when I was writing my first books, at first I typed them on a laptop, then sometimes on my phone, sometimes by hand, and then retyped them. And yes, there were moments when I would write a chapter and say: