The first flash of fiction arrives without words. It consists of a fixed image like a slide or closer still a freeze frame showing characters in a simple situation....

I began to ration my writing, for fear I would dream through life as my father had done. I was afraid I had inherited a poisoned gene from him, a vocation without a gift.

Mavis Gallant

[My father] had spent his own short time like a priest in charge of a relic, forever expecting the blessed blood to liquefy.

Mavis Gallant