Found material might be “evidence” –might even be a direct, indexical sign of a thing that happened–but the thing that happened, the life that contained it, can’t be reassembled, or back-engineered into existence. It’s only what it is now: if you try to glue the fragments together with the sentiments “evoked” in you, all you will have is a golem. All you’ve done is bully the mud into a shape that satisfies your needs.

Fiction-writing advice from M John Harrison. Or at least I’m interpreting it as fiction-writing advice… with Harrison in particular, you can never be entirely sure.