About the writing
As for the couples who sit in these columns — they are not people who were. It is not true cases I write here, nor files that were opened, nor people who sat across from me in this chair. They are fruits of the heart, which rose in me in an evening hour out of all that I have seen and all that I have heard in the years that passed over me, and they mingled with one another until it cannot be said of any one of them, this is so-and-so.
For this is my way, and I have no other: what remains in the room remains in the chambers of my heart, and it never leaves there.
And do not let the secret be light in your eyes, for it is not merely a fence of prohibition. The secret is the ground our room stands on. For a person removes his armor only in a place where he knows that no word will leave it, and a heart opens only before a lock. And all who sit across from me — they deposit in my hands the dearest thing of all, the face that has no witnesses, and by virtue of the secret alone they dare to show it. So the secret is not what hides our work; it is what makes it possible. It is our place, mine and theirs, a place with no third in it.
And one more thing I have learned over the years: the place of the secret is the place of creation. For whatever is sealed and not passed on does not die there, but sinks and becomes matter, like seeds in a dark cellar. And out of that matter, and not out of the deeds themselves, there rise afterward people who never were, and they sit in the chair, and speak in their own voice.
And whoever reads and says in his heart, this is I — he is not mistaken, and neither is he right. For I do not speak of him, but of that very thing he carries, which many like him carry. And had I written true cases, I would have broken the trust of people who gave me what was theirs. And I do not break it. And therefore I invent — and therefore, it seems to me, the thing comes out truer.