Drew Barrymore

Oh, I would love to be a motivational speaker. I have pulled myself out of a million potholes, and I can see the potholes ahead of me. That doesn't mean that I could always do that so perfectly for my own life. I totally fall in potholes.

The historical novelist has to consider what has actually happened, while the SF writer is dealing in possibilities, but they are both in the business of imagining a world unlike our own and yet connected to it.