The author of one of my all-time favorite books died this weekend.

Flowers for Algernon, which I read for the first time in elementary school, tells the story of a man with an IQ of 68 who becomes a genius through surgery. But that is to simplify a deeply moving, human, emotional, psychological, and compelling story. It’s one of the hundreds of books from my childhood that subconsciously made me want to write and that inspired me as a pre-teen when I picked up a pen for the first time in a serious way.

I’m fascinated by the way author Daniel Keyes arrived at the idea for his most well-known book:

“I thought: ‘My education is driving a wedge between me and the people I love.’… And then I wondered: What would happen if it were possible to increase a person’s intelligence?”

Thanks, Mr. Keyes, for this amazing story, which still sits in the stack of my all-time favorite books on my nightstand.