Two consequences of the absorption of light in optically absorbing materials that appear not to have been recognized previously are : (1) localization of the final electron and hole states involved in the absorption process into wave packets and (2) propagation of these wave packets with their respective group velocities. We demonstrate the existence of these phenomena by applying first-order time-dependent perturbation theory to a simple model that can be solved analytically even when correlations that are ordinarily discarded in the random phase approximation are retained. This approach provides a natural explanation of components in surface- and interface-optical spectra that are related to energy derivatives of the bulk dielectric function epsilon(b) and apparent differences in nominally bulk critical point energies E-g and broadening parameters Gamma depending on surface conditions.