Our stories are funny because we lived them, and we survived them. The worse the incident was when it was happening, the funnier the story had become to us over the years.

We can choose the narrative we tell about our lives. We're born into cultures, nations and languages that we didn't choose. We're born with certain brain chemicals and genetic predispositions that we can't control. We're sometimes thrust into social conditions that we detest. But among all the things we don't control, we do have some control over our stories. We do have a conscious say in selecting the narrative we will use to organize perceptions.

I would not know how I am supposed to feel about many stories if not for the fact that the TV news personalities make sad faces for sad stories and happy faces for happy stories.

The power of owning our stories, even the difficult ones, is that we get to write the ending.

Sad stories make good books

We can spend out lives letting others dictate our narrative, and cast ourselves as the victims. Or we can realize the truth: that we are the creators of our own story.

A good story should make you laugh, and a moment later break your heart.

We tell ourselves stories in order to live.… We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the “ideas” with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.

I am weary of all our sad stories — not hearing them, but that we have these stories to tell, that there are so many.

Why do most of us make such boring choices for the stories of our lives? How hard can it be to change gears and say, "You know what? Instead of inventing and telling stories, I’m going to make my life a more interesting story." (p. 177)

We tell ourselves stories in order to live.

This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.

You have a choice. You don't have to be a person who spreads negativity and lies for a living. Let's just make that choice and—it feels better.

Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.