We tell ourselves stories in order to live.

We owe it to each other to tell stories.

We tell stories and listen to them because we live stories and live in them.

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.

Our lives are stories, and the stories we have to give to each other are the most important. No one has a story too small and all are of equal stature. We each tell them in different ways, through different mediums — and if we care about each other, we'll take the time to listen.

To survive, you must tell stories.

We tell ourselves stories in order to live. We live entirely by the impression of a narrative line upon disparate images, the shifting phantasmagoria, which is our actual experience.

We learn from each other’s stories

I believe we owe it to each other to tell stories. It’s as close to a credo as I have or will, I suspect, ever get.

We all need stories. What happens in our daily lives changes our stories.

We live in the stories we tell ourselves.

"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."

Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.

Our story is not really ours until we tell it, until it belongs to others too.