Women thought me charmingly shy, and sometimes stopped at nothing to “penetrate the disdainful shell of my fear,” as one of their number put it. Ofte… - John Barth

Consider that if the novelist is like God and a novel like the universe, then the converse ought to have at least some some metaphorical truth: The universe is a novel; God is a novelist! (I have observed elsewhere that the trouble with God is not that He's a bad novelist; only that He's a realistic one, and that dates Him.) [Footnote:] But also keeps bringing Him back into fashion.

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

[A]rtistic Meisterstücken [masterpieces], even less-than-Meisterstücken, have always been points of departure for "solitary meditation and contemplation," to a degree depending, I suppose, on the particular Meisterstück, the particular reader, viewer, or auditor, and the particular circumstances of their encounter.