In order to record a tale, something must always be lost. Some things must be left unsaid and disguised. The art of storytelling, his brother said, is all about where and how to leave the voids.

There is an archive of alternate endings, she tells him, and every one ends differently than this.

When I feel most alone, I remember I am part of the cosmos, a celestial event. We are part of a system, for better and for worse.

Instead of permitting the stories to bend and fold with each new teller, the scripts are like coffins that calcify the tales.

what gets committed to the page, what gets translated into the code of letters and locked in the coffin of a book, becomes truth while everything else dissolves into the abyss of history lost.

What is story if not the safe harbor for our most disturbing imaginings?

part of invention is a bloated faith in the self. Part of creation, she thinks, slicing the bread, is making believe.

this is how the best stories are told, with enough space to make them say several things at once.

It is easy to forget, but stories need not always have a purpose. We are quick to say that folktales have a moral or a lesson or a creed. But most of the stories that have survived the ages are told for one purpose only, and that purpose is to say this: “Being human is difficult. Here is some evidence.”