“Stories are how we make sense of our lives. To tell a story is to own it: to own the narrative thread to own a piece of our past. And when we own a story when we put it in a tidy box and store it on a high shelf it becomes manageable so that whatever negative effects it's been having on us are in theory lessened.”

“So I found myself telling my own stories. It was strange: as I did it I realised how much we get shaped by our stories. It's like the stories of our lives make us the people we are. If someone had no stories, they wouldn't be human, wouldn't exist. And if my stories had been different I wouldn't be the person I am.”

“For we live with those retrievals from childhood that coalesce and echo throughout our lives, the way shattered pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope reappear in new forms and are songlike in their refrains and rhymes, making up a single monologue. We live permanently in the recurrence of our own stories, whatever story we tell.”

“The truth about our own modest contribution might immobilize us: much easier then, to tell ourselves a story about how much we make our own reality. ”

“We have the right, and the obligation, to tell old stories in our own ways, because they are our stories.”

“Isn't it amazing how we always have to put our mark on things? And how, from the natural world, we find evidence over and over again that reminds us, not so much of the birds, but of our own stories and our own kinds of art?”