“Everyone's got a different story.”

“Stories are a different kind of true.”

“This is a bad story.”“Sorry. I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have told you.”“No, you should,” I say.“But—”“I don’t want there to be bad stories and me not know them.”

“For all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written plain as day in the faces of the people around him.”

“I tell you frankly, Mrs. Damer, the more I see of different nations, the less sure I feel about the pre-eminence of my own.”

“Writing stories is my way of scratching that itch: my escape from the claustrophobia of individuality. It lets me, at least for a while, live more than one life, walk more than one path. Reading, of course, can do the same.”

“Driving home I see the playground but it's all wrong, the swings are on the opposite side. "Oh, Jack, that's a different one," says Grandma. There's playgrounds in every town." Lots of the world seems to be a repeat.”