“Our lives feel fuller when we can weave them into stories, even if not all the stories are true and even if we are just filibustering, hoping our number won’t be called--so long as we keep talking.”

“All we are, all we can be, are the stories we tell," he says, and he is talking as if he is talking only to me. "Long after we are gone, our words will be all that is left, and who is to say what really happened or even what reality is? Our stories, our fiction, our words will be as close to truth as can be. And no one can take that away from you.”

“We have our stories, and we speak of them, and weave them into other people's stories - that's how it goes, does it not?”

“Just like any woman,...we weave our stories out of our bodies. Some of us through our chicdren, or our art; some do it just by living. It's all the same.”

“Literature might be called the art of story, and story might in turn be called a universal language, for every culture we know of has a tradition of storytelling. No doubt stories have touched your life, too, from bedtime stories you may have heard as a child to news stories you see on TV or read in a newspaper. We might even say that a major goal of living is to created the story of our own lives, a story we hope to take pleasure and pride in telling.”

“. . . our stories are what make the difference, and if we can tell them honestly we can hope to help each other. In the end, we have nothing to offer each other but our stories.”