“in the story no one smiles,no lesson is learned.the narrator can not change any one's heartthe story is agate to another story,which opens onto a story after that. i made it up but the story is true.”

“All those stories need different endings——which is possible because it's my life and I do have the privelege of being able to write the story.”

“I have made up thousands of stories; I have filled innumerable notebooks with phrases to be used when I have found the true story, the one story to which all these phrases refer. But I have never yet found the story. And I begin to ask, Are there stories?”

“So, too, how to tell your story has a great deal to do with how you feel about the circumstances in your life and which direction your story is going to go in”

“If there’s no one else to tell another side - the only story that can be told is the story that becomes true. (p. 173)”

“You can't regret a whole period in your life. . . . It's part of who you are, one of your stories.”

“After all, it was only a story,' I said, determined to prove her wrong. 'All manner of terrible things may happen in a story. They may be startling at the time, but it passes. One gets caught up in the narrative, but the dangers aren't real, are they? Things happen in any way the storyteller chooses. It is all just made up.”