Telling some stories, Miss Leroy says, is committing suicide.
Pretty much always. We need to tell the story of our life to someone.
Who you are moment to moment is just a story.
These stories are ghosts, bringing people back from the dead. Just for a moment. For a visit. Every story is a ghost.
I try to tell a story the way someone would tell you a story in a bar, with the same kind of timing and pacing.
Those who remember the past tend to get the story really screwed up.
There’s always the chance you could die right in the middle of your life story.
Emotionally, in our minds, we get so filled with resentments where we’ve got a story about absolutely everything.
You can tell a more over-the-top incredible story if you use a nonfiction form.
We’d turn our lives into a terrible adventure. A true-life horror story with a happy ending. A trial we’d survive to talk about.
The problem with every story is you tell it after the fact.
At some point, your memories, your stories, your adventures, will be the only things you’ll have left.
Some stories, you use up. Others use you up.
Because everything up to now is a story and everything after now is a story.
I could imagine myself becoming one of Marla’s stories.
What do you do when your entire identity is destroyed in an instant? How do you cope when your whole life story turns out to bw wrong?
Great stories teach you something. That’s one reason I haven’t slipped into some sort of retirement: I always feel like I’m learning something new.
When I see a story, I ask: is this something I’d like to be in? Is this something I’d like to see? And if I’d like to see it, would I like to tell it?
Every story has its demands.
Whatever the drama of the story is, you have to be true to it.