Stories are what connect us, shape us, bring us into existence and snuff us from history.” Dante gestured around him at the vastness of the plains. “The reality of this, and what’s beyond all this, is too complex for the human mind to conceive. But stories give form to the universe, order to the chaos, substance to the unknown. Stories give us beginnings and middles and endings. Stories take our base instincts and weave love and heartache and redemption and pleasure and forgiveness into every word, until we believe ourselves to be essential to the plot rather than being swept along by it.
