The Annotated Arabian Nights: Tales from 1001 Nights

by Paulo Lemos Horta

Every story is simply bone. The marrow, the life-full thing, is the telling.

Great novelist though [Shahrazad] was—exquisite in her descriptions, tolerant in her judgements, ingenuous in her morality, vivid in her delineations of character, expert in her knowledge of three oriental capitals—it was on none of these gifts that she relied when trying to save her life from her intolerable husband. They were but incidental. She only survived because she managed to keep the king wondering what would happen next.66

God knows more than us about the truth of times gone by)