Neither novels or their readers benefit from any attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species.
There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who want to know the facts, and those who want to make up a nice story to feel better. I wish I was the kind who made up stories.
Everything I've done has always been my own made up world with its own rules and its own made up stories.
I've thought a lot about the power of empathy. In my work, it's the current that connects me and my actual pulse to a fictional character in a made up story, it allows me to feel, pretend feelings and sorrows and imagined pain.
If this were a made-up story, it would begin at night, with a storm blowing and owls hooting and rattling noises under the bed.
I had these cheap alien toys and I made up stories for them. They were space pirates. They didn’t have names so I made up names. These were the first stories I wrote. Even as a little kid I was thinking about torture.
If you did not know at age five that the gods are made up beings and the myths made up stories, you are a fool.
I grew up on a suburban street with lace curtains and dull neighbours, so I made up stories to tell my friend, in which they became serial killers and burglars. She told her mother, who then told mine.
No, Paul, I couldn't care less if you tell me made-up stories. Our lies reveal as much about us as our truths. ' (Said to Paul by Elizabeth Costello, the interloping novelist-angel-inner voice).
What happens to children and families today who sit around the television? They're watching made-up stories. It's not their experience and it's not truly shared. A human being must learn at a very young age how to connect to other human beings. Our technologies are driving us apart, only connecting us in terms of information, not in terms of emotions.
Recognize that whether you are worthy or not is all a made-up 'story'. . . Nothing has meaning except for the meaning we give it. . . There's no one who comes around and stamps you 'worthy' or 'unworthy'. You do that. You make it up. You decide it. . . If you say you're worthy, you are. If you say you're not worthy, you're not. Either way you will live into your story.
