““Stories are structured as we wish our lives were, with a beginning, a middle, and an end; with meaning and purpose; with a transformation from darkness to understanding. When we read a book, we look forward to the end-we race toward it. We want to know what happens, and we want all the loose threads tied up so that we can feel reassured that there is a grand design, because our real lives often feel random and meaningless.” “Are you saying that real life has no design or meaning?” “No, I’m saying that the design is too complicated to know except in bursts of insight, and as for meaning… well, meaning is all we really have.””
