To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the actual world. By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety that attacks us when we try to say something true about the world. This is the consoling function of narrative —the reason people tell stories, and have told stories from the beginning of time.
―Umberto Eco, Six Walks in the Fictional Woods
Kat, I just love the quotes you post…I always get an aha moment out of them.
Thank you! I try to put up things that make me go aha, too. 😉
“we give sense to the immensity of things that happened” – indeed