This earth that we live on is full of stories in the same way that, for a fish, the ocean is full of ocean. Some people say when we are born we're born into stories. I say we're also born from stories.

I held you in the square And felt the evening Re-order itself around Your smile.

I lived rough, by my wits, was homeless, lived on the streets, lived on friends' floors, was happy, was miserable.

Stories are the secret reservoir of values: change the stories individuals and nations live by and tell themselves, and you change the individuals and nations.

Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.

The magician and the politician have much in common: they both have to draw our attention away from what they are really doing.

The Nigerian storyteller Ben Okri says that ‘In a fractured age, when cynicism is god, here is a possible heresy: we live by stories, we also live in them. One way or another we are living the stories planted in us early or along the way, or we are also living the stories we planted — knowingly or unknowingly — in ourselves. We live stories that either give our lives meaning or negate it with meaninglessness. If we change the stories we live by, quite possibly we change our lives.’