The truth is, if what we choose to do with our lives won't make a story meaningful, it won't make a life meaningful either.

Good writers show rather than tell. Stories are told in action. Life stories are no different.

We live on top of the created world, I think to myself, not in it.

I've wondered, though, if one of the reasons we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life is because we don't want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgment. We don't want to be characters in a story because characters have to move and breathe and face conflict with courage. And if life isn't remarkable, then we don't have to do any of that; we can be unwilling victims instead of grateful participants.

If the point of life is the same as the point of a story, the point of life is character transformation.

Most great art is freedom within form. Without form, we are amateurs, without freedom, we are robots.

The inciting incident is how you get (characters) to do something. It's the doorway through which they can't return, you know. The story takes care of the rest.