We are creatures of story, and the process of changing one mind or the whole world must begin with 'Once upon a time.'

I have this little neighbor next door. He comes over and tells me about playing Call of Duty, and he's talking about, 'Aw yeah, I slit this guy in the throat and then I stuck a grenade up this guy's ass.' He's describing it in all this detail, and that makes me uncomfortable. I don't think that's good for him.

The brain stays up all night telling stories while we sleep. We just call them dreams.

We are a species addicted to a stories.

We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories.

Human minds yield helplessly to the suction of story. No matter how hard we concentrate, no matter how deep we dig in our heels, we just can't resist the gravity of alternate worlds.

The average daydream is about fourteen seconds long and we have about two thousand of them per day. In other words, we spend about half of our waking hours - one-third of our lives on earth - spinning fantasies.