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Stories need stupid decisions that, at the time, seem absolutely rational and necessary. Without stupid decisions, the world isn't thrown out of balance, and so there's no need for a 'rest of the story' to balance it back.

The idea of telling a story in reverse destabilises your ordinary moral reactions. That's one of the points of art - to challenge your preconceptions.

I'm not a good storyteller. I always think I'm going to get interrupted, or something's going to get edited. I think that comes from being in a large family, so you have to get your story in really quick or someone cuts you off.

Sometimes I get the story wrong, or it's the wrong story, and then things don't work.

I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.

My stories seem to always in some way explore mistakes and misapprehensions and the possibility of redemption - though that redemption doesn't always occur in expected ways.

The moral of a fable is eternal. The moral of a story is temporary to a story.

Sometimes when you tell a story, you reach a little bit too far just to make the story a better one.

No matter how close to personal experience a story might be, inevitably you are going to get to a part that isn't yours and, actually, whether it happened or not becomes irrelevant. It is all about choosing the right words.

Stories can bring alive the moral universe in a very vivid, useful, engaging way.