The need [for story] is not for the total consolation of narcotic fantasy–our own will performed in airless triumph–but for the credible news that our lives proceed in order toward a pattern which, if tragic here and now, is ultimately pleasing in the mind of a god who sees a totality and at last enacts His will. We crave nothing less than perfect story; and while we chatter or listen all our lives in a din of craving–jokes, anecdotes, novels, dreams, films, plays, songs, half the words of our days–we are satisfied only by the one short tale we feel to be true: History is the will of a just god who knows us.
–Reynolds Price
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