Of course that is not the whole story, but that is the way with stories; we make them what we will. It's a way of explaining the universe while leaving the universe unexplained, it's a way of keeping it all alive, not boxing it into time.
Interpretation
Stories shape our understanding of the universe, allowing us to explore its mysteries without confining them.
In this quote, Jeanette Winterson suggests that the narratives we create about our lives and the universe serve a vital purpose. They not only help us make sense of complex realities but also keep the essence of those realities vibrant and ever-evolving, preventing them from becoming stagnant or overly simplified through strict definitions and boundaries. Essentially, stories are a means of engaging with the infinite complexities of existence.
In practice
In a discussion about literature, you could use this quote to emphasize the power of storytelling.
What is remembered is not a deed in stone but a metaphor. Meta = above. Pheren = to carry. That which is carried above the literalness of life. A way of thinking that avoids the problems of gravity. The word won't let me down. The single word that can release me from all that unuttered weight.
Reading things that are relevant to the facts of your life is of limited value. The facts are, after all, only the facts, and the yearning passionate part of you will not be met there. That is why reading ourselves as a fiction as well as fact is so liberating. The wider we read the freer we become.
I have a list of titles that I leave at the [library] desk, because they are bound to be written some day, and it's best to be ahead of the queue.
Woolf wanted to say dangerous things in Orlando but she did not want to say them in the missionary position.
In that house, you will find my heart. You must break in, Henri, and get it back for me.' Was she mad? We had been talking figuratively. Her heart was in her body like mine. I tried to explain this to her, but she took my hand and put it against her chest. Feel for yourself.
History is a string full of knots, the best you can do is admire it, and maybe tie it up a bit more. History is a hammock for swinging and a game for playing.
Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downwards through the mud and slush of opinion and tradition, and pride and prejudice, appearance and delusion, through the alluvium which covers the globe, through poetry and philosophy and religion, through church and state, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, till we come to a hard bottom that rocks in place which we can call reality and say, "This is and no mistake.
There is no present or future-only the past, happening over and over again-now.
Memory can glean, but can never renew. It brings us joys faint as is the perfume of the flowers, faded and dried, of the summer that is gone.
You cannot see what I see because you see what you see. You cannot know what I know because you know what you know. What I see and what I know cannot be added to what you see and what you know because they are not of the same kind. Neither can it replace what you see and what you know, because that would be to replace you yourself." "Hang on, can I write this down?" said Arthur, excitedly fumbling in his pocket for a pencil.
It does not matter what men say in words, so long as their activities are controlled by settled instincts. The words may ultimately destroy the instincts; but until this has occurred, words do not count.
EXPLORING the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind, and walking travels both terrains.
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