On Writing

“We tell ourselves stories in order to make sense of life. Narrative is reassuring. There are days when life is so absurd, it’s crippling — nothing makes sense, but stories bring order to the absurdity. Relief is provided by the narrative’s beginning, middle, and end. Without an end, you have an obsession, a constant circling around a fact or situation that cannot be put in place.”

— Norman Mailer

[HT to Bryan Colley for sending me this quote]