Nature, History, and Narrative

''Children, only animals live entirely in the Here and Now. Only nature knows neither memory nor history. But man -let me offer you a definition - is the storytelling animal. Wherever he goes he wants to leave behind not a chaotic wake, not an empty space, but the comforting marker-buoys and trail-signs of stories. He has to go on telling stories. He has to keep on making them up. As long as there's a story, it's all right. Even in his last moments, it's said, in the split second of a fatal fall- or when he's about to drown - he sees, passing rapidly before him, the story of his whole life.''