Humans thus can escape the s hackles of an eternal present, can dream, can remember, can learn and live more fully. Complementing Block's sense of elapsed time is this understanding of time, a sense developed by the ability to tell and formulate stories. Locked within the nerves, then, are the stories that make up our lives. And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That's what stories are for.
Stories are for joining the past to the future.
Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the stor y. Reading the Fights . The White Album . Studies in Short Fiction .