True stories are experienced, not learned. True stories tell us who we are as much as who somebody else is. True stories don't reflect the world, they change it. To tell a true story is to gamble a little, to take a risk. It is a performance of a sort.
True stories cost.
And true stories never end. You can't encompass true stories in a six volume History of Australia or an Oxford or Cambridge Companion to this and that. True stories are mysterious. There is no closure to true stories. There is always another true story to be told.