i started reading fiction for the first time just last year after having exclusively avoided that section in book stores and libraries all my life. i can’t explain how much it has changed my thinking. stories have expanded my worldview and given me a kind of understanding that feels impossible to get any other way. it is magical how they resize the world to fit in the palm of your hand. you live lives you never could have lived, and somehow understand your own a little better because of it. no wonder myths spread faster than facts. there are things we seem to understand only once they become stories