The Crane Wife

All stories begin before they start and never, ever finish.

Yes", Kumiko said, seriously. "Exactly that. The extraordinary happens all the time. So much, we can't take it. Life and happiness and heartache and love. If we couldn't put it in story - " "And explain it -" "No!" she said, suddenly sharp. "Not explain. Stories do not explain. They seem to, but all they provide is a starting point. The story never ends at the end. There is always after. And even within itself, even by saying that this version is the right one, it suggests other versions, versions that exist in parallel. No, story is not an explanation, it is a net, a net through which the truth flows. The net catches some of the truth, but not all, never all, only enough so that we can live with the extraordinary without it killing us." She sagged a little, as if exhausted by this speech. "As it surely, surely would.

This is not the way our story ends. You know this' - 'Stories do not end.' - 'Ah, you are right, but you are also wrong. They end and they begin every moment. It is all about when you stop the telling.

At her core, she was broken, and life was just one long attempt to distract people from noticing

The world has always been hungry, though it often does not know what it hungers for.

No one wanted to hear that people other than themselves might be complicated, that no one was ever just one thing, no history ever just one version.

It just felt like she'd been born with a small flaw, right at the centre of herself, a flaw somehow too shameful to be shown to anyone else, so she'd spent her life building a carapace around it to keep it hidden. Inevitably, the carapace became her true self, a fact she could never quite see, a fact that might have offered relief. Because all she knew was the truth deep inside of her, the little something wrong no one else could ever, ever know. And if that wasn't the real her, then what was? At her core, she was broken, and life was just one long attempt to distract people from noticing.

The purpose of a volcano is to die,' she says. 'Is this not what you strive for?' 'The purpose of a volcano is to die, my lady,' says the volcano, 'but as angrily as possible.

You end up hating so many people that without even noticing, you start to hate everyone. Including yourself. But that's the trick, you see? The trick that makes everything survivable. You've got to love somebody.

There were as many truths - overlapping, stewed together - as there were tellers. The truth mattered less than the story's life. A story forgotten died. A story remembered not only lived, but grew.

How have you made it this far in life, George? How do you not get eaten alive by the world out there?

she is born in the breath of a cloud

She is born a breath of cloud. She sees neither her mother nor her father – her mother has died during the birth and not hung around; her father is the cloud itself, silent, weeping, consumed with grief – and so she stands alone, on legs unfamiliar. ‘Where have I come from?’ she asks. There is no answer. ‘Where am I to go?’ There is no answer, even from the cloud, though he knows. ‘May I ask, at least, what I am called?’ After a hesitant moment, the cloud whispers into her ear. She nods her head and understands.

And by being possessed, you possess, because that's how love works.

He answered the phone to his daughter with a broken but joyous heart, ready to speak with her of astonishment and wonder.

A story forgotten died. A story remembered not only lived, but grew.

For Rachel, it might have even been worse, because she had known the rules for a long time, had thrived on them, and had maybe now - if her equally unprecedented lunch outburst was anything to go by - found them empty.

The past always fails those who grasp at it.

Did it matter? George thought perhaps it did, and not in terms of finding truth or of any hope of discovering what really happened at any given moment. There were as many truths - overlapping, stewed together - as there were tellers. The truth mattered less than story's life. A story forgotten died. A story remembered not only lived, but grew.