p.410-411 a fundamental premise of my field is that human acts occur within a network of relationships,
processes, and systems that are ecological as they are cultural.
p.411 When we describe human activities within an ecosystem, we seem always to tell stories about
them.
p.411 By writing stories about environmental change, we divide the causal relationships of an ecosystem
with a rhetorical razor that defines included and excluded, relevant and irrelevant, empowered and disempowered. In
the act of separating story from non-story, we wield the most powerful yet dangerous tool of the narrative form.
p.411 It is a commonplace of modern literary theory that the very authority with which narrative presents
its vision of reality is achieved by obscuring large portions of that reality. Narrative succeeds to the extent that
it hides the discontinuities, ellipses, and contradictory experiences that would undermine the intended meaning
of its story... A powerful narrative reconstructs common sense
p.424 What distinguishes stories from other forms of discourse is that they describe an action that begins,
continues over a well-defined period of time, and finally draws to a definite close, with consequences that become meaningful
because of their placement within the narrative. Completed action gives a story its unity and allows us to evaluate and judge
an act by its results.
p.425 Narrative is a peculiarly human way of organizing reality... Nature and the universe do not tell stories;
we do. Why is this?
p.425 narrative... is fundamental to the way we humans organize our experience... our human perspective
is that we inhabit an endlessly storied world... We tell stories to explore the alternative choices that might lead
to feared or hoped-for futures.
p.425 Insofar as people project their wills into the future, organizing their lives to make acts
in the present yield predictable future results - to just that extent, they live their lives as if they were telling
a story.
p.431 As Aristotle reminded us so long ago, narrative is among our most powerful ways of encountering the
world, judging our actions within it, and learning to care about its many meanings.
