on stories and their writers

The Top 3 on my list of favorite writers could stand some revision, as it was drafted in the days before I read James Baldwin among others, and has not gone through a single edit. But one of the original three is Arundhati Roy, and this is the opening paragraph of a piece of hers, on the occasion of the first anniversary of 9/11:

Writers imagine that they cull stories from the world. I'm beginning to believe that vanity makes them think so. That it's actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal themselves to us. The public narrative, the private narrative -- they colonize us. They commission us. They insist on being told. Fiction and non-fiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons I do not fully understand, fiction dances out of me. Non-fiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning.

Seven years to the day later, it is still just as prescient. Do us a favor and read it in full.

Tip to Clare Bayard, who didn't know she put me onto it.