best - Michael Austin - Useful Fictions - Page 36

"Since, in telling one's story to others, one wants to be coherent, one has to structure one's story according to [certain] norms.  This means, in effect, that one has to lie.  Nothing in life naturally occurs as a culturally coherent story.  In order to construct such a story we must leave out the details that don't fit, and invent some that make things work better.... The danger here is that we may come to believe our own stories."