Beauty Mountain

If a story is a seed, then we are its soil. Just hearing the story allows us to experience it as though we ourselves were the heroine who either falters or wins in the end. If we hear a story about a wolf, then afterward we rove about and know like a wolf for a time. If we hear a story about a dove finding her young at last, then for a time after, something moves behind our own feathered breasts. If it be a story of wresting the sacred pearl from beneath the claw of the ninth dragon, we feel exhausted afterward, and satisfied. In a very real way, we are imprinted with knowing just listening to the tale. -Clarissa Pinkola Estes