From the Preface to Ignazio Silone’s Fontamara


The art of storytelling — the art of putting one word after another, one line after another, one sentence after another, explaining one thing at a time, without allusions or reservations, calling bread bread and wine wine — is just like the ancient art of weaving, the ancient art of putting one thread after another, one color after another, cleanly, neatly, perseveringly, plainly for all to see. First you see the stem of the rose, then the calyx, then the petals. You can see from the beginning that it is going to be a rose, and for that reason the townsfolk think our products coarse and crude. But have we ever gone to town and tried to sell them? Have we ever asked townspeople to tell their story in our way? No, we have not.

Let everyone, then, have the right to tell his own story in his own way.