"What is most important for me is to tell a story, not to prove a point"

A storyteller chooses curiosity over certitude. The goal is to bring a world to life so fully that readers inhabit it, not to shepherd them toward a predetermined verdict. Rather than marshaling facts as soldiers for a thesis, the writer arranges details, voices, places, and moments so they resonate. Meaning emerges from the grain of experience: a gesture, a room’s light, the rhythm of a conversation. When narrative leads, interpretation follows as an echo, not a command.

Proving a point narrows; it simplifies messy lives into clean conclusions. Story widens. It admits contradiction, ambivalence, and the awkward seams where motives collide. A character can be generous and petty, brave and self-protective, all in a single scene. Such complexity resists sermonizing but invites empathy, which is a deeper form of understanding than assent. A reader who feels implicated will do their own thinking; the writer doesn’t have to do it for them.

There is also humility in privileging story. It acknowledges that reality resists tidy categories and that readers bring their own histories to the page. The writer becomes a guide rather than a prosecutor. Even in nonfiction, especially there, the arrangement of facts into a narrative respects both truth and texture. It says, Here is what happened, as closely as I can render it; decide what it means.

Paradoxically, stories often persuade more lastingly than arguments. A point can be refuted; a lived scene is harder to shake. We remember the person on the bus, the kitchen table at midnight, the letter never sent. From such images, insights grow organically. If a “point” arises, it does so as a byproduct of attentive witness, not as a weapon.

To tell a story is to trust the reader and the material. It is to honor the unruliness of life and let meaning reveal itself in the act of listening.