A Sense that Someone is Listening

"I’m quite fascinated with our narrative sense of ourselves. We tell our story to ourselves often, in fact we tell it all the time. We tell fragments of it. At certain times, we stop and try to tell the whole story of our existence and our lives to ourselves. And when we do that, we have a sense that someone is listening. We’re telling this narrative not just to ourselves, but there’s something about our mind that creates a listener even though we know that no one’s there. And it fascinates me how much we do in our life implies a listener who will be listening to the story of what we’ve done."

--C.K. Williams, speaking with Michael Silverblatt on KCRW's Bookworm