I believe that the love of stories, indeed, the need for stories, is innate. Our lives are principally literary; literature, rather than supplemental to our lives, is instead at the center of meaning. Very young children often have favorite books of the Goodnight, Moon or Caps for Sale variety, and you no sooner finish reading to them, when they implore, "read it again, please." Children love to hear stories again both because they relish anew the individual moments and because they delight in knowing what's coming next and how things will turn out. Is there a parent or relative in this room who has not experienced your child asking you to "tell me a story about when I was little?" or, once a story has become part of the family lore, "tell me about the time when..." As interesting and humorous as the tales are, they are often private family yarns, and, naturally, there are many that hold fascination only for the family itself. But these stories form and shape childhood memories, and ultimately become part of who we are as adults. And, for better or worse, these stories become every bit as powerful a piece of the inheritance we receive, and then pass on, as wealth and material goods -- indeed, it can be argued, sometimes even more powerful.

For Boccaccio, stories enable one to develop empathy, to experience others' joy and pain, to laugh, to criticize. The opening line of the Decameron, his "human comedy" of 100 tales, begins with Boccaccio implicitly offering a counterpoint to the "Divine" Comedy of his revered Dante, by emphasizing one of humankind's finer qualities: "To have compassion 'E umana cosa.'" "To have compassion is a human thing." For Scherezade in the Alf Layla waLayla, the Thousand Nights and A Night, stories were life-sustaining and life-changing, since her tales staved off her execution and ultimately persuaded the King to marry her.

Keep reading and keep your stories alive in your hearts.

Recently, I was speaking with an acquaintance, a professor at Harvard, who began to talk in great detail about his mother's illness. He stopped suddenly, and said, "I don't know why I'm telling you all this," although it was perfectly clear to me why he was doing it. During the decisive and, indeed, cataclysmic moments of our life, we mentally put the events in order, trying to organize them so that we can begin to make sense of them and accept them. We can find ourselves, like a child, running the story over and over through our minds, or, sometimes, like my acquaintance, speaking it aloud. As I said a few minutes ago, even though I have dedicated my life to literary studies, I continue to be surprised at the pervasive influence of stories in our lives. And, one of the things that most sustains one in times of sorrow is precisely the stories of one's own childhood, and the remembered tales of a loved one's own life.

The world of reading contributes to our abilities to be storytellers of our own lives and to be listeners of others' tales. In the Renaissance, fiction was considered dangerous, something that could incite the imagination to become fertile ground for the occasion of sin. But for Cervantes, the imaginative faculties were qualities of soul, one of the essential components of humankind and of human experience, in balance with other essential features, which is one of the main themes of Don Quijote. Interestingly, recent developments in early childhood education increasingly emphasize imaginative play as a foundation for learning, which is nothing more than making up and performing stories. If the skill of storytelling is the foundation of learning, does that not tell us that perhaps stories are with us for life?

When I read with my students such works as Don Quijote we experience how the narrative gets inside you and moves you, opens up critical faculties, and helps you to dream. I never let them forget -- no matter how many sophisticated techniques of literary analysis I may teach -- that they are enjoying a good yarn, and that writers cherish this very ability. One of the features of Renaissance fiction was stories told within stories, whereupon the listeners would declare their appreciation and enjoyment of the manner of telling as much as of the content itself. In one case, in Don Quijote, the guests at the famous Inn listen to a long, byzantine story of captivity, freedom and love, and at the end, agree one and all that if it were not now the middle of the night, they would have the Captive tell it all over again.

As you set out on your journeys to invest your lives with high significance, keep reading and keep your stories alive in your hearts. Reading a good book, hearing a tale well told, not only opens up worlds for you, it provides you unconsciously with mental tools for the stories you will be weaving for yourself and telling your families throughout your life.