“Different parts of the ocean contained different sorts of stories, and as all the stories that had ever been told and many others that were still in the process of being invented could be found here, the ocean of the streams of story was in fact the biggest library in the universe.  And because the stories were held here in fluid form, they retained the ability to change, to beome new versions of themselves, to join up with other stories and so become yet other stories; so that unlike a library of books, the ocean of story was much more than a store room of yarns.  It was not dead but alive”

(Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, 1990)