Lessons for Life and Storytelling

These lessons for life and storytelling from Shadow Spinner:

1. [Begin with a simple question, to prepare us for the quest:] What's going to become of you?

2. Keep your mind out of the mist...Be practical --- look to your own survival!...[Not spinning shadows]...But...Look at Shahrazad. Telling stories can be very practical...Stories can save your life.

3. Wishing has power. When you wish for something you are concentrating on it. And when you concentrate on a thing, you help to bring it about. You must be very careful what you wish for.

4. Chew your words seven times before letting them out. If you let words go buzzing out of your mouth like bees, they will come back and sting you. Silence holds power too.

5. Don't give up.

6. Some stories you don't tell out loud. Tell them to yourself until you don't need them anymore. Those are the ones where you like to "see them sweat".

7. You can re-tell old stories of ancient wisdom or tell them like the spider who caught the dream in her threaded web.

8. When you hear a story, you sometimes get a new idea of what's possible in the world --- for you to do, especially when you're scared and you read about heroes.

9. Learn how to pick a ripe mellon. Look for sunken scars that indicate it's good and sweet.

10. Pay for your life with stories, but never in advance. Always hold something back to live another day.

11. Tell stories about justice and people getting what they deserve.

12. Wrap morsels of truth in a confection of tales, hoping that those truths won't seem mutinous anymore --- just true.

13. Life under the wing of a fly is better than the sleep of the grave.

14. People take what they need from te stories they hear. The tale is often wiser than the teller.

15. If we don't share our stories --- trading them across our borders as freely as spices and ebony and silk --- we will all be strangers forever.

16. If you want to send a message with a pidgeon, here is what to do:...Be gentle!

17. There's more to disguise than changing your clothes. The best disguise can be just a look.

18. Could it be that, by choosing certain stories, you draw to yourself the happenings inside them? So that your life begins to echo your stories?

19. Often, the the old tales, the humblest creatures turn out to be more powerful than you ever would expect...Sometimes it really does happen.

20. There's more than one way to be crippled...You forget what it's like not to ache. You forget that you're aching at all.

21. You should always try to remember your dreams. Because you can learn from your dreams, though you may not see how at first.

22. Words are how the powerless can have power.

23. What seems like an ending is a beginning in disguise.