The problem with every story is you tell it after the fact.

Streator introduces his narrative by pointing out that even live broadcasts arrive after the event and that a teller shapes what is told. He describes writing in roadside cafes while pursuing reports of apparent miracles with Sarge. Before moving back into the earlier events, he explains that the account is the story of how they reached this situation.

Telling an event necessarily comes later than living it; narrative also depends on the person who selects and presents it.

This is a fictional reporter’s introduction to the timing and mediation of his own account, not a demonstration that every story is false.

Time, Art

• Today, my mother died. Albert Camus
• To love at all is to be vulnerable. C. S. Lewis
• Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. (paraphrase) Carl Gustav Jung
• Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. (not found) Aristotle
• Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid. (not found) Fyodor Dostoevsky

Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby (2002), Chapter 1, opening sentence. Spoken by Carl Streator. Checked at Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/the-problem-with-every-story/ (28 October 2026).

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