"He looked into the water and saw that it was made up of a
thousand thousand thousand and one different currents, each one a different colour,
weaving in and out of one another like a liquid tapestry of breathtaking
complexity; and Iff explained that these were the Streams of Story, that each
coloured strand represented and contained a single tale. Different parts of the
Ocean contained different sorts of stories, and as all the stories that had ever
been told and many 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 become 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 the Streams of Story was much more than a storeroom of yarns. It was
not dead but alive."
Salman Rushdie,Haroun and the Sea of Stories (London: Granta Books, 1990), p. 71.