He looked into the water and saw that it was made up of 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; . . . these were the Streams of Story, . . . 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. ( Rushdie 1990 :72)