Bold leadership, we are told, requires unpopular decisions in difficult times.
Gilligan says that the story as told requires "the willing suspension of disbelief".
(Counterinsurgency theory suggests that it would take more than ten times that many; would forty — or ten, or twenty thousandnd be only a first installment?) Any counterinsurgency campaign, we're told, requires a very long commitment.
Perhaps we would all be wise to remember that, while studies speak in broad generalities, love, I'm told, requires finding only the "one" (who may, in fact, deviate from the statistical norm).
"It was like a goddam Auschwitz for birds, so the Marquis de Sade and Casanova could do their fucking on feather beds!" The stories he was telling required more space, and his paintings expanded to provide it.
All story telling requires a good edit.
But even they recognize that truth telling requires earnest effort, a strong conscience and a desire for knowledge.
By contrast, in its central uses, telling requires a speaker to intend to convey information (or alleged information) in a way that relies crucially upon taking her at her word.
"If the story you want to tell requires 33 minutes... great," Rosenstein wrote.
To go to her sister's wedding, in New Zealand, she told me, required months of therapy beforehand.
