Mythic Truth of Fiction
Why else do we read fiction, anyway? Not to be impressed by someone’s dazzling language — or at least I hope that’s not our reason. I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not “true” because we’re hungry for another kind of truth: The mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself.
— Orson Scott Card, Introduction, Ender’s Game, 1991 Tor edition