Stories shape the world...

So I'm re-reading Alan Moore's Swamp Thing run (collected in six trade paperbacks) and I wanted to share a passage that illustrates why I exalt Moore as much I do (this is from the second collection):

"There are people. There are stories. The people think they shape the stories, but the reverse is often closer to the truth. Stories shape the world. They exist independently of people, and in places quite devoid of man, there may yet be mythologies. The glaciers have their legends. The ocean bed entertains its own romances."

I think in some ways that passage is a precursor to Moore's concept of Idea Space that he introduced in his run on Supreme (a terrible Superman copy book that Rob Liefeld created which Moore made into an enjoyable homage to the Superman comics of the 1950's and 1960's). Stories and ideas aren't real in the tangible sense like physical objects (unless they are published in books or some other medium), but as Moore put words to, stories and ideas are very real no matter how seemingly outlandish as long as the people who create or follow those stories and or ideas believe in them. While most people don't believe superheroes are real in the sense that their relatives are real, a good number of people do invest more time following the adventures of Nightwing (for example) or thinking about this or that character or idea than they do about Bob, their third cousin, whom they've maybe met once in their life so to them Nightwing or this or that character, story, or idea is more "real" to them and means more to them in their lives than a cousin they hardly ever see, let along think about. Characters, stories, and or ideas that we invest time in are components of the person we are and are part of the blueprints upon which we interact with the world and people around us.

Anyway, I don't know if my ramblings in the above paragraph made any sense, but it's my attempt in trying to convey that Alan Moore isn't just a master wordsmith, he's a writer who thinks about things within our world in a new light and in turn, infusing his readers with new ways of looking at their worlds.