From Daniel Taylor's essay "In Praise of Stories" (emphasis mine): 

We are drawn to stories because our own life is a story and we are looking for help. Stories give us help in many ways. They tell us we are not alone, and that what has happened to us has happened first to others and that they made it through. They also help us see, however, that our own story is not big enough, that the world is larger and more varied than our limited experience. They help us be more fully human by stimulating and appealing to all that we are--mind, body, spirit. They help us by calling us into relationship--with other people, with other places and times, with creation, and with God. They help us by giving us courage to be the kinds of characters we should be in our own stories, and by making us laugh, empathize, and exercise judgment. But most of all, stories help us by telling the truth, without which we cannot live. 

. . .

Stories are not optional for human beings. It is not the case that some people like stories and seek them out, and other people do not. ... We are all, without exception, drawn to stories, and it may have to do with the way the brain works. As our experience presents itself to us, the brain organizes the stream of perceptions in story form--making connections between things, seeking out a plot, searching for meaning and coherence, trying to decipher what actions and responses are required. As a result, we are as instinctively drawn to story as to water and food. The attraction requires no education or training or special inclination. 

We are shaped by stories from the first moments of life, and even before. Stories tell us  who we are, why we are here, and what will become of us. Whenever humans try to make sense of their experience, they create a story, and we use those stories to answer all the big questions of life. The stories come from everywhere--from family, church, school, and the culture at large. They so surround and inhabit us that we often don't recognize that they are stories at all, breathing them in and out as a fish breathes water.

 . . . 

A story must, literally, be for our good, though good must be understood in the widest possible way. Stories don't necessarily make you a nicer or more ethical person--though many can; they draw out of you more of what makes you a feeling, giving, thinking, creating, laughing, curious human being. Not every story must improve us--stories are valuable on other scores--but we should be different and better because of the cumulative effect of the stories in our lives.

 . . . 

The stories we choose for ourselves define who we are. Every story defines a community--at least the community of two, teller and listener, at the most the community of humanity. A community, a family, is a group of people who share common stories. The health of any community depends directly on the health of the stories the community embraces.