A man is always a teller of stories (...) and he tries to live his life as if he were recounting it

In order to write about life first you must live it.

Life is not what one lived, but what One remembers and how One remembers it in order to recount it

If my life is going to mean anything, I have to live it myself.

Pour écrire l’histoire de sa vie, il faut d’abord avoir vécu ; aussi n’est-ce pas la mienne que j’écris.

Voici ce que j'ai pensé : pour que l'événement le plus banal devienne une aventure, il faut et il suffit qu'on se mette à la raconter. C'est ce qui dupe les gens : un homme, c'est toujours un conteur d'histoires, il vit entouré de ses histoires et des histoires d'autrui, il voit tout ce qui lui arrive à travers elles ; et il cherche à vivre sa vie comme s'il la racontait.
Mais il faut choisir : vivre ou raconter.

This is what I thought: for the most banal even to become an adventure, you must (and this is enough) begin to recount it. This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story.
But you have to choose: live or tell.

To call up modern versions of the old stories, one has to go forth and live life. As a result then, one will have the challenge of not only living the story, taking it all in, but also interpreting it in whatever ways are useful. So too, one will reap the reward of telling all about it afterward. One's interest in the world, and in having experiences, is really an interest in hearing, having, living one more story, and then one more, then one more story, till one cannot live them out loud any longer. Perhaps it should be said that the drive to live out stories is as deep in the psyche, when awakened, as it is compelling to the psyche to listen to stories and learn from them.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D. in Introduction to the 2004 edition of The hero with a thousand faces (J.Campbell)

....faking his real life so he can live his fake one.

I must change my life so that I can live it, not wait for it.

Make my life my favorite movie. Live my favorite character. Write my own script. Direct my own story. Be my biography. Make my own documentary on me. Non-fiction, live, not recorded. Time to catch that hero I've been chasing. See if the sun will melt the wax that holds my wings or if the heat is just a mirage. Live my legacy now. Quit acting like me. Be me.

Whoever survives a test, whatever it may be, must tell the story. That is his duty.

He had got himself a life. Now he had to find a purpose in it.

Life is our resume. It is our story to tell, and the choices we make write the chapters. Can we live in a way where we look forward to looking back?