Muriel Rukeyser

The American poet whose line — “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” — supplies the epigraph and subtitle for Kyle’s essay The Storytelling of Investing. In the research doc behind that essay (The Storytelling of Investing - Research), her quote sets up the core thesis: that reality is “dictated by the stories we tell,” so mastering the culture of communication and the toolkits for telling tales is the investor’s edge — wielded well alongside Intellectual Honesty and humility, and “a weapon for hype” when not. She functions as the conceptual anchor for the essay’s argument that there are always two sides to an investment, the number and the story.

Context: Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980) was an American poet and political activist; the “universe is made of stories” line comes from her poem “The Speed of Darkness.”

Where this appears

• The Storytelling of Investing - Research — her line is the essay’s subtitle and the launch point for its thesis on story versus number in investing.