Storytelling Quotes
893 quotes
"After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world."
"You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift."
"Writing is something you do alone. Its a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don't want to make eye contact while doing it."[Thoughts from Places: The Tour, Nerdfighteria Wiki, January 17, 2012]"
"Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen."
"There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth."
"You can fix anything but a blank page."
"A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead."
"Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river."
"[I]t is the wine that leads me on,the wild winethat sets the wisest man to singat the top of his lungs,laugh like a fool – it drives theman to dancing... it eventempts him to blurt out storiesbetter never told."
"But I'm going to try to tell the truth. Except for the parts I'm leaving out, because there's still stuff I'm just not going to tell you. Get used to it."
"Tell the story that's been growing in your heart, the characters you can't keep out of your head, the tale story that speaks to you, that pops into your head during your daily commute, that wakes you up in the morning."
"Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole."
"Authors do not choose a story to write, the story chooses us."
"I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story."
"Doubt is a question mark; faith is an exclamation point. The most compelling, believable, realistic stories have included them both."
"All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, 'Sir, write me, I am beautiful."
"Write to your heart’s content and by all means, have fun with your creation. It’s your moment to do absolutely anything within those pages."
"Writing's funny, it's like walking down a hall in the dark looking for the light switch, and suddenly you find it, flip it on, and then you discover the hallway you passed through is papered with the novel you've written."
"In Paris, where raillery is so quick to throw emotion out the window, silence, in a roomful of clever people after a story, is the most flattering of all marks of success"
"Film gives us a second chance at a first impression."
"The power of your story may not lie in its drama, but in its absolutely perfect relationship to your cause."
John Capecci and Timothy Cage, Living Proof: Telling Your Story to Make a Difference
"Storytelling was the most honored of all talents, for it benefited everyone."
"There were good places and bad places to tell stories and there were of course stories that could not be told in any place on earth and these were reserved for heaven."
"Living in a story of a limited self—to any degree—is not love."
"Identifying the source of our personal narratives helps us to release its negative aspects and re-frame it in ways that promote wholeness."
"You want to tell a story? Grow a heart. Grow two. Now, with the second heart, smash the first one into bits."
Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
"Luz's manner of speaking made it clear that she had no idea what she might say next. It wasn't that she made things up, strictly speaking--only that facts were merely a point of departure for her."
"We are reaching levels of high experiential comfort and our standards will keep rising. We want to feel, we want to experience, we want to connect, we want intelligence, and we want to play; Ladies and Gentlemen: A new theatre is on its way."
"All stories have a curious and even dangerous power. They are manifestations of truth -- yours and mine. And truth is all at once the most wonderful yet terrifying thing in the world, which makes it nearly impossible to handle. It is such a great responsibility that it's best not to tell a story at all unless you know you can do it right. You must be very careful, or without knowing it you can change the world."
"Trust the story ... the storyteller may dissemble and deceive, the story can't: the story can only ever be itself."
"One doesn't intentionally to alter the truth, just enhance it and make it more memorable."
"I tell the story to you now, but in each telling the story itself changes a little, changes direction, and that in turn changes you and me. So be very careful not only in how you repeat it but in how you remember it, goslings. More often than you realize it, the world is shaped by two things -- stories told and the memories they leave behind."
"Storytellers seldom let facts get in the way of perpetuating a legend, although a few facts add seasoning and make the legend more believable."
"How might I get over this? How would I be able to overlook the way he used to be with me? How could I overlook that his fingers touched my indiscernible soul before it twisted my nipples? How might I overlook his essence that still is in my garments? Despite everything, I still hear you saying that you love me. Though I know you don't."
"The idea that traumatic residues—or unresolved stories—can be inherited is groundbreaking."
"Chimerical words, the words were written,Some are wasted; some are still on the page,Tattered words, the words were written,Some are young, some are aged,Gloomy words, the words were written,Some are unspoken, some are told,Words were hurt, though they can heal,Words are breathless, though can feel,Words won hearts, words shattered hearts,Words lost battles, words won wars,Wars within, words had scars."
"His pen spoke more to her than he ever did”.In the war of words, some are unwritten and some are unspoken."
"All she captures is a moment and what she calls it is a memory,Sometimes, it is assumptions that we use; all we need is a theory,Because you don’t know what is there in the future,And all you need is a vision to make a perfect picture.I feel that I have known you for a century,And whatever she calls is a memory."
"After all these years, all I know is, I need not to do anything as a part of remorse.All I need is to write.Because,'Poetry forgives."
"For any marginalized group to change the story that society tells about them takes courage and perseverance."
"These were our bedtime stories. Tales that haunted our parents and made them laugh at the same time. We never understood them until we were fully grown and they became our sole inheritance."
"Stories,' the green-eyed Sigrid said, unperturbed, 'are like prayers. It does not matter when you begin, or when you end, only that you bend a knee and say the words."
"No one is ever really lost as long as their story still exists."
"I have fallen,for your words.They are like,a gossamer cobweb,I have been,embroiled,decoyed,snared into!Incapacitated.I fail to escape.I fail to liberate.Your words,didn't redeem,made me a,captive instead."
"Writing is something you do alone. Its a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don't want to make eye contact while doing it.", Nerdfighteria Wiki, January 17, 2012]"
"Life is a sea of vibrant color. Jump in."
"I write for the kid in me. . . . Often when I’m working on a story, I’ll find myself laughing at something my characters have done, or even being surprised at where they’ve taken the story. It’s as if they have a life all their own. What I do is create them and then let them go on to entertain me. . . ."
"I got this story from someone who had no business in the telling of it."
"I have from the first felt sure that the writer, when he sits down to commence his novel, should do so, not because he has to tell a story, but because he has a story to tell. The novelist's first novel will generally have sprung from the right cause."
"...required for good fiction: character, conflict, change through time. And if you're really blessed, you get resolution. But life doesn't usually work out that way."
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