Stories Quotes

Not every story is true. And sometimes the things that were wicked become the things that save us, and the things that were good doom us to misery and pain.

~ Kelly Barnhill

As survivors and procreators, we unravel stories that at their root are not dissimilar from the habitual behaviors seen in nature. But as beings who know they will die we digress into episodes and epics that are altogether dissociated from the natural world. We may isolate this awareness, distract ourselves from it, anchor our minds far from its shores, and sublimate it as a motif in our sagas. Yet at no time and in no place are we protected from being tapped on the shoulder and reminded, “You’re going to die, you know.” However much we try to ignore it, our consciousness haunts us with this knowledge. Our heads were baptized in the font of death; they are doused with the horror of moribundity.

~ Thomas Ligotti

What your mind sees when you close your eyes marks the entrance to an endless universe: your imagination.

~ Stephen Helmes

I love the story of a thing. I love a thing for what it means a thousand times more than for what it's worth.

~ Elizabeth Wein

People think monsters are born without origin. But it is the monsters that have the greatest stories to tell...

~ Charles Lee

Genres are what holds each story together and help it along, but in no way should it ever be treated as a boundary, especially for a reader. If I’ve only read science fiction books, I would probably consider myself mad.

~ Lauren Lola

The better you tell an old story, the more you are talking about right now.

~ John Crowley

I could be listening to Painted Red weave the stories of the saints in her rich roomy voice, and beginning to see how all those stories were in some way one story: a simple story about being alive, and being a man; a story that, simple as it was, couldn't itself be told.

~ John Crowley

path is only a name for a place where you find yourself. Where you're going on it is only a story. Where you've been on it is only another. Some of the stories are pleasant ones, some are not. That's dark and light.

~ John Crowley

Audiences are craving intricate and intelligent stories that keep them on the edge of their seats.

~ Jennifer Arnett

She reminded me that I could write stories,/could be struck by lightning & live.

~ Jen Currin

What doesn't kill us makes a good story.

~ Marty Rubin

Stories, whether they're good or bad, are expressions of interactions within society. Some may be seen as 'boring', but in their own right, they are still stories to be explored. People throughout life have more exciting endeavours than others, and that can be the same for stories. It's just a matter of segregating comparisons between the senseless and the thoughtful. The norm and the unbiased. We are what we are. As are stories.

~ Corey Dale-Gardener

If you are present, then you can see that you give yourself presents in each moment that you can unwrap and thoroughly enjoy - the amazing world around us that we can explore, each incredible detail, the lives, and the stories we tell ourselves or experience so that we can feel what it's like to be human, the things we can learn from an interaction, about ourselves as well as everything and everyone else.Everyone is here in their own story, writing the script as they go, living the movie picture.... choosing who to meet, what to do, how to react to each new experience. We each find our own tools to help us traverse the terrain of each particular part of our journeys. It cannot be right to judge another, or yourself, for we are all at different stages, or on different stages. We do as we need to according to where and how we find ourselves, but the more you realise that you actually put yourself exactly where you are in each moment, the more your eyes will widen. You are an amazing Being playing the game of life - your attitude makes all the difference.

~ Jay Woodman

Careful with what you know and what you experience. Sometimes, closed mouth with memories is better than opened mouth with stories.

~ London Casey (Karolyn James)

There are stories that don't need a plot. Sooner or later they rise above the confusion and untangle their mysteries in a series of sentences.

~ Patrice Nganang

The lively oral storytelling scene in Scots and Gaelic spills over into the majority English-speaking culture, imbuing it with a strong sense of narrative drive that is essential to the modern novel, screenplay and even non-fiction.

~ Sara Sheridan

Everybody’s got sad stories.” Devon’s voice was as ungiving as stone. “And everyone thinks they’re so very special and broken because of them.

~ Kat Zhang

I write about love all the time, what a tragedy those stories turn into.

~ Turcois Ominek

Lies are just stories, and stories are all that matter. We all tell stories. Some are more truthful than others, maybe, but in the end the only thing that counts is what you can make people believe.

~ Lauren Oliver

Would you believe in a story without the heroes? There are stories without heroes.

~ Pushpa Rana

The patterns we perceive are determined by the stories we want to believe.

~ John Verndon

Storytelling creates a healing serum. The thematic unguent of our personal story represents a fusion of the ineffable truths that each of us must discover within ourselves.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

My father used to say that stories are part of the most precious heritage of mankind.

~ Tahir Shah

For my father there was no sharper way to understand a country than by listening to its stories.

~ Tahir Shah

...Food serves two parallel purposes: it nourishes and it helps you remember. Eating and storytelling are inseparable—the saltwater is also tears; the honey not only tastes sweet, but makes us think of sweetness; the matzo is the bread of our affliction.

~ Jonathan Safran Foer

Or was Chris thinking, as I was, that if we went tothe police and told our story, our faces would be splashed on the frontpages of every newspaper in the country? Would the glare of publicitymake up for what we'd lose? Our privacy-our need to stay together?Could we lose each other just to get even?

~ V.c. Andrews

Stories start in all sorts of places. Where they begin often tells the reader of what to expect as they progress. Castles often lead to dragons, country estates to deeds of deepest love (or of hate), and ambiguously presented settings usually lead to equally as ambiguous characters and plot, leaving a reader with an ambiguous feeling of disappointment. That's one of the worst kinds.

~ Rebecca Mckinsey

Stories are not real life, stories are pieces of morality made entertaining.

~ Matthew Jarpe

Stories weren't just make believe, all Dr. Seuss and Mother Goose. I saw a circle: first life, then death. Spring, summer, fall, winter. Blue sky and storms and quilts of cold clouds occupy the same space but at different times. Memories and stories help you rebuild. Things most precious to you may be gone, lost to the wicked wind, but you remember what had been, and you move on.

~ Rachael Hanel

We are our stories - dozens, hundreds, thousands of them - sprayed across our memories, embedded in our identity. Calling them up for others or for ourselves or for God, can enlighten, crush, amuse, trap, or free us, depending on how we pay attention.

~ Emma Lou Warner Thayne

Stories about lives remembered bring us backward while allowing us to move forward.

~ Nina Sankovitch

Toy is talking and this is why I love her. She can go on about herself ceaselessly and like the scratching of a branch against the window at night, the steady insistence of it is comforting. She has stories without beginnings, stories that trail off, stories that crisscross and contradict and dead end.Toy is the star of her stories. Events orbit her like a constellation.

~ Erica Lorraine Scheidt

So I found myself telling my own stories. It was strange: as I did it I realised how much we get shaped by our stories. It's like the stories of our lives make us the people we are. If someone had no stories, they wouldn't be human, wouldn't exist. And if my stories had been different I wouldn't be the person I am.

~ John Marsden

We are wolves, which are wild dogs, and this is our place in the city. We are small and our house is small on our small urban street. We can see the city and the train line and it's beautiful in its own dangerous way. Dangerous because it's shared and taken and fought for.That's the best way I can put it, and thinking about it, when I walk past the tiny houses on our street, I wonder about the stories inside them. I wonder hard, because houses must have walls and rooftops for a reason. My only query is the windows. Why do they have windows? Is it to let a glimpse of the world in? Or for us to see out?

~ Markus Zusak

We hold these stories and mad idea and events in our head and they run around and around telling us we are different, separate, broken. Then one day the mad idea escapes the asylum. Most times it’s unplanned. It just tumbles out on the lap of the man sitting next to us on the bus, or it slips sideways into a conversation on line at the Trader Joe’s or it falls out at the kitchen table when your neighbor comes to pick up her cat. And there is a terrifying moment when it first hits the light of day, where we think, “holy mother of God! What have I done? How could I have been to casual with my crazy ways?”But the man on the bus just smiles and nods his head, and the casher takes a moment to look us in the eye and the neighbor sits for a cup of tea and together we move into some new agreements that we are all in fact crazy and it’s so much nicer to be out of the closet with it all.

~ Maureen Muldoon

JAY: Why is a story more upfront than life?LENORE: It just seems more honest, somehow.JAY: Honest meaning closer to the truth?LENORE: I smell trap.JAY: I smell breakthrough. The truth is that there's no difference between a life and a story? But a life pretends to be something more? But it really isn't more?LENORE: I would kill for a shower.

~ David Foster Wallace

Stories arrest us. Parents use stories to capture the attention of active children. Preachers use stories to capture the attention of sleepy adults.

~ Tony Reinke

If you didn't like your own life, you changed it. You ran away. You did something spectacular. you didn't steal someone else's story and pretend it was yours.

~ Traci Chee

She told him of ship voyages she had taken to places he had never heard of, and stories he knew were all untrue, were bad non-truths, even, but he nodded and tried to convince himself to be convinced, tried to believe her, because he knew that the origin of a story is always an absence, and he wanted her to live among presences.

~ Jonathan Safran Foer