Storytelling Quotes

Now the second common characteristic of fiction follows from this, and it is that fiction is presented in such a way that the reader has the sense that it is unfolding around him. This doesn't mean he has to identify himself with the character or feel compassion for the character or anything like that. It just means that fiction has to be largely presented rather than reported. Another way to say it is that though fiction is a narrative art, it relies heavily on the element of drama.

~ Flannery O'connor

If the first step in establishing a professional identity is claiming our interests and talents, then the next step is claiming a story about our interests and talents, a narrative we can take with us to interviews and coffee dates (...) a story that balances complexity and cohesion is frankly, diagnostic.

~ Meg Jay

Emotional position is part of it, but as an individual you are not your emotions, neither are you your intellect. These are things that you have . They're not things that you are . Therefore you have to start to become aware of the different requirements that human beings have, the different areas that they like to be satisfied in. Which means becoming aware of yourself. I mean, as a writer you're gonna have to understand pretty much the whole universe. But the best place to start is by understanding the inner universe. The entire universe – for one thing – only exists in your perceptions. That's all you're gonna see of it. To all practical intents and purposes this is purely some kind of lightshow that's being put on in the kind of neurons in our brain. The whole of reality. So. To understand the universe there's worse advice than that which was carved above the shrine of the Delphi oracle. Where it just said: “Know thyself”. Understand yourself. Know thyself is a magical goal, but like I say to me there is very little difference between magic and creative art in any sense – the laws of one apply perfectly well to the other.

~ Alan Moore

402Emotional position is part of it, but as an individual you are not your emotions, neither are you your intellect. These are things that you have . They're not things that you are . Therefore you have to start to become aware of the different requirements that human beings have, the different areas that they like to be satisfied in. Which means becoming aware of yourself. I mean, as a writer you're gonna have to understand pretty much the whole universe. But the best place to start is by understanding the inner universe. The entire universe – for one thing – only exists in your perceptions. That's all you're gonna see of it. To all practical intents and purposes this is purely some kind of lightshow that's being put on in the kind of neurons in our brain. The whole of reality. So. To understand the universe there's worse advice than that which was carved above the shrine of the Delphi oracle. Where it just said: “Know thyself”. Understand yourself. Know thyself is a magical goal, but like I say to me there is very little difference between magic and creative art in any sense – the laws of one apply perfectly well to the other.

~ Alan Moore

Academics have given up trying to recover an honest picture of the past and have decided that their history-writing should be simply an instrument of moral hand-wringing.

~ Gordon S. Wood

There are books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story... don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words--the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers who won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book.

~ Stephen King

My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? When the lightning strikes shadows on the bedroom wall and the rain taps at the window with its long fingernails? No. When fear and cold make a statue of you in your bed, don't expect hard-boned and fleshless truth to come running to your aid. What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie.

~ Diane Setterfield

A story has its purpose and its path. It must be told correctly for it to be understood.

~ Marcus Sedgwick

It is my opinion that a story worth reading only in childhood is not worth reading even then.

~ C.s. Lewis

People take on the shapes of the songs and the stories that surround them, especially if they don't have their own song.

~ Neil Gaiman

There's a Palestine that dwells inside all of us, a Palestine that needs to be rescued: a free Palestine where all people regardless of color, religion, or race coexist; a Palestine where the meaning of the word occupation is only restricted to what the dictionary says rather than those plenty of meanings and connotations of death, destruction, pain, suffering, deprivation, isolation and restrictions that Israel has injected the word with.

~ Refaat Alareer

I think the best stories always end up being about the people rather than the event, which is to say character-driven.

~ Stephen King

If every event which occurred could be given a name, there would be no need for stories.

~ John Berger

A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.

~ George Lucas

A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick. Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose it’s moorings or orientation... Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart larger.

~ Ben Okri

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.

~ Edwidge Danticat

I'll tell you a secret.Old storytellers never die.They disappear into their own story.

~ Vera Nazarian

But Andrew was right about one thing. Human beings need to tell stories. Historically, it's the quickest way we have for transmitting useful information to other members of our species. Stories are not simply nice things to have; they are essential survival tools. And yes, the stories we tell ourselves are just as important as the stories we tell other people.

~ Hugh Macleod

What I'm going to do up here, kid, is tell you a story. Like all stories, it's an attempt to make sense of something larger than itself. And, like most stories, it fails, to a certain degree. It's a gloss, a rendition, so it's not exact. But it'll do. -Silenus

~ Robert Jackson Bennett

Stories are a communal currency of humanity.

~ Tahir Shah

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.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

My father never told us how the stories worked. He didn't reveal the layers, the nuggets of information, the fragments of truth and fantasy. He didn't need to -- because, given the right conditions, the stories activated, sowing themselves.

~ Tahir Shah

We come together as a community — in our sitting room, in sacred space or in a coffee shop. We share our joy and pain, our surprises and disappointments, successes and failures and we try to make some sense of it all. We listen to find some way to connect. We give reassurance or advice. Sometimes we say nothing because just being there is enough. Storytelling is that moment in time when we are not alone - I met my Soul in a Coffee Shop

~ Louise Gilbert

It is the nature of stories to leave out far more than they include.

~ Marion Dane Bauer

The Gingerbread House has four walls, a roof, a door, a window, and a chimney. It is decorated with many sweet culinary delights on the outside.But on the inside there is nothing—only the bare gingerbread walls.It is not a real house—not until you decide to add a Gingerbread Room.That’s when the stories can move in.They will stay in residence for as long as you abstain from taking the first gingerbread bite.

~ Vera Nazarian

Every story needs to be worth telling.

~ Vera Nazarian

When a story gets wedged in your head and refuses to go away, when it keeps coming back, again and again, despite your seeming inability to tell it, know this..the story has chosen you and You are ready, so tell it or it’ll haunt you to the end of your days. Characters too! They will find you, drop anchor and before you know, they will speak through you, shaping their own narrative, their own unique destiny. Let go and allow them. You have no option but to be a channel for them. This joy of surrender can only be felt… never truly explained.

~ Nidhie Sharma

Storytelling is an ancient art. The lucent vibes of stories express what we cannot articulate directly. When we hear someone’s story, we respond to the spark of humanness within ourselves that seeks to come out in the light and greet the world. When we tell the stories of our lives, we give voice to people bereft of speech, we make the persons whom we love or loved immortal, and we pass along our familiarity with the natural and physical world.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Rain's pouring and it's too cold. All people bored and I even accord What to do but spell a tale told: So once upon a time a land in the shore...

~ Ana Claudia Antunes

She closed her eyes. Said the four most comforting words she knew: Once upon a time. An incantation.

~ Jennifer Mcmahon

Stories help us remember what we never want to forget.

~ Emory R. Frie

Storytelling still matters in the digital age, because commencing in adolescences and continuing through adulthood, people receive training in using stories to describe the human contestants, organize the facts, communicate the moral message behind the messy human conflict, evaluate competing ethical issues, and render a final value judgment.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The story of what it means to be human is never complete. Every generation will produce its own share of comedies and tragedies, fools and geniuses. What the Greeks started the rest of the world will continue to build upon. The old stories will continue to explicate where we came from, while the new stories will illuminate in what direction humankind trends. The collection of future stories of humanity will add to the cumulative library of stories that past writers told, an anthology of collaborative stories will shed light upon the singleness of the human spirit in its aspirations, powers, vicissitudes, and wisdom.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Come with me to the mountains. Every rock there tells a story.

~ Avijeet Das

We need stories in order to understand ourselves, for good or bad, to be inspired or horrified, it's how we cope with being human and how we decide what type of person we will become.

~ Lily Graham

Did you know that writing stories down kills them?Of course it does, words aren't meant to be stiff, unchanging things.

~ N.k. Jemisin

And she cries even more, for the way the universe keeps throwing her together with the players in her son's tragedy, like handfuls of dust.

~ Clara Chow

I believe we owe it to each other to tell stories. It's as close to a credo as I have or will, I suspect, ever get.

~ Neil Gaiman

Of course, fairy tales are transmissible. You can catch them, or be infected by them. They are currency that we share with those who walked the world before ever we were here. (Telling stories to my children that I was, in my turn, told by my parents and grandparents makes me feel part of something special and odd, part of the continuous stream of life itself.)

~ Neil Gaiman

Every human being carries with them the stories of their ancestors, the story of their generation, and the rudiments of pliable clay to build future storylines that will shape their community of kindred souls. Storytelling unites us as a species and supplies texture to our lives. By listening to other people’s stories and by sharing our personal story, we deftly weave the threads that compose the sacred hoop of the tribe.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster