Storytelling Quotes

Everyone and everything needed to be raised to its highest level – the teacher must become a mage, the husband a knight errant, the labor a hero in a sacred drama – intensified, rarefied, baptized in the turbulent waters of restlessness, curiosity, and ardor.

~ Philip Zaleski

Christian myth, reveals the truth that the Christian was (and is) still like his forefathers a mortal hemmed into a hostile world.

~ Philip Zaleski

Mom was the midwife who delivered stories to me.

~ Rachael Hanel

Writing is new, relatively speaking. Story telling is ancient. Tell your story first putting aside all other worries. Leave fretting over homonyms, semicolons, and Oxford commas to editors and friends you can be bribe with baking.

~ Ada Maria Soto

A tale may have exactly three beginnings: one for the audience, one for the artist, and one for the poor bastard who has to live in it.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

He was telling an interesting anecdote full of exciting words like encyclopedia and rhododendron.

~ A.a. Milne

We don't do well with infinity and endless possibility, and so we break things down into individual units and into stories. And then we accidentally believe in those stories, and we accidentally start acting them out. Stories about what love is, what happiness is. What men are, what women are. Unable to shape our own stories about the madness that surrounds us, we get infected with other people's stories, trying to ignore the discomfort that comes with an imperfect fit.

~ Jessa Crispin

My story being done,She gave me for my pains a world of sighs:She swore,––in faith, twas strange, 'twas passing strange;'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful:She wish'd she had not heard it, yet she wish'dThat heaven had made her such a man: she thank'd me,And bade me, if I had a friend that lov'd her,I should but teach him how to tell my story.And that would woo her.

~ William Shakespeare

Any story told is a lie cunningly told to hide the real world from the poor bastards who live in it.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

Stories are important too. Stories help make sense of things. They make you believe you can do things. They help you imagine that things may be different, that if you just have enough courage... or faith... or goodness... you can change things for the better.

~ Kate Forsyth

Storytelling is a dangerous vocation, for the fairies punish those who return to tell their secrets.

~ Marina Warner

Good writing is true writing. If a man is making a story up it will be true in proportion to the amount of knowledge of life that he has and how conscientious he is, so that when he makes something up it is as it would truly be.

~ Ernest Hemingway

You must liberate your mind of such dogmatic ideals, rid yourself of this unending illusion that stories have clear beginnings and endings. Stories never begin, nor do they end. They are comprised of people living an endless cycle of interacting, influencing each other, and parting ways. As long as stories are told they should not have clear endings.

~ Ryohgo Narita

Story = Character + Predicament + Attempted Extrication

~ Jonathan Gottschall

I won't be one of the hundreds telling you that being alive flows like a story you write consciously, deliberately, full of linear narrative, foreshadowing, repetition, motifs. The emotional beats come down where they should, last as long as they should, end where they should, and that should come from somewhere real and natural, not from the tyranny of the theatre, the utter hegemony of fiction.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

Our parents tell us the story of our beginning and they have total control over it--they know they've changed it, and we know they've changed it, but we just let them. They massage the details to reflect who we are now, so that there will be a sense to it: you are this because that. We gave you a blanket with birdies on it and now you're a pilot, how lovely! All so that we think of ourselves as being in . . . not just a story, but a good story. One written in full command of their craft. Someone who abides by the contract with the audience, even if the audience is us. Everyone loves a system. Everyone relaxes.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

A mythological image that has to be explained to the brain is not working.

~ Joseph Campbell

Disenchantment is the blessing of becoming yourself.

~ Rebecca Solnit

The vote was taken at once, and it was agreed by an overwhelming majority that rats were comrades.There were only four dissentients, the three dogs and the cat, who was afterwards discovered to have voted on both sides.

~ George Orwell

I am the unseen. For centuries I have been here, beneath this great city, this metropolis. I know your language. I know all languages. . . . My cave is broad and cool. The sun cannot send its heat down here. The damp soil is rich and fragrant. I turn softly on my back and place my eight legs to the cave ceiling. Then, I listen. I am the spider. I see sound. I feel taste. I hear touch. I spin this story. This is the story I’ve spun.

~ Nnedi Okorafor

Anchor Your Stories in Redemptive Themes So We Are Moved to Live Up to Them: Rather than making yourself the victim or the hero in the stories you tell, describe a daunting time of loss, crisis, or criticism or where you made a mistake or acted badly, yet you were eventually able to learn from it. Such stories show vulnerability and a desire to grow and live fully rather than in fear. Then that facet of you can be the place where others can positively and productively connect with you, hard-earned strengths firmly attached together. You can support each other in reinforcing redemptive characterizations and action.

~ Kare Anderson

To tell a story is always to translate the raw material into a specific shape, to select out of the boundless potential facts those that seem salient.

~ Rebecca Solnit

My TV show enraged people. I had prostitutes on, and I treated them like real people.... I was fired from Maclean's after I wrote a piece called 'Let's Stop Hoaxing The Kids About Sex'. Now I'm the 'beloved author,' the 'beloved historian of Canada,' an icon. I get standing ovations.... I never set out to be a patriot or a popular historian. I just liked storytelling. [interview promoting Marching as to War (2002)]

~ Pierre Berton

Say It So You Lift Your Spirits: Even non-Scandinavians and optimists can feel their moods dampen during the dark of night. Luckily there are some easy ways to lift your spirits. Here are three:1. When describing something in the past, what role do you play in the story? Are more of your most retold stories anchored by a positively or a negatively felt incidents? Those who are most resilient, energetic, caring and involved with others tend to link their stories to redemptive themes.Those who are plagued by down moods often mark their stories with what went wrong and don't include a redeeming detail. These narrative themes affect our choices -- what we think we have to choose from -- and how others see us.2. We each have many personalities inside us. Some situations enable us to use our best talents and display our best side. Instead of attempting to be a virtuoso juggler as many women do, discover the specific situations where you thrive. When you can identify those moments you are better able, like a defensive driver, to see potential danger farther ahead where situations or individuals spark your discomfort or worse.Conversely, knowing where you shine (temperament and talent) means you can make smarter choices about how you work and live -- and with whom. While Marcus Buckingham's book is intended for women, I know three male friends who have found it helpful in how they seek the situations that best serve them -- professionally, personally and socially.3. We each have a set point along the continuum of pessimistic to optimistic. After winning the lottery or experiencing the death of a loved one, we eventually return to that set point.

~ Kare Anderson

All of our lives were a story, their magic came in their retelling. Words could give life everlasting rebirth.I would accept this challenge. I would use my breath to give life.

~ J. Lynn Else

It's easier to make up storiesthan it is to write them down. When I speak, the words come pouring out of me. The storywakes up and walks all over the room. Sits in a chair, crosses one leg over the other, says, Let me introduce myself. Then just starts going on and on.

~ Jacqueline Woodson

People like to separate storytelling which is not fact from history which is fact. They do this so that they know what to believe and what not to believe.

~ Jeanette Winterson

Asking storytellers to be genuine is like, asking a chain smoker to quit smoking . Habit of lying isn't easy to fix. Pretend as believing is like selling cigarettes. What else we could do, if we want them to be in our lives...

~ Heshan Udunuwara

Remember that writing things down makes them real; that it is nearly impossible to hate anyone whose story you know; and, most of all, that even in our post-postmodern era, writing has a moral purpose. With twenty-six shapes arranged in varying patterns, we can tell every story known to mankind, and make up all the new ones—indeed, we can do so in most of the world’s known tongues. If you can give language to experiences previously starved for it, you can make the world a better place.

~ Andrew Solomon

It is an axiom of modern social psychology that the stories that tend to get repeated are the ones that somehow have the potential to strengthen the communities in which they are told, or to enhance the relationship between the teller and the hearer. This principle seems to be reflected in the stories that were handed down from the community around Jesus. Again and again, early Christian stories suggest that virtue is not enough. The lives of families and communities can only really flourish where virtue takes second place to love.

~ Kate Cooper

Storytelling is an essential part of our cultural and human identity...when we become afraid of stories outside the mainstream, I believe we have lost a valuable part of our cultural inheritance and growth.

~ Louise Sommer

Sharing our story is one way we create intimacy. And like a good novel, it’s more engaging – and lasting – when we allow it to gradually unfold.

~ Gina Greenlee

...have always been known for their storytelling. It appears to be the supreme expression of their spirit. Perhaps they know that, without a story, there could be no nation, no culture, no civilization, no life.

~ I. Murphy Lewis

The deep map configures narratives. It is a matrix of intertexual storytelling, charting our movements through the landscape.

~ Linda Lappin

Telling a story is like sowing a seed—you always hope to see it become a beautiful tree, with firm roots and branches that soar up in the sky. But it is a peculiar sowing, for you will never know whether your seed sprouts or dies.

~ Laila Lalami

Historical exclusivity often has a way of turning into present and institutionalized tragedy. Whose story gets told matters.

~ Aurin Squire

..so Grandpa turned the rusty latchkey of his magnificent remembery and set free a symphony of stories

~ Glenda Millard

Who makes things up? Who tells the real story? We all turn our lives into stories. It is a defining characteristic of our species. We retell our experiences. We quickly learn what parts are interesting to our listeners and what parts lag, and we shape our narratives accordingly. It doesn't mean we aren't telling the truth; we've simply learned which parts to leave out. Every time we tell the story again, we don't go back to the original event and start from scratch, we go back to the last time we told the story. It's the story we shape and improve on, we don't change what happened. This is also a way we have of protecting ourselves. It would be too painful to relive a childhood illness or the death of your best friend every time you had to speak of it. By telling the story from the story, instead of from the actual events, we are able to distance ourselves from our suffering. It also gives us the chance to make the story something people can hear.

~ Ann Patchett

No matter how good a story is, there is more at stake in the telling.

~ Rabih Alameddine

That's the problem with revealing true truths. They make people uncomfortable. The truth should be grand and exotic, but mostly it isn't. Mostly it's uncomfortable.

~ Leslie Pietrzyk