Popular quotes about Stories! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
Yes, we could talk to you for days on end about all the bad first dates. Those are stories. Funny stories. Awkward stories. Stories we love to share, because by sharing them, we get something out of the hour or two we wasted on the wrong person. But that's all bad first dates are: short stories. Good first dates are more than short stories. They are first chapters. On a good first date, everything is springtime. And when a good first date becomes a relationship, the springtime lingers. Even after it's over, there can be springtime.
David LevithanStories move in circle. They donโt move in straight lines. So it helps if you listen in circles. There are stories inside stories and stories between stories and finding your way through them is as easy and as hard as finding your way home. And part of the finding is the getting lost. And when youโre lost you start to look around and to listen.
Deena MetzgerWhat does it matter, if we tell the same old stories? ...Stories tell us who we are. What weโre capable of. When we go out looking for stories we are, I think, in many ways going in search of ourselves, trying to find understanding of our lives, and the people around us. Stories, and language tell us whatโs important.
Kameron HurleyMy real purpose in telling middle-school students stories was to practice telling stories. And I practiced on the greatest model of storytelling we've got, which is "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey." I told those stories many, many times. And the way I would justify it to the head teacher if he came in or to any parents who complained was, look, I'm telling these great stories because they're part of our cultural heritage. I did believe that.
Philip PullmanI like to tell untold true stories, or the lesser-known aspects of larger, familiar stories. I think people or topics that are slightly on the edge or outside the mainstream often reveal more than better-known stories.
Nancy KatesYou learn by writing short stories. Keep writing short stories. The money's in novels, but writing short stories keeps your writing lean and pointed.
Larry NivenWe need more female directors, we also need men to step up and identify with female characters and stories about women. We don't want to create a ghetto where women have to do movies about women. To assume stories about women need to be told by a woman isn't necessarily true, just as stories about men don't need a male director.
Geena DavisTell them stories. They need the truth you must tell them true stories, and everything will be well, just tell them stories.
Philip PullmanLies 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 OliverI started writing the book without realizing I was writing a book. That sounds stupid, but it's true. I'd been trying and failing to make a different manuscript work, and I thought I was just taking a break by writing some short stories. I'm not a very good short story writer - the amazing compression that is required for short stories doesn't come easily to me. But anyway, I thought I'd try to write some short stories. And a structure took shape - I stumbled upon it.
Ayana MathisThe earliest influence on me was the movies of the thirties when I was growing up. Those were stories. If you look at them now, you see the development of character and the twists of plot; but essentially they told stories. My mother didn't go to the movies because of a religious promise she made early in her life, and I used to go to movies and come home and tell her the plots of those old Warner Brothers/James Cagney movies, the old romantic love stories. Through these movies that had real characters, I absorbed drama, sense of pacing, and plot.
Robert CormierFor many years now I have listened to the stories of people with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses as their counselor. From them I have learned how to enjoy the minute particulars of life once again, the grace of a hot cup of coffee, the presence of a friend, the blessing of having a new cake of soap or an hour without pain. Such humble experience is the stuff that many of the very best stories are made of. If we think we have no stories it is because we have not paid enough attention to our lives. Most of us live lives that are far richer and more meaningful than we appreciate.
Rachel Naomi RemenThere's so many ways to be a voice and that's what I'm figuring out. Being an artist, being an actor, it's about telling stories that could heal, that could open up discussion that could make the community better. There are many (Latino) stories that need to be told and haven't been told right. If I could help be that voice then that's what I'm going to do, because this is a reality for me.
Richard CabralBut it's hard for me to pinpoint where all my characters and dialogue come from - imagination or real life. My memoir, of course, was all about my past, and many of the short stories cleave very closely to my life, but the more stories I wrote in the collection, the more that seemed to be invented, but who knows... I think I'm writing about a young woman with acne who shoplifts, but I'm really writing about myself.
Said SayrafiezadehThe Greeks used to use the same stories, the same mythology, time after time, different authors. There was no premium placed upon an original story, and indeed, Shakespeare likewise. A lot of people wrote plays about great kings. They didn't expect a brand-new story. It was what that new author made of the old story. It is probably the same now. We disguise it by inventing what seem to be new stories, but they're basically the same story anyway.
Arthur MillerThere are stories told to him only at this time of year. Fantastic, magical stories, the old Hollier in the woods finding only three red berries, which peel back in the night to reveal gifts of frankincense, gold and myrrh, Christmas in hot deserts, dust-blown countries, the necklace of tears, and the story of the robin.
Sarah HallThere is humanist enterprise of the book, and amongst that there are many, many stories. And that is why at the end, when he says that the stories are so illuminating that they must be engraved and encased in gold and put in the palace library, the people who compile the book are telling us that this is a collection of human wisdom.
Marina WarnerGood stories flow like honey but bad stories stick in the craw [gullet]. What is a bad story? It's a story that cannot be absorbed in the first time of reading. It's a story that leaves questions unanswered.
Arthur ChristiansenSamurai films, like westerns, need not be familiar genre stories. They can expand to contain stories of ethical challenges and human tragedy.
Roger EbertI could read at a very early age and I loved stories, losing myself in stories, novels.
Heather DonahueThe least livable life is the one without coherence-nothing connects, nothing means anything. Stories make connections. They allow us to see our past, our present, and our future as interrelated and purposeful.... The stories we value most reassure us that life is worth the pain, that meaning is not an illusion, and that others share our experience with us.
Daniel TaylorI just think it's a great world to tell stories in, to tell cool stories: money, sex, fame, and scandal. Those are great subject matters to work with.
James FreyThere are characters in some short stories who exist as people, and there are other characters in different short stories who exist as purely literary constructs. You know, the young man in "Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire" - I probably got that right - is a literary construct, and enjoys being a literary construct. He has no life off stage, whereas the young men in "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" were as near to being real human beings as I could possibly get them.
Neil GaimanI always wrote. I've written stories since I was 9. We didn't have a computer at home, but my aunt Magda had one. Whenever I'd go to her place, I was in the basement working on her computer, writing stories.
Xavier DolanWhat I'm always trying to do with every book is to recreate the effect of the stories we heard as children in front of campfires and fireplaces - the ghost stories that engaged us.
Chuck PalahniukAs a kid, I was always the jokester. I was telling stories at dinner and trying to make people laugh. I guess I've always just been naturally inclined to tell stories.
Wyck GodfreyLife is painful sometimes. It touches everyone, so you may as well try to look for other answers and find peace. So, it is difficult to write those types of things because nobody wants to tell sad stories. I think that I'll always tell stories about human hope. I would love to be able to tell somebody, "It's okay. It's all right. Be a good person." That's what my job is, in life.
J.H. WymanIn a pure anonymous encounter you find a world alive and full of character. In New York, the street adventures are incredible. There are a thousand stories in a single block. You see the stories in people's faces. You hear the songs immediately. Here, in Los Angeles, there are fewer characters because they are all inside automobiles.
Joni MitchellYou mean old books?" "Stories written before space travel but about space travel." "How could there have been stories about space travel before --" "The writers," Pris said, "made it up.
Philip K. DickA story works when there's momentum, life behind the words. Some stories have this and others don't, and it's difficult to say why this is. If all stories "worked," though, writing wouldn't be much of a challenge; it wouldn't be art.
Mary J. MillerBorges said there are only four stories to tell: a love story between two people, a love story between three people, the struggle for power and the voyage. All of us writers rewrite these same stories ad infinitum.
Paulo CoelhoCollege is the reward for surviving high school. Most people have great fun stories from college and nightmare stories from high school.
Judd ApatowMy works are a direct response to the typical space opera. I grew tired of always reading about how the people with power, with agency, get involved in huge sweeping arcs of stories. I wanted stories that dealt with real people, people I could relate to.
Nathan LowellI have a book in the pipeline of short stories. You want to hear an agent scream, say 'I'm thinking about doing a collection of short stories set in the Ozarks.
Daniel WoodrellWithout archives many stories of real people would be lost, and along with those stories, vital clues that allow us to reflect and interpret our lives today.
Sara SheridanShe once complained that her stories were like 'birds bred in cages,' but that concentrated atmosphere, that claustrophobic hothouse of emotion, was her talent. Her stories were little masterpieces of compression: she succinctly contained whole lifetimes in a few pages, every moment loaded with as much as it could bear.
Katie RoipheI wanted to write a story that was different than what I've done before - so I decided to write dual love stories that will keep the reader wondering how the stories will come together by the end.
Nicholas SparksWe are storied folk. Stories are what we are; telling and listening to stories is what we do.
Arthur KleinmanI feel very privileged to hear how somebody used to run around stickin' people up and stealing cars, and now they're gettin' their life back together... I just love the stories. The stories of the fallen world, they excite us. That's the interesting stuff.
Denis JohnsonI have great admiration and respect for the editors, writers, and artists of the comic books. They're turning out, I don't know, maybe 100 Batman stories a year, and the character turns 70 years old in May. It's incredible: for 70 years, on a weekly basis, every Wednesday, there is some Batman story coming out, if not a bunch of Batman stories coming out.
Michael UslanWhen I was growing up, my mom told me every story that was happening to her. Most of the stories that come to me are through a female voice in my head. My stories seem to naturally be about females.
Natalie PortmanI'm an interpreter of stories. When I perform it's like sitting down at my piano and telling fairy stories.
Nat King ColeAs a young woman, Ama Ata Aidoo the freedom fighter vowed never to write love stories. Letโs delight in the fact that over the years she has changed her mind about the value of writing about love, as her rich edited collection of highly original and diverse โAfrican Love Storiesโ demonstrates. She has traveled her path and had the courage to grow and change while retaining her deep commitment to Pan- Africanism. Love flourishes, after all is said and done.
Amina MamaPeople tend to think that hate is the most dangerous emotion. But love is equally dangerous,โ Will said. โThere are many stories of spirits haunting the places and people who meant the most to them. In fact, there are more of those than there are revenge stories.
Libba BrayI think what Laura Linney was saying about teaching her all the lessons as a child actor, right, that's a whole ball of wax. That's a really mixed bag of stuff. I look at so many people that I knew personally or didn't know personally but who have ended badly, have died young, have been destitute - there are a lot of bad child-actor-gone-wrong stories, a very high percentage, but I think the thing about it is that a lot of those are Hollywood stories, and you don't have that same kind of a thing in the theater.
Cynthia Nixon