Quotes About Story

So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?' Mr. Okamoto: 'That's an interesting question?' Mr. Chiba: 'The story with animals.' Mr. Okamoto: 'Yes. The story with animals is the better story.' Pi Patel: 'Thank you. And so it goes with God.

The 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.

I had no intention of replacing Arnold [Schwarzenegger]. There were a few things that made me want to do the movie. They were the script which had a different direction to it, and it was a chance to do a very different Quaid. I didn't read the short story until I went to college.Reading the story had a different effect on me of how I pictured him to be and the tone of the story was different. In the story, he's a bit more of an everyman.

You didn't plan to write a story; it just happened. Well, it could be argued that the next thing you should do is find a hole to dig. Right? So you start digging a hole and then somebody brings a body along and puts it in. That's what a story must feel like to me. It's not that you say, "I want to write a story about a gravedigger." But you're walking along and "I don't know what I'm doing here in this story,' and - boop! a shovel. "Oh, interesting. Ok, what does one do with a shovel? Digs a hole. Why? I don't know yet. Dig the hole! Oh, look a body."

The story you envision as you start out is always a great story; when the facts turn out to be different from, or more complex than, what you expected, your first reaction is always disappointment. That's when you must fight the urge to bend the story to your preconceived notions. First, it's dishonest. And second, in the end, the truth is always the best story.

It occurred to me that there was a story behind the scar -- maybe not as dramatic as the story of my wrists, but a story nonetheless -- and the fact that everyone had a story behind some mark on their inside or outside suddenly exhausted me, the gravity of all those untold pasts.

I am waiting for the right story to tell. Just like 'Man of Tai Chi' just seemed to be the right story to tell. So I'm looking for that. Because I really love directing. I love developing the story. I love actors. I love the cinema of it, the way that you tell a story visually.

The format of the book was the idea of my wonderful editor, Stephen Segal. Stephen and I had worked together before, on projects for the Interstitial Arts Foundation, and when he got the idea for an accordion-style book, he called and asked if I could write the story for it. I told him that I would love to try! And I knew it had to be a love story, because that's the sort of story you really want to hear from both perspectives. I mean, imagine if Pride and Prejudice were told from Darcy's perspective as well as Elizabeth's. It would be quite a different story!

I feel like, if I'm being honest with myself, my biggest skill set is as a writer 'cause I can do that quickly and I'm really grounded in story structure. Part of my success as an actor, is that I know story well. Part of my success as a director, is how well I know story. Same thing, as a producer. It all begins and ends with me as a story creator. But, I love doing it all.

It's hard to tell if anyone's interested in reading a serialized story. But it's interesting to put in a cliffhanger each week. That was popular in old comic strips. They'd write a weekend story different from the daily strip. So people follow one story day to day, and a separate story on weekends. If you read them, you think "I'll read two more." Then you're like "I gotta find out!" And you read 500 more.

Hateful material travels the globe. A few years ago, CNN, America's Der Sturmer, ran a story about Black parents being so low down that they abandoned their children and the children had to eat rats. I was at a University in Wisconsin at the time and the mother of a student from South Africa called to see whether the story was true. She had seen it all the way over there. The story was untrue. The children lied. CNN never corrected the story.

When thousands of people discover that their story is also someone else's story, they have the chance to write a new story together.

I wouldn't have thought that the techniques of story-telling, which is what the novel is after all, can vary much because there are two things involved.There's a story and there's a listener, whose attention you have to keep. Now the only way in which you can keep a reader's attention to a story is in his wanting to know what is going to happen next. This puts a fairly close restriction on the method you must use.

It's only a story, isn't it?"... "Who's to say what's only a story and what's truth disguised as a story?

I hate being too serious about anything. If I'm with my friend, I want to be having fun with him or her. And if anybody is reading my story, I want them to be not only reading the story, but I want them to feel they're having fun; that they're enjoying it. So any way you can make it more informal, more fun-filled, more amusing - instead of just a dry story that goes on and on - if there's any way to do that, I like to try and do it.

And she never could remember; and ever since that day what Lucy means by a good story is a story which reminds her of the forgotten story in the Magician's Book.

With literature, sometimes a book is presented in the media as being say, a Muslim story or an African story, when essentially it's a universal story which we can all relate to it, no matter what race or social background we come from

I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.

The ideas always have to be in service of the story. And that's what Scott and the writers did - they weren't trying to beat you over the head with an idea; they had a story they wanted to tell, and they had ideas, so they used the story as a way of fleshing out the ideas. It all depends on where they want to go with it.

We live in story like a fish lives in water. We swim through words and images siphoning story through our minds the way a fish siphons water through its gills. We cannot think without language, we cannot process experience without story.

The story, I like to say and remember, is always smarter than you—there will be patterns of theme, image, and idea that are much savvier and more complex than what you could come up with on your own. Find them with your marking pens as they emerge in your drafts. Become a student of your work in progress. Look for what your material is telling you about your material. Every aspect of a story has its own story.

Sometimes I'm considered, I guess, a subtle actor. Maybe I'm less of a showman and more just trying to tell the story. I don't know what the perception is. I just want to tell the story so the story as a whole works as opposed to just making sure that I work.

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.

I don't tell a story unless I have a very deep bench. If you tell an idiosyncratic story, there's no resonance. People read it and say, "I don't see anyone like that." So I tell a story only when I have many stories behind it.

Though it may not seem like it, I never try to write about a place, per se; it's always, first and last, about story. Story is everything. Story and a bit of attitude.

A story is a story is a story. The only difference is in the techniques you bring to bear. There are always limitations on what you can and can't do. But I enjoy that. Just like when you write a sonnet or haiku, there are rules you have to abide by. And to me, playing within the rules is the fun part. It keeps the brain fresh.

Do not think your story [for a one-person show] is unique. . . . your story is the same as millions of others. But that's o.k. - you just need to find the one or two things that makes your story interesting enough to justify someone leaving their apartment and exchanging currency.

Lastly get emotionally connected to your story so you can deliver it, you know, if you can't deliver the emotions to your script there's no point to your story. Story is the key.

Wakolda or The German Doctor is a very intimate story. It is the story of a teenage girl and the way she falls in love with a monster. It is the story of a hunt and of a seduction.

I can relate to historical characters or imaginary ones. It doesn't matter if a story takes place in the future or in the present, as long as the story is compelling.

The life of a thinking man will probably be divided into two parts -- the first in which he desires to exterminate modern thinkers, and the second in which he desires to watch them exterminating each other. ... Suppose, for instance, there is an old story and a new skeptic who is skeptical of the story. We have only to wait a little while for a yet newer skeptic who is skeptical of the skeptic. He will probably find the old notion actually a help in his new notion. This process is an abstract truth applying to anything, apart from agreement or disagreement.

I come from the best era of film I believe; when people were taking chances on films. It's time for us to bring more truth to the story and not necessarily carry a torch for every Black person in America; just tell a story, and a good one too.

All of us have a responsibility to work for the day when the mothers of Israelis and Palestinians can see their children grow up without fear; when the Holy Land of the three great faiths is the place of peace that God intended it to be; when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra - (applause) - as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, peace be upon them, joined in prayer. (Applause.)

You know, the process of making a documentary is one of discovery, and like writing a story, you follow a lead and that leads you to something else and then by the time you finish, the story is nothing like you expected.

No ancient story, not even Homer's Iliad or Odyssey, has remained as popular through the course of time. The story of Rama appears as old as civilization and has a fresh appeal for every generation.

It wasn't a love story." -Tar's dad It was a love story. Me, Gemma, and junk." -Tar

I always like story songs, Dolly Parton, Tom T. Hall, Mel Tillis, Red Stegall, when they'd do their story songs. I was totally enthralled.

We need myths to get by. We need story; otherwise the tremendous randomness of experience overwhelms us. Story is what penetrates.

Dean [Devlin, Emmerich's partner on "Independence Day"] and I always said that we'd only do it when we had a really good story that excites us both, and we have the story written. And we've had it for a year and a half, two years. So we've been ready.

Femininity, yes, effectively there is more in The First Man, not only in terms of women but stylistically, in its elements, the notes he wrote. You can see a real love story in it, a childhood love story, [Albert] Camus' first. Meursault [protagonist of The Outsider] and Marie were never up to much really. There is Dora in The Just and others in his plays, but they aren't so well known.

And books are such an empowering way to give voice to some of these kids who aren't yet ready to tell their story. Or don't know what their story is, or are trying to figure it out.

Anna Karenina is just a story about a woman falling in love with a bloke who is not her husband. Its gossip, rubbish - on the other hand, its the deepest story there could be about social transgression, about love, betrayal, duty, children.

Notice how every science fiction movie or television show starts with a shot of the location where the story is about to occur. Movies that take place in outer space always start with a shot of stars and a starship. Movies that take place on another world always start with a shot of that planet. This is to let you know where you are. Novels and stories start the same way. You have to give the reader a sense of where he is and what's happening as quickly as possible. You don't want to start the story by confusing the reader.

I don't want to steal anybody's story. I very much want to use the stories that I hear to get lost in my mind, to tell a larger story.

A poison can hardly be called safe if for some reason specific to me it's ineffective against, say, my body. But the power of story on the human mind is such that anecdote is often more persuasive than numbers. That's why news stories often concretize the impact of a change in government policy by following the story of one person.

There's an amazing line in Marcus Aurelius: "The healthy eye ought to see all visible things and not to say, I wish for green things; for this is the condition of a diseased eye." Maybe green is your favorite color - but if you saw everything as green, that wouldn't be a blessing, it would be an eye disease. By the same token, if there was no heartbreak, and everything happened exactly as you want - it would be a less beautiful and meaningful story than the actual story, where you're a part of a huge complicated mysterious whole.

In some ways, Lotus Eaters is a journey disguised as a party film; there's a circus in the movie, and there are parties, but the real story is of an internal journey. There's themes of emptiness and excess and beauty and grief around it, but it's always surrounded by these glamorous events, and those are ways of waylaying her on her journey in the same way that it is in the ancient Greek story.

It can take years. With the first draft, I just write everything. With the second draft, it becomes so depressing for me, because I realize that I was fooled into thinking I'd written the story. I hadn't-I had just typed for a long time. So then I have to carve out a story from the 25 or so pages. It's in there somewhere-but I have to find it. I'll then write a third, fourth, and fifth draft, and so on.