“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

Variant: When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story,” he said. “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.
Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Source: Finnikin of the Rock

Source: His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000), Ch. 32 : Morning
Context: One of the ghosts — an old woman — beckoned, urging her to come close.
Then she spoke, and Mary heard her say:
"Tell them stories. They need the truth. You must tell them true stories, and everything will be well, just tell them stories."
That was all, and then she was gone. It was one of those moments when we suddenly recall a dream that we’ve unaccountably forgotten, and back in a flood comes all the emotion we felt in our sleep. It was the dream she’d tried to describe to Atal, the night picture; but as Mary tried to find it again, it dissolved and drifted apart, just as these presences did in the open air. The dream was gone.
All that was left was the sweetness of that feeling, and the injunction to tell them stories.

Lestat
The Tale of the Body Thief (1992)

Source: First Love

As quoted in Loose Cannons: Devastating Dish from the World's Wildest Women (1998) by Autumn Stephens, p. 270

Source: The Arkadians

The Dignity of Human Nature (1754)

Variant: If you don't like someone's story, write your own.
Source: Things Fall Apart