“A good yarn, an offbeat tale, a bloodcurdling ghost story -- they need no explanation or excuse for the telling!”

Source: East

Miss Harkins, Chapter 13, p. 139
2000s, A Bend in the Road (2001)

that sentence held it all.
A hundred times I'd lived the scene in days when I was small,
A broken rule, a teacher vexed, hot rage where calm belonged,
A guilty judgment blindly made - a youngster sadly wronged.<p>I still can see that little chap upon his homeward way,
"She never gave a chance to me," I still can hear him say,
And so I write this verse for him, and all the girls and boys
Who shall their tutors now and then disturb with needless noise.
Be fair, you teachers of our land, in every circumstance;
Don't let some little fellow say he never had a chance.
She Never Gave Me a Chance, third and final stanzas.
The Passing Throng (1923)

"2 Movie Gems Amid a Lot of Hollywood Hooey," http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=81 WorldNetDaily.com, July 6, 2007.
2000s, 2007

Source: Intensity

November 5, 2010.
Tom Peters Daily, Weekly Quote

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

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.