Quotes about story (3521 quotes, page 33)

“I absolutely have made mistakes, and some of them are very grave. I think people are owed that story and should make a decision based on the complete story.”

Beto O'Rourke (1972) American politician

[Tilove, Jonathan, Beto Effin’ O’Rourke: On running for Senate with the expletive undeleted First Reading, http://politics.blog.mystatesman.com/2017/09/25/beto-effin-orourke-on-running-for-senate-with-the-expletive-undeleted/, My Statesman, 12 November 2018, en, September 25, 2017] When asked about his "youthful indiscretions"
2017

Thinking , Making love , People , Decision

“The romance genre was all around us. There was love story pulps, and there was love story sections in the newspapers. There was love stories in the movies. Wherever you went there was love stories! That’s how we got our new material, and it suddenly struck me that that’s what we haven’t done. We haven’t done any romance stories!”

Jack Kirby (1917–1994) American comic book artist, writer and editor

1990, Gary Groth interview

Love , Making love

“The problems with framing it in terms of race is not that it is inaccurate, it absolutely is effective…but the minute you raise race, you derail the conversation and it becomes possible to dismiss this whole story as a story about a racist cop. Now he may be a racist cop, but that is not the issue, the issue is that the system with the best intentions set him up in a certain way.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

On the Sandra Bland case in “Malcolm Gladwell: ‘I’m just trying to get people to take psychology seriously’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/sep/01/malcolm-gladwell-interview-talking-to-strangers-apolitical in The Guardian (2019 Sep 1)

Way , Problem

“Coming to the theater humanizes people…Culture informs perspective, and the world is a complicated place. Telling the story on stage increases understanding…”

Karen Zacarias (1969) Mexican-American playwright

On how she views theater in “BWW Interview: A Date with DESTINY: Talking with Playwright Karen Zacarías” https://www.broadwayworld.com/washington-dc/article/BWW-Interview-A-Date-with-DESTINY-Talking-with-Playwright-Karen-Zacaras-20150914 in Broadway World (2015 Sep 14)

World , People , Understanding

“As an American, I always want to create work that reminds the world that people of colour have been great contributors to American history, culture, and tradition and that our stories exist and matter.”

Nilaja Sun

On her aim in “Interview with Nilaja Sun” https://www.voicemag.uk/interview/2818/interview-with-nilaja-sun (2017 Aug 6)

World , People , History

“I’m not a poet, but I do like heightened language that can exist in the theatre. Many plays are sounding more naturalistic these days, more like TV. I still take my cues from Shakespeare. I would rather have the story exist more in the audience’s heads than on a screen.”

Octavio Solis (1958)

On avoiding the label of magical realism in “Octavio Solis’s Journey to ‘Mother Road’” https://www.americantheatre.org/2019/09/09/octavio-soliss-journey-to-mother-road/ (American Theatre; Sept 2019)

“If you tell stories about a really cool kid that you can relate to, and then you hear about kids being mean to that kid, then you feel what it is like to walk in his shoes. And you think, that is not right. I think the best way to write is to want to build empathy for your characters. You want the readers to feel the things they are feeling.”

R. J. Palacio (1963) American author

On thinking about kids who are different in “Author R.J. Palacio talks to LI kids” https://www.newsday.com/lifestyle/family/kidsday/rj-palacio-wonder-author-interview-1.20364470 in Newsday (2018 Aug 8)

Thinking , Relation ships , Shoe , Way

“Women, not all, but many, like seeing they aren’t alone. My story is very common. I was abused. Mistreated. Hurt by men. I came up. Women resonate with that story because it’s theirs sometimes.”

Terese Marie Mailhot (1983) First Nation Canadian writer, journalist, memoirist, teacher

On how women might relate to the topics explored in Heart Berries in “Terese Marie Mailhot: On Personal Narratives and Grief” https://roommagazine.com/interview/terese-marie-mailhot-personal-narratives-and-grief in Room Magazine (2019)

Hurt , Women , Men

“I wanted to be at the apex of my story…For a long time, it felt as though things were happening to me. I felt as though I had no agency.”

Terese Marie Mailhot (1983) First Nation Canadian writer, journalist, memoirist, teacher

On what led her to write Heart Berries in “Why 'Heart Berries' Author Terese Marie Mailhot Doesn't Use The Word ‘Resilient’" https://www.bustle.com/p/why-heart-berries-author-terese-marie-mailhot-doesnt-use-the-word-resilient-8134108 in Bustle Magazine (2018 Feb 7)

Time

“The relationship between reader and writer in fiction is steeped in vulnerabilities. It really does require trust and faith because some books have the power to transform people. You feel like you can never go back, look at the world in the same way again. And that grand ambition is what I hope to do with my books because at the heart of my writing is a passion for telling stories of the oppressed, the marginalized, and the misunderstood.”

Randa Abdel-Fattah (1979) contemporary Australian writer of novels for young adults

On being a writer in “Both Freedom and Constraint: An Interview with Randa Abdel-Fattah” https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/both-freedom-and-constraint-an-interview-with in Words Without Borders (May 2015)

Faith , Hope , Heart , People

“We also have a fundamental right to not carry a pain that we did not choose. Whether you’re born black or gay or a woman or Jewish, you didn’t choose it. You have to be the person in charge of it saying your story, again and again. When it is something you are forced to recount, there’s something violent about it…”

Édouard Louis (1992) French writer

On being able to control your own story in “AUTHOR ÉDOUARD LOUIS SAYS THE UNSAYABLE” https://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/edouard-louis-bam-st-annes-warehouse-the-end-of-eddy-a-history-of-violence in Interview Magazine (2019 Nov 13)

Personality , Pain

“At this point in my life, I don’t worry about telling a literary story or the right story; I tell the story I want to tell, the story that makes me feel alive, the questions I want to answer.”

Amulya Malladi (1974) Indian writer

On not caring about what other people think about her writing in “An Interview with Amulya Malladi” http://jaggerylit.com/an-interview-with-amulya-malladi/ in Jaggery

Life , Making love , Feeling , Question

“I feel like a citizen of the world. I have now lived outside of India, where I grew up, longer than I lived in India. I have picked up traditions and even accents from India, the United States, and Denmark. I struggle with my cultural identity – where do I really come from? And even harder, where do I really belong? Everywhere or nowhere? Since many of my stories are about women trying to find their place in society, their cultural identities play a major role in driving their narrative.”

Amulya Malladi (1974) Indian writer

On her identity struggles in “Amulya Malladi: How I Write” https://www.writermag.com/writing-inspiration/author-interviews/amulya-malladi/ in The Writer (2018 May 22)

World , Feeling , Women

“As writers, of course we’re interested in human beings, human stories, human trauma, and all that is very compelling for readers. But when we write these powerful stories about individual people, we have the illusion that we’ve made a difference. And of course we have—people read the books, they’re touched emotionally by these kinds of stories, and that’s great. But to the extent that the stories that we’re telling are about people who are weaker, in some way—they come from a small country, or a forcibly removed population, they’re underrepresented collectively—individual stories don’t change the conditions that produce those refugees in the first place…”

Viet Thanh Nguyen (1971) American author of fiction

On writers overestimating the difference that their writings make in “An interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen” https://www.asymptotejournal.com/interview/an-interview-with-viet-thanh-nguyen/ in Asymptote Magazine

Reading , Country , People , Books

“Implicitly, the novel insists that a true war story has to take into account not just combat and soldiers, but civilians, the home front, and the military-industrial complex. For me, war is more than guns and shooting. That’s the spectacle that distracts us from how pervasive war is throughout a society and how it makes all of us complicit through things like paying taxes and watching horrifying images on TV without doing anything to stop them from happening…”

Viet Thanh Nguyen (1971) American author of fiction

On his work The Sympathizer in “Viet Thanh Nguyen: From both sides” https://www.writermag.com/writing-inspiration/author-interviews/viet-thanh-nguyen-sides/ in The Writer (2017 Jan 17)

War , Home , Making love

“All through my childhood, I wanted to be a novelist. I stopped writing at various points because I would get frustrated because there were things I didn’t know how to do. I didn’t know how to move a story through time. Pacing. My character would enter a room and need to get across the room to the action, and I would walk her ploddingly across the room. I didn’t know how to move the plot along quickly and efficiently through time…”

Ruth Ozeki (1956) American writer

On her initial struggles to become a novelist in “Ruth Ozeki: Neither here nor there” https://www.writermag.com/writing-inspiration/author-interviews/ruth-ozeki-neither/ in The Writer (2017 Feb 24)

Childhood , Time

“I love the short story: I love its flexibility, its distillation of language, the pressure it exerts on the moment. A story demands that the reader look closely. And yet, despite the intensity and constraints, a story can be surprisingly capacious…”

Kirstin Valdez Quade American writer

On why she loves writing short stories in “Kirstin Valdez Quade: How I Write” https://www.writermag.com/writing-inspiration/author-interviews/kirstin-valdez-quade/ in The Writer (2017 Apr 21)

Love , Making love

“When I read, if I don’t know where a story is set, I always feel unmoored. The same is true for my writing: Until I place my story in a specific place, I can’t get my footing in the world…”

Kirstin Valdez Quade American writer

On the importance of location in her writings in “Kirstin Valdez Quade: How I Write” https://www.writermag.com/writing-inspiration/author-interviews/kirstin-valdez-quade/ in The Writer (2017 Apr 21)

World , Feeling , Reading

“I succeeded in making you care. If you feel nothing, I failed you as a storyteller. I love happy endings, but some readers need the darker stories, too. The stories that don’t make them feel disturbed by their own reality because it doesn’t reflect what they’re used to seeing in fiction. There’s some comfort in harsher stories, and witnessing how one character rebuilds after tragedy can provide hope for the reader.”

Adam Silvera (1990) American author

On what he aims for as a storyteller in “History Is All You Left Me Author Adam Silvera Talks Second Books and More with Nicola Yoon” https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/teen/history-left-author-adam-silvera-talks-second-books-nicola-yoon/ (Barnes & Noble; 2017 Jan 19)

Hope , Reality , Love , Making love

“All stories that are centring queer kids and their experiences are all valid whether it’s dealing with the trials of having parents who aren’t as welcoming about it or parents who are totally chill about it, which is obviously the hope for all teenagers. I think there are some things that could be said too, especially culturally, like there’s a lot of stigma in the Puerto Rican community that fathers especially are so hyper masculine that they will always be uncomfortable with their children being gay…”

Adam Silvera (1990) American author

On addressing the full scope of queer experiences in “Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera Interview” https://thelittlecontemporarycorner.com/2018/11/20/becky-albertalli-and-adam-silvera-interview/ in The Little Contemporary Corner (2018 Nov 20)

Children , Hope , Communication , Thinking

“I think it is a natural impulse to look to your own past and history to discover the stories that move and inspire you. The problem is that the past is nebulous and waiting for a shape. What ultimately gives it form and context is the present. That’s the part of writing inspired by personal history that is exciting to me.”

Stephanie Powell Watts

On using personal history in “Fruits of the Same Tree: An Interview with Stephanie Powell Watts” https://fictionwritersreview.com/interview/an-interview-with-stephanie-powell-watts/ in Fiction Writers Review (2012 Aug 6)

Waiting , History , Past , Personality

“Humor is absolutely necessary to keep going…So many of the people in my family and my community were wonderful storytellers. They would tell stories about just awful things that happened to them. But their humor made what happened into their own kind of triumph.”

Stephanie Powell Watts

On the importance of humor in “INTERVIEWS: Stephanie Powell Watts” https://bookpage.com/interviews/21148-stephanie-powell-watts-fiction#.Xe_qN_lKjcs in BookPage (April 2017)

Family , People , Communication

“To see brown bodies in this environment was exciting to me…Rural upstate New York could be anywhere in middle America…The parents being from Brooklyn, and Pop having Puerto Rican heritage, and the mom being white, makes it a quintessential American story.”

Raúl Castillo (1977) American actor, writer

On his role in the film We the Animals in “After ‘Looking’ and ‘We the Animals,’ Raul Castillo Is Ready to Be a Movie Star” https://www.indiewire.com/2019/01/raul-castillo-interview-we-the-animals-looking-1202029967/ in IndieWire (2019 Jan 2)

Making love , Parent , Moms

“However much Dhamma the Buddha taught, we gather it all to our own confusion. It’s as if we were building a hut and yet went around to gather up plans for hundred-story buildings and spread them out for a look. They just don’t go together. The plan for a building and the plan for a hut are as different as earth and sky, and yet here we are going to gather the mind into one point, which is like building a hut. Only after we have the strength can we then begin enlarging it into a building.”

Ajahn Maha Bua (1913–2011) monk

Straight from the Heart

“The people who work as their mouthpieces also know very well but they succeed in spreading the lie as they have been controlling the narrative. We broke into it, challenged it and tried to introduce a new narrative. In the last six months, we have travelled in deep Bastar and recorded umpteen stories of Naxal barbarity and exploitation of Adivasis. The awareness the film created has given a lot of confidence to ex-Naxals who have been secretly wanting to share their stories with me. This is the victory of Buddha.”

Vivek Agnihotri (1973) director

Urban Naxals (2018)

Confidence , Victory , People , Self-confidence

“There are no souls, Melba thought with a touch of pity. We are bags of meat with a little electricity running through them. No ghosts, no spirits, no souls. The only thing that survives is the story people tell about you. The only thing that matters is your name.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Abaddon's Gate (2013), Chapter 11 (p. 121)

Soul , People

“After all, the call for historical proof was only launched by India’s secularists spoiling for a fight, as a dispersionary tactic… They themselves have not contributed any evidence to the search for the historical true story, they were actually demanding from the Hindu side what they themselves never provided, - indeed, never intended to provide. In the process, their ulterior motives have come to light…”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

2000s, Ayodhya: The Case Against the Temple (2002)

Fight , Light , Motivation , Search

“I was encouraged to look around me and to paint what I saw. I painted my story, and it had a lot of angles to it. I was trying to explain how I saw life as a black person living in America, and I put things together that were not acceptable. A lot of people did not want these kind of paintings representing America in any sense, but I wanted to tell my story and what I saw…”

Faith Ringgold (1930) American artist

On the Civil Rights Movement puncturing the image of the American Dream in https://www.theartnewspaper.com/interview/faith-ringgold-discusses-civil-rights-and-children-s-books-ahead-of-solo-serpentine-gallery-show in The Art Newspaper (2019 Jun 5)

Painting , Personality , People , Sense

“Every Mexican family has a member that fought in the Revolution…There are stories in my family of two great uncles who fought on different sides and they would meet at my uncle’s land to share a meal and then they’d go back to the fight…The Revolution…it divided families.”

Nao Bustamante (1969) American artist

On the familial toll of the Mexican Revolution in “Femininity in Kevlar: Nao Bustamante’s women of the Mexican Revolution” https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/miranda/la-et-cam-artist-nao-bustamante-women-of-the-mexican-revolution-20150513-column.html in Los Angeles Times (2015 May 14)

Fight , Family

“The written word is holy…When we write our stories, it helps us bring understanding.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

On the importance of gaining knowledge in “Author Victor Villaseñor talks 'Crazy Loco'” https://www.lmtonline.com/que_pasa/article/Author-Victor-Villase-or-talks-Crazy-Loco-10268363.php in LMT Online (2008 Dec 11)

Help , Understanding

“Doniger makes clear that no history focused on an imperial centre can capture the history of the Hindus here, any more than could such a state-focused story in the days before the arrival of the Muslims. But at the same time, the very structure of her presentation points also to the import-ance of the state as a locus for understanding how the history of the Hindus depends also on an engagement with broader currents of historical change extending outside India and linking this history to larger, worldwide processes.”

Wendy Doniger (1940) American Indologist

Gilmartin, David (December 2010), "Review of Wendy Doniger, The Hindus: An Alternative History (New York: Penguin), 2009. 779 pages. $35", Indian Historical Review, 37: 338–345
The Hindus' (2009), About her book 'The Hindus

Time , Understanding , History , Dependency

“I became the protagonist of my story and the protagonist of my life. I realized we’ve all been left out of this story. We are always the supporting characters, and we have to say no. My job is to show people that everyone belongs in the theater, everyone belongs making films, everybody has something important to teach someone else. And that’s why stories are so important.”

Josefina Lopez (1969) American playwright

On making Latinos the center of the story in “Josefina López: ‘I became the protagonist of my story’” https://boyleheightsbeat.com/josefina-lopez-i-became-the-protagonist-of-my-story/ in Boyle Heights Beat (2018 Sep 19)

Support , Life , Making love , People

“Oral tradition is really how Chicano literature came to be. I was not exposed to the written word, but I had the greatest teacher. I always tell people that my mother was my inspiration because she was the best chismosa, and she had the best stories. And if anyone taught me about drama, it was my mother because she knew how to tell a story. And my grandfather also told stories. One of the reasons why I waned to be a writer was because I was fascinated by stories of La Llorona, supernatural stories and things like that and I love hearing chisme (gossip)…”

Josefina Lopez (1969) American playwright

On her earliest influences in “JOSEFINA LÓPEZ – IN HER OWN WORDS” http://latinopia.com/latino-theater/josefina-lopez/ in Latinopia (2010 Mar 6)

People , Teachers , Literature , Love

“The hardest thing about being a black writer in this town is having to pitch your black story to white execs…Also, most of the time when we go into rooms to pitch, there’s one token black executive that sometimes can be a friend and sometimes can be a foe. I wonder if they think it makes me more comfortable, if that makes me think that they’re a woke network or studio because they’ve got that one black exec. It feels patronizing. I’m not against a black exec. I want there to be more of them.”

Lena Waithe (1984) American actress, producer, and screenwriter

On the still existing obstacles to pitching ideas in “Lena Waithe Is Changing the Game” https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/03/lena-waithe-cover-story in Vanity Fair (April 2018)

Thinking , Time , Feeling , Making love

“We haven’t gotten a chance to tell those stories for Latina women. If you look at what’s in the landscape right now, it’s very stuck in its lane, and I love that we have no lanes. There’s no road. There’s nothing. We start off somewhere and it just detours, regarding the characters…”

Tanya Saracho Mexican-American actress, playwright and showrunner

On her television series Vida which stars a Latino cast in “‘Vida’ Creator Tanya Saracho on Exploring Underrepresented Perspectives with Her Starz Drama” https://collider.com/vida-interview-tanya-saracho/#starz in Collider Magazine (2018 May 5)

Love , Chance , Making love , Women

“He did not want to draw attention to himself. So he ingeniously made the delicensing announcement on the morning of the day Manmohan Singh was presenting his first Budget. The media clubbed the Budget and delicensing stories together as one composite reform story. In the public mind, Manmohan Singh was seen as the liberalizer, while Rao stayed in the background.”

P. V. Narasimha Rao (1921–2004) Indian politician

Unsung hero of the India story

Drawing

“This leads to my next myth—the myth that government can spend money at nobody’s expense. What was really involved in that last story was that somehow the local people do not pay out the money coming down from Washington somebody else does. Of course, the truth is that the money makes a round trip between Florida and Washington, and there is a discount taken off for cash as it passes through Washington. Some of you may remember that wonderful description of government by the French economist, Frederic Bastiat, who said that government is that fiction whereby everybody believes that he can live at the expense of everybody else.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

“Economic Myths and Public Opinion” https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/friedman_images/Collections/2016c21/AmSpectator_01_1976.pdf, The Alternative: An American Spectator, vol. 9, no. 4, (January 1976) pp. 5-9

Money , Truth , Making love , People

“A lot of people want to tell me their stories, and it’s not just the people who were alive back then. Though the play deals with AIDS, it’s about more than just the epidemic. It deals with things that plague gay men now. It’s very much about addiction, too. And the audience’s experiences run the gamut. And these audiences feel emboldened in the best way possible to not keep secrets. And they feel like they trust us enough to tell us their stories. It’s a beautiful thing.”

Matthew Lopez (playwright) (1978) American playwright

On the impact of The Inheritance in “PLAYWRIGHT MATTHEW LOPEZ WANTS TO HEAR YOUR STORIES” https://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/matthew-lopez-the-inheritance-broadway-play-aids-gay-storytelling in Interview Magazine (2019 Nov 14)

Beauty , People , Secret , Way

“I have to totally credit that to my mother. There were two children. I was the only girl. And she just always talked to me. She would tell me things that happened to her … her dreams, her past … it’s like the monologues in my plays, it really is. Because her stories were loaded with imagery and tragedy, darkness and sarcasm and humor…”

Adrienne Kennedy (1931) African-American playwright

On how her mother’s influence appears in her works in “Adrienne Kennedy by Suzan-Lori Parks” https://bombmagazine.org/articles/adrienne-kennedy/ in BOMB Magazine (1996 Jan 1)

Dreams , Past , Children , Girl

“I didn’t start writing to tell happy, little stories. I started writing to make some impact on the world in which I live. If you don’t want to say anything about sexual assault, that’s your business, but I want to say something about it. I think it is absolutely and unequivocally wrong. We have no right because we are in the military to rape fellow soldiers who just happen to be females. A lot of victims are male as well. In the Army I was in, the life of the person next to you was as valuable as your own. You would never do anything to hurt your comrade. Your life depended on him, and in the case of Iraq, those gentlemen’s lives depended on the women they were raping. It’s horrifying.”

Charles Fuller (1939–2022) American playwright

On writing about a female sexual assault victim serving in the military in his play One Night in “Charles Fuller Discusses ‘One Night’” https://catf.org/charles-fuller-discusses-one-night/ in Contemporary American Theater Festival (2014 Jun 1)

Hurt , Dependency , Business , Personality

“Some of these things seem as if it’s a lot of hard work, and it is. But it’s to an end—toward a richer, deeper understanding of a phenomenon that I was seeking to bring to life…The term narrative comes from Greek for the word knowing. And I think that that’s a powerful message because it means you cannot tell a story until you know the story.”

Isabel Wilkerson (1961) American journalist

On how she hopes The Warmth of Other Suns led to a deeper understanding in “Isabel Wilkerson” https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2016/fall/feature/isabel-wilkerson in Humanities (Fall 2016)

Life , Thinking , Understanding

“I love that Camilla is trying to figure it out. We tell kids there are no stupid questions. But when you throw race in the mix, there are a lot of questions — some are painful to ask, some are painful to answer and we all say stupid things sometimes. I hope readers feel after reading Cammi’s story that it’s not about one moment or interaction, it’s about staying heart strong and moving forward. Like Maya Angelou used to say, when you know better, you do better.”

Veronica Chambers (1970) writer

On the character arc of Camilla in “Author Interview: Veronica Chambers questions Mexican immigrant stereotypes in ‘The Go-Between’” https://www.hypable.com/author-interview-veronica-chambers-the-go-between/ in Hypable (2017 May 9)

Pain , Reading , Question , Strong

“The miracles in fact are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see. Of that larger script part is already visible, part is still unsolved. In other words, some of the miracles do locally what God has already done universally: others do locally what He has not yet done, but will do. In that sense, and from our human point of view, some are reminders and others prophecies.”

Clive Staples Lewis book God in the Dock

"Miracles" (1942), p. 29
God in the Dock (1970)

God , Universe , Sense , World

“I think what happened was the language settled in me much deeper than it settled into people who just can read something once and absorb what they absorb of it. I feel like what I was absorbing was not by any means superficial. And I think I was - from a really young age, I was reading like a writer. I was reading for this deep understanding of the literature not simply to hear the story but to understand how the author got the story on the page…”

Jacqueline Woodson (1963) American writer

On how she processed literature differently at an early age in “Jacqueline Woodson On Growing Up, Coming Out And Saying Hi To Strangers” https://www.npr.org/2016/10/14/497953254/jacqueline-woodson-on-growing-up-coming-out-and-saying-hi-to-strangers in NPR (2016 Oct 14)

Reading , Understanding , People , Thinking

“I confess, the Amnewor is new to me. Yes, I’ve heard the name—as a minor fact in some other god’s story. Precisely what it did, though, I can’t remember. That, of course, makes it more intriguing. Death. It was associated with endless, mindless, pointless death. But which of them isn’t?”

Samuel R. Delany book Flight from Nevèrÿon

Section 9.81 (p. 273)
Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985)

God , Death , Making love

“Life, I sometimes think—like dreams, like stories, like plans, even like lies if you will—is to be pondered on, interpreted, interrogated: but you had best not try to change it too radically in the middle, or you risk never finding its secret.”

Samuel R. Delany book Flight from Nevèrÿon

Section 10 (p. 109)
Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985)

Dreams , Secret , Thinking , Life

“I chose to rewrite it in poetry because the original Ramayana was in poetry- the fact is, it’s sort of been corrupted into prose. In its original form it was an epic poem rather like the Iliad or works of that sort. Rather than traditional poetry, it was a verse novel, without a traditional structure. What I most wanted to do was to preserve the essential musicality of the lines. Especially as the Ramayana like so many stories, was based on a fundamentally oral tradition.”

Daljit Nagra (1966) British poet, teacher and broadcaster

On reworking the Ramayana in “An Interview With Daljit Nagra” https://www.thebubble.org.uk/culture/literature/an-interview-with-daljit-nagra/ in The Bubble (2014 Sept 17)

Music

“The theme of choice and the power of culture pops up in my stories often. Before Binti, the biggest example of this is in Who Fears Death when Onyesonwu must face the decision of whether or not to go through a ceremony that required cutting off her clitoris. To many readers, the fact that she even has to think about whether or not to do this is shocking. It’s not shocking to me at all, coming from the culture that I come from where the individual is often secondary to the community…”

Nnedi Okorafor (1974) Nigerian-American writer of fantasy and science fiction

On choice being reconciled with culture in her works in “Interview: A Conversation with Nnedi Okorafor” http://weirdfictionreview.com/2017/02/interview-conversation-nnedi-okorafor/ in Weird Fiction Review (2017 Feb 20)
Personal life

Communication , Thinking , Decision , Fear

“Look at the manner in which the aborigines are swept away from continent after continent by the sword and beverage of the Aryans. See how the red children of America have been cheated and debauched and driven from homes where they and their fathers had lived from immemorial generations. When the banner of Castile first furled in Bahama breezes, America was inhabited by a noble, magnanimous, and happy people. They were not like the sodden, suspicious, revengeful remnants that to-day huddle on barricaded reserves, the vindictive survivors of four centuries of injustice. They were kind and generous. They came to the invading Europeans as children, with minds of wonder and with hands filled with presents. They were treated by the invaders like refuse. They were plundered, and their outstretched hands cut off and fed to Spanish hounds. They are gone from the valleys where once their camp-smokes curled to heaven, and their quaint canoes ruffle the moonlight of the rivers no more. They that remain are too weak to rise in warlike challenge to the aggressions of the mighty white. But the story of the meeting of the pale and the red, and of the wrongs of the vanquished red, will remain as one of the mournful tales of this world when the kindred of Lo, like fleecy clouds, have melted into the infinite azure of the past.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Preponderance of Egoism, p. 133–134

Home , Cheating , Past , Children

“To superficial consideration, it might appear that in its relationship to the State Christianity simply took over the heritage of Judaism, and that the problem poses itself in exactly the same way here as there. Actually, however, the Jewish theocratic ideal is expressly rejected by Christianity as satanic—we need only recall the temptation stories in the Gospel. Satan offers to Christ the kingdoms of the world.”

Oscar Cullmann (1902–1999) French theologian

Source: The State in the New Testament (1956), p. 9

Problem , Appearance , Way , Christ

“In dialogue, I’m dealing with the sounds I’ve heard. One of the reasons I often write from first person or multiple points of view is to hear the voices of different characters. Omniscient narration becomes a problem because, for me, the omniscient is my own voice narrating the story and then bringing in characters for dialogue.”

Ernest J. Gaines (1933–2019) Novelist, short story writer, teacher

On how he handled dialogue in his works in “An Interview with Ernest J. Gaines” https://www.missourireview.com/article/an-interview-with-ernest-j-gaines/ in The Missouri Review (1999 Dec 1)

Problem , Personality

“Alexander sacrificed to the gods to whom it was his custom to sacrifice, and gave a public banquet, seated all the Persians, and then any persons from the other peoples who took precedence for rank or any other high quality, and he himself and those around him drank from the same bowl and poured the same libations, with the Greek soothsayers and Magi initiating the ceremony. Alexander prayed for various blessings and especially that the Macedonians and Persians should enjoy harmony as partners in government. The story prevails that those who shared the banquet were nine thousand and that they all poured the same libation and gave the one victory cry as they did.”

Arrian Anabasis Alexandri

Anabasis Alexandri, 7.2.6-9

God , Personality , Victory , People

“Well, I think that when I’m writing about Haiti, I’m just writing one long, ongoing story. But I really did feel, like a lot of people did, that after the earthquake, there were suddenly two Haitis: the Haiti of before the earthquake and the Haiti of after the earthquake. So I feel that I’ve been writing about the first one much longer. And writing about the earthquake… it’s been such a short period of time and it’s still such a raw experience that the few things that I’ve written about it, I feel like I’ve written them to process it myself.”

Edwidge Danticat (1969) Novelist, short story writer, memoirist

On how she views Haiti since a major earthquake in in “An Interview | Edwidge Danticat” http://www.bkreview.org/fall-2018/an-interview-with-edwidge-danticat/ in The Brooklyn Review (Fall 2018)
Interviews

Feeling , Thinking , Time , People

“In some of the earlier work, I liked to keep readers guessing: one story asked a question, and another resolved it. For the stories I’m working on now—both the new ones and the older ones I’m revisiting—I want to wring everything out. That way, I don’t have to write separate stories for every character who surprises me.”

Edwidge Danticat (1969) Novelist, short story writer, memoirist

On how her short story writing style has evolved in “An Interview | Edwidge Danticat” http://www.bkreview.org/fall-2018/an-interview-with-edwidge-danticat/ in The Brooklyn Review (Fall 2018)
Interviews

Way , Question

“Along with plot, I am always thinking about structure. Sometimes the story guides you to the best structure for its telling. Using letters seemed like the best way to tell this story. When writing these letters, the characters are selecting what they want to tell. In this case, the woman is writing in a way that would not endanger her or her family if her letters were found by the military authorities who took over the country, and the man is writing with the urgency of someone who could die at any minute while at sea.”

Edwidge Danticat (1969) Novelist, short story writer, memoirist

On using an epistolary form for her short story “Children of the Sea” in “An Interview | Edwidge Danticat” http://www.bkreview.org/fall-2018/an-interview-with-edwidge-danticat/ in The Brooklyn Review (Fall 2018)
Interviews

Family , Country , Thinking , Way

“I believe that they have put a spotlight on what women have always known and have always been more or less silent about. Patriarchal domination, even — despite appearances — in the West, is still very entrenched, and each of us, in the most diverse places, in the most varied forms, suffers the humiliation of being a silent victim or a fearful accomplice or a reluctant rebel or even a diligent accuser of victims rather than of the rapists. Paradoxically, I don’t feel that there are great differences between the women of the Neapolitan neighborhood whose story I told and Hollywood actresses or the educated, refined women who work at the highest levels of our socioeconomic system…”

Elena Ferrante (1943) Italian writer

On the #MeToo movement and the parallels between her characters and the plight of American women in “In a rare interview, Elena Ferrante describes the writing process behind the Neapolitan novels” https://www.latimes.com/books/la-ca-jc-elena-ferrante-interview-20180517-htmlstory.html in Los Angeles Times (2018 May 17)

Suffering , Appearance , Education , Fear

“I don’t know if my writing has the energy you say it does. Of course, if that energy exists, it’s because either it finds no other outlets or, consciously or not, I’ve refused to give it other outlets. Of course, when I write, I draw on parts of myself, of my memory, that are agitated, fragmented, that make me uncomfortable. A story, in my view, is worth writing only if its core comes from there.”

Elena Ferrante (1943) Italian writer

On being told that her writing is energeticin “In a rare interview, Elena Ferrante describes the writing process behind the Neapolitan novels” https://www.latimes.com/books/la-ca-jc-elena-ferrante-interview-20180517-htmlstory.html in Los Angeles Times (2018 May 17)

Drawing , Making love , Memory , Parting

“No, I never plan my stories. A detailed outline is enough for me to lose interest in the whole thing. Even a brief oral summary makes the desire to write what I have in mind vanish. I am one of those who begin to write knowing only a few essential features of the story they intend to tell. The rest they discover line by line.”

Elena Ferrante (1943) Italian writer

On not planning her stories in advance in “In a rare interview, Elena Ferrante describes the writing process behind the Neapolitan novels” https://www.latimes.com/books/la-ca-jc-elena-ferrante-interview-20180517-htmlstory.html in Los Angeles Times (2018 May 17)

Making love

“I can’t say precisely. I don’t think anyone really knows how a story takes shape. When it’s done you try to explain how it happened, but every effort, at least in my case, is insufficient. There is a before, made up of fragments of memory, and an after, when the story begins. But before and after, I have to admit, are useful only in answering your question now in an intelligible way.”

Elena Ferrante (1943) Italian writer

On being asked how she begins a new work in “Elena Ferrante, Art of Fiction No. 228” https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6370/elena-ferrante-art-of-fiction-no-228-elena-ferrante in The Paris Review (Spring 2015)

Question , Intelligence , Thinking , Memory

“More than any other continent or culture in the world today, Europe is now deeply weighed down with guilt for its past. Alongside this outgoing version of self-distrust runs a more introverted version of the same guilt. For there is also the problem in Europe of an existential tiredness and a feeling that perhaps for Europe the story has run out and a new story must be allowed to begin. Mass immigration — the replacement of large parts of the European populations by other people — is one way in which this new story has been imagined: a change, we seemed to think, was as good as a rest. Such existential civilizational tiredness is not a uniquely modern-European phenomenon, but the fact that a society should feel like it has run out of steam at precisely the moment when a new society has begun to move in cannot help but lead to vast, epochal changes.”

Douglas Murray (1979) British political commentator and far-right activist

The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam (2017)

Imagination , Past , People , Help

“I wrote my first story when I was fifteen, and sent it—to Adventure, I believe. Three years later I managed to break into Weird Tales. Three years of writing without selling a blasted line.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

I never have been able to sell to Adventure; guess my first attempt cooked me with them for ever!
From a letter to H. P. Lovecraft (c. July 1933)
Letters

“We are confident in our story and will be fighting this all the way. I am very sorry that Alastair Campbell has taken this decision but I can see that he got his tits in the wringer.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

Catherine Macleod, "Angry Blair takes on press", The Herald (Glasgow), 24 April 2002, p. 1.
On Campbell's negative reply to the Spectator's report that the Government had influence the Queen Mother's funeral arrangements.
2000s, 2002

Confidence , Fight , Self-confidence , Decision

“He is one of Britain’s most successful travel writers, whose highly entertaining books elegantly combine scholarship and story-telling, trans-cultural investigations and romance.”

William Dalrymple (1965) author and historian

Jules Smith, in William Dalrymple: Critical Perspective http://literature.britishcouncil.org/william-dalrymple, 2007, British Council.
About William Dalrymple

Travel , Books , Success

“I think for both of us, though, it was really refreshing because given that I didn’t know a lot about him, everything that I have learned about him, I learned through him as opposed to having grown up around different news stories or tabloids, whatever else. Anything I learned about him and his family was what he would share with me, and vice versa. So for both of us it was a very authentic and organic way to get to know each other.”

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (1981) American former actress and member by marriage of the British royal family

Engagement interview (November 2017)

Way , Family , Thinking , Learning

“Where a story begins in the mind I am not sure—a memory of haystacks, maybe, or wheel ruts in the ruined stone, the ironies that fall out of the friction between past and present, some casual phrase overheard. But something kicks in, some powerful juxtaposition, and the whole book shapes itself up in the mind…”

Annie Proulx (1935) American novelist, short story and non-fiction author

On her writing process in in “An Interview with Annie Proulx” https://www.missourireview.com/article/an-interview-with-annie-proulx/ in The Missouri Review (1999 Mar 1)
Personal life and writing career

Past , Books , Memory

“The construction of short stories calls for a markedly different set of mind than work on a novel, and for me short stories are at once more interesting and more difficult to write than longer work. The comparative brevity of the story dictates more economical and accurate use of words and images, a limited palette of events, fewer characters, tighter dialogue, strong title and punctuation that works to move the story forward. If the writer is trying to illustrate a particular period or place, a collection of short stories is a good way to take the reader inside a house of windows, each opening onto different but related views—a kind of flip book of place, time and manners.”

Annie Proulx (1935) American novelist, short story and non-fiction author

On her short story collection Close Range: Wyoming Stories in “An Interview with Annie Proulx” https://www.missourireview.com/article/an-interview-with-annie-proulx/ in The Missouri Review (1999 Mar 1)
Personal life and writing career

Time , Housing , Strong , Books

“In the East the existence of the invisible helpers has always been recognized, though the names given and the characteristics attributed to them naturally vary in different countries; and even in Europe we have had the old Greek stories of the constant interference of the gods in human affairs, and the Roman legend that Castor and Pollux led the legions of the infant republic in the battle of Lake Regillus. Nor did such a conception die out when the classical period ended, for these stories have their legitimate successors in medieval tales of saints who appeared at critical moments… or of guardian angels who sometimes stepped in and saved a pious traveler from what would otherwise have been certain destruction.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

Source: Invisible Helpers (1915), Ch. 1

God , Country , Nature , Angels

“I grew up being aware that I was Southern, and that being a very important thing for me. And being drawn to short story writers, like Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty—the surroundings in their stories were so familiar to me, the whole Southern Gothic thing. That world only existed in that part of the country. It’s going to inform the personality of the songs. In a lot of my songwriting, I mention towns and places. It’s a culturally traditional thing in the South to tell stories.”

Lucinda Williams (1953) American rock, folk, blues, and country music singer, songwriter and musician

On how her Southern heritage informed her songwriting in “Lucinda Williams On the Hard and Sedulous Road to Major Label Success” https://sheshredsmag.com/interview-lucinda-williams/ in She Shreds (2017 Mar 6)

World , Personality , Parting , Country

“The only excuse for this book is that it is an attempt to penetrate to that deeper meaning underlying the great events in the life of Christ, and to bring into renewed life and interest the weakening aspiration of the Christian. If it can be shown that the story revealed in the Gospels has not only an application to that divine Figure Which dwelt for a time among men, but that it has also a practical significance and meaning for the civilised man today, then there will be some objective gained and some service and help rendered…. A myth is capable of becoming a fact in the experience of an individual, for a myth is a fact which can be proven. Upon the myths we take our stand, but we must seek to re-interpret them in the light of the present. Through self-initiated experiment we can prove their validity; through experience we can establish them as governing forces in our lives; and through their expression we can demonstrate their truth to others. This is the theme of this book, dealing as it does with the facts of the Gospel story, that fivefold sequential myth which teaches us the revelation of divinity in the Person of Jesus Christ, and which remains eternally truth, in the cosmic sense, in the historical sense, and in its practical application to the individual. This myth divides itself into five great episodes: 1. The Birth at Bethlehem. 2. The Baptism in Jordan. 3. The Transfiguration on Mount Carmel. 4. The Crucifixion on Mount Golgotha. 5. The Resurrection and Ascension.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: From Bethlehem to Calvary (1937), Chapter One

Time , Light , Personality , Help

“Is the Gospel story historically true? Is it a mystical tale of great beauty and of real teaching value but nevertheless of no vital import to the intelligent men and women of today, who pride themselves on their reasoning powers and upon their independence of ancient mental trammels and of old and dusty traditions? As to the perfection of the portrayed character of Christ there is never any question. The enemies of Christianity admit His uniqueness, His basic profundity and His understanding of the hearts of men. They recognise the intelligence of His ideas and sponsor them in their own philosophies. The developments which the Carpenter of Nazareth brought about in the fabric of human life, His social and economic ideals, and the beauty of the civilisation which could be founded upon the ethical teaching of the Sermon on the Mount are frequently emphasised by many who refuse to recognise His mission as an expression of divinity.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: From Bethlehem to Calvary (1937), Chapter One

Understanding , Question , Beauty , Intelligence

“We are in process of passing from one religious age into another. The spiritual trends of today are steadily becoming more defined. The hearts of men have never been more open to spiritual impression than they are at this time, and the door into the very centre of reality stands wide open. Paralleling, however, this significant development is a trend in the counter direction, and materialistic philosophies and doctrines of negation are becoming increasingly prevalent. To many, the whole question of the validity of the Christian religion remains to be determined. Claims are made that Christianity has failed and that man does not need the Gospel story with its implications of divinity and its urge to service and sacrifice.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: From Bethlehem to Calvary (1937), Chapter One

Religion , Time , Question , Heart

“If anything I think my story might help illustrate why categories aren’t as important as we think. I’m a church-going, gay, millennial, Red State mayor. I’m also a left-handed Maltese American. I also spent Thanksgiving in a deer blind with my partner’s father. So am I supposed to be a Republican or a Democrat?”

Pete Buttigieg (1982) American politician

5 January 2017
Pete Buttigieg: meet the Indiana mayor Barack Obama says could be the future of the Democratic Party
The Telegraph
David Lawler
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/31/pete-buttigieg-meet-indiana-mayor-barack-obama-says-could-future/
2017

Thinking , Help

“The mystery story is a kind of writing that need not dwell in the shadow of the past and owes little if any allegiance to the cult of the classics. It is a good deal more than unlikely that any writer now living will produce a better historical novel than Henry Esmond, a better tale of children than The Golden Age, a sharper social vignette than Madame Bovary, a more graceful and elegant evocation than The Spoils of Poynton, a wider and richer canvas than War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov.”

Raymond Chandler book The Simple Art of Murder

But to devise a more plausible mystery than The Hound of the Baskervilles or The Purloined Letter should not be too difficult. Nowadays it would be rather more difficult not to.
Introduction
The Simple Art of Murder (1950)

Peace , War , Past , Children

“While his father had railed against the church, to Sarmiento, the Christian sky-king, the virgin impregnated by the air, and the man who came back from the dead were stories so manifestly absurd they did not merit much more than a raised eyebrow and a shrug at human credulity.”

Michael Nava (1954) American writer

Source: The Children of Eve' series of novels (historical fiction), The City of Palaces (2014), p.99

Dead

“Let me tell you a story: Once there was a republic. It had its constitution, its laws, its freedoms, a president, a congress and courts of law. Everyone could assemble, associate, speak and write with complete freedom.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

ibid., p. 89-901
History Will Absolve Me (October 16th, 1953)

Law , Freedom

“No story in English literature has intrigued me more than Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.”

Walt Disney (1901–1966) American film producer and businessman

It fascinated me the first time I read it as a schoolboy and as soon as I possibly could after I started making animated cartoons, I acquired the film rights to it. People in his period had no time to waste on triviality, yet Carroll with his nonsense and fantasy furnished a balance between seriousness and enjoyment which everybody needed then and still needs today.
American Weekly (1946)

Literature

“The way you sustain and improve upon a culture is by fostering a sense of gratitude for what is best about it. You celebrate the good in your story while putting the bad in the correct context. Conservatism is gratitude…”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2010s, 2019, What's So Great About Western Civilization (2019)

Way , Bad luck , Gratitude , Sense

“The rifts between Shia and Sunni, Eastern Orthodox and Catholic, Israelis and Palestinians, Tibetans and Chinese, obviously have real political, theological, or economic substance behind them, but they are often reduced to symbolism. If you study the history of nationalism, it is often a story of symbols. What flag shall we fly? What icon shall we mount? What books will we revere — or burn?”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

"The Border Wall Is a Symbol of Our Symbolic Politics" https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/border-wall-immigration-debate-political-symbol/ (28 December 2018), National Review
2010s, 2018

Study , Books , History , Flying

“When you understand the basic change taking place in any one major area, it is easier to make sense of the others. This discovery of a new pattern transcends explanation. The shift is qual-itative, sudden, the result of neurological processes too rapid and complex to be tracked by the conscious mind. Although logical explanations can be laid out up to a point, the seeing of a pattern is not sequential but all-at-once. If a new concept does not click into place for you on first encounter, read on. As you move through the book you will come upon many related ideas, connections, examples, metaphors, analogies, and illustrative stories. In time, patterns will emerge, the shifts will occur. From the new perspective, old questions may seem suddenly irrelevant.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter One, The Conspiracy

Time , Reading , Understanding , Question

“But today the fashion is to ascribe the extinction of Buddhism to the persecution of Buddhists by Hindus, to the destruction of their temples by the Hindus. One point is that the Marxist historians who have been perpetrating this falsehood have not been able to produce even an iota of evidence to substantiate the concoction. In one typical instance, Romila Thapar had cited three inscriptions. The indefatigable Sita Ram Goel looked them up. Two of these turned out to have absolutely no connection with Buddhist viharas or their destruction, and the one that did deal with an object being destroyed had been held by authorities to have been a concoction; in any event, it told a story which was as different from what the historian had insinuated as day from night.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

Fashion , Night

“It is never quite safe to think we have done with life. When we imagine we have finished our story fate has a trick of turning the page and showing us yet another chapter.”

Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874–1942) Canadian fiction writer

Source: Rainbow Valley (1919), Ch. 13

Life , Thinking , Imagination , Fate

“Nobody knows what is going to happen because so much depends on an enormous number of variables, on simple hazard. On the other hand if you look at history retrospectively, then, even though it was contingent, you can tell a story that makes sense…. Jewish history, for example, in fact had its ups and downs, its, enmities and its friendships, as every history of all people has. The notion that there is one unilinear history is of course false. But if you look at it after the experience of Auschwitz it looks as though all of history—or at least history since the Middle Ages — had no other aim than Auschwitz…. This, is the real problem of every philosophy of history how is it possible that in retrospect it always looks as though it couldn’t have happened otherwise?”

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) Jewish-American political theorist

The New York Review of Books interview with the French writer Roger Errera (1978)

Friendship , History , Dependency , People

“Do you know why swallows build in the eaves of houses? It is to listen to the stories.”

J. M. Barrie book Peter Pan

Act I
Peter Pan (1904)

Housing

“The difference of development, North and South, is explained as a sort of working out of cosmic social and economic law. … In this sweeping mechanistic interpretation, there is no room for the real plot of the story, for the clear mistake and guilt of building a new slavery of the working class in the midst of a fateful experiment in democracy.”

W.E.B. Du Bois book Black Reconstruction

Source: Black Reconstruction in America (1935), pp. 714-715

Democracy , Law , Fate

“The treatment of the period of Reconstruction reflects small credit upon American historians as scientists. We have too often a deliberate attempt so to change the facts of history that the story will make pleasant reading for Americans.”

W.E.B. Du Bois book Black Reconstruction

Source: Black Reconstruction in America (1935), p. 713

Reading , Making love , History , Change

“Where are we going? Where are we headed? Because believe me, it isn’t always the police. There’s two sides to every story, three if the truth’s told. In the backseat, headed somewhere unknown. All alone, my innocence will soon be seized. No permanent friends, no permanent enemies just permanent interest. Its time to fight the powers that be; let em know, we can’t have peace until niggas get a piece too. We’re taught our only option’s to be deceased. Look, I’ll be what you need me to be just know. Where I’m headed could be a rocky road. Shit, this old world is crumbling fast, a new one coming slow but fsho, you better exercise control before THEY take control, ya dig? Rebel with a cause and THEY hate it…”

Marcus Orelias (1993) American actor, rapper, songwriter, author and entrepreneur

Exercise Control
Rebel of the Underground (2013)

Peace , Time , Hate , Fight

“Professor Lal was already a veteran whose major book, History of the Khaljis, was compulsory reading for students of medieval Indian history from the undergraduate class onwards. I still find it very useful when I teach any course on the Delhi sultanate. … Historiographically the book fell entirely and conspicuously in the genre of nationalist historiography whose hallmark was its challenge· to the portrayal of medieval Indian history as a story of unrelenting conflict between the medieval Muslim rulers and their Hindu subjects. History of the Khaljis is one of the best works in this genre: empirically sound, objective in its assessment of events and persons, non-judgemental in its evaluation of the motives of rulers or their opponents. The remarkable quality gave the book a long life in the discipline, even when newer problematiques of socio-economic history began to displace the ones of dynastic history that had remained the preoccupation of the earlier generation.”

K. S. Lal (1920–2002) Indian historian

Harbans Mukhia, Obituary, The Indian Historical Review http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/037698360102800245

Reading , History , Personality , Books

“Slavery in the British colonies of North America was more than a century-and-a-half old before independence. It was roundly condemned, at one time or another, by nearly all the important political personages of the Revolution. I know of no instance in which any of these personages contradicted the doctrine of the Declaration, or maintained that slavery was a positive good. We must recognize, however, that slavery next to the family was perhaps the oldest institution of civilized mankind. Its origin in the ancient world came with the discovery that it was more profitable to enslave an enemy defeated in war than to kill him. The ancient law of the ancient city may be seen in the Bible. When the Israelites conquered Jericho, they put to the sword everyone in the city—men and women, young and old, sheep, oxen, and asses. Only Rahab the harlot and her family were spared, since they had given shelter to the Israelite spies. Later, in the custom of ancient warfare, the males of a defeated people would all be killed, but the women and children would be carried into slavery. Eventually the entire population of a defeated people would be enslaved. Such are the steps in the human story. That defeat in war meant slavery was the rule for many thousands of years.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, God Bless America (2008), Slavery and the Human Story

Family , Time , Law , War

“Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa are the Indian equivalents of Homer, Dante and Shakespeare. The story of Rama, the ideal son and ruler, Sita, the ideal wife, Bharata and Lakshmana, the ideal brothers and Hanuman, the ideal devotee, has been so beautifully stated in the epic poem of Ramayana that even in the remotest village of India, even the most illiterate man, woman or child is familiar with the characters and situations in the story. The credit for this goes to the poetic and dramatic genius of Valmiki.”

Vālmīki Legendary Indian poet, author of the Ramayana

Sri Aurobindo
Valmiki

“His idea may not solve the mystery of faster-than-light neutrinos, and it may not even shed much light on it – the details of the analysis might be wrong, or be filled with old-fashioned ideas. But I thought it was fascinating that a 50-year-old New Scientist story touched on a topic that is all over the headlines today.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

Michael Brooks in: "Neutrino misbehaviour suggested 50 years ago"

Light , Idea , Fashion

“RNG could be magnanimous to a fault, he could also be mean. He had all the time for Gandhians, yet was full of stories on Gandhian humbug.”

Ramnath Goenka (1904–1991) Indian politician

Two Cars And An Express

Time

“He produced, directed, processed and did everything to make the first Indian feature film Raja Harishchandra. Unlike most film makers of those days, Phalke did not have the westernized audience in mind. His vision was to use the medium to narrate an Indian story to the audience.”

Dadasaheb Phalke (1870–1944) Indian producer-director-screenwriter

In [Khandekar, Vanita Kohli-, The Indian Media Business, http://books.google.com/books?id=1C4nAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA176, 3 October 2013, SAGE Publications, 978-81-321-1788-9, 176]

Making love

“The most discussed building in Mumbai is probably the twenty –seven- story of Mukesh Ambani India’s wealthiest man and the head of Reliance Industries. Ambani’s personal wealth is estimated at just under $ 25 billion, just about a billion for each floor of his Mumbai home.”

Mukesh Ambani (1957) Indian business magnate

Inside Out, India and China: Local Politics Go Global

Home , Wealth , Personality

“Premchand’s stories have a mixed legacy. Seen from a contemporary view point it is easy to see his ideal of womanhood the basis for women’s continued subordination withing the patriarchal family.”

Premchand (1880–1936) Hindi writer

Family , Women

“He introduced me to all the intellectuals at S. F. State and convinced me I should be a writer since I had so many fucking stories to tell. Little did he know I was scared shitless of all those guys with the tweed coats and fancy pipes.”

Oscar Zeta Acosta book Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo

Source: Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), p. 100.

Guy

“The writer of the above lines (E. W. Bovill), a supposed European authority on the Western Sudan, then goes on to say that silent trade or dumb barter was a feature of the Western Sudan’s gold trade throughout all the centuries until modern times. Actually, the only thing dumb about the trade is what he writes about it. The story of dumb barter for gold in West Africa is repeated in several accounts, starting with ancient Greek scripts. It is clearly a rough approximation of the first attempts at exchange of a people coming into contact with strangers, and it was not a permanent procedure.”

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 92.

Time , People

“But what gave him the most satisfaction was going back through the pages to read about his first story appearing in the Saturday Evening Post.”

Patricia Reilly Giff (1935) American children's writer

That afternoon he'd bought Bird the largest bag of lemon drops he could find.
"He gives her candy," she had said, remembering too.
Source: Water Street (2006), Epilogue, p. 164 (closing words); reference to quote from Chapter 11

Appearance , Reading

“It would have been funny if I had been an observer and not a participant, an idea that gave me a disconcerting insight into gossip. As I talked beside the silent Tamara, I realized that despite how entertaining certain stories were, at the bottom of every item of gossip there was someone getting hurt.”

Sherwood Smith book Crown Duel

Crown Duel (Crown & Court #1 - 2, 1997)

Idea , Hurt

“Sometimes even Satyajit Ray was criticized for portraying only the poverty of Bengal. That poverty is not the whole story of India, just a part.”

Satyajit Ray (1921–1992) Indian author, poet, composer, lyricist, filmmaker

Above three quotes by Amos Gitai in I got to know about India from Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak films: Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai, 13 November 2013, 13 December 2013, Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/regional/bengali/news-interviews/I-got-to-know-about-India-from-Satyajit-Ray-and-Ritwik-Ghatak-films-Israeli-filmmaker-Amos-Gitai/articleshow/25651595.cms,

Parting

“We used to have a period called story hour. Shivaji was such a popular story-teller that after some months, he became our standard minstrel: the students simply did not want anyone else. He would not tell original stories. But he had the talent of narrating and enacting well-known, popular old tales -- like that of Vikram and the betaal -- so well that the biggest truants would come to class to listen to his stories.”

Rajinikanth (1950) Indian actor

G M Adishesh, his friend
You can see God in him at times (22 December 1999)

Quotes about story page 33

Quotes about story
page 33