Quotes about story
page 34

“In these letters to Ridley, Hunters Gonzo style began to rear its head. One of the characteristics of the style Hunter developed was his preoccupation of getting the story.”

William McKeen (1954) American academic

In fact, getting the story became the story. His writing could be classified as metajournalism, journalism about the process of journalism.
Source: Outlaw Journalist (2008), Chapter 5, Observer, p. 73

Roscoe Arbuckle photo
Stanislaw Ulam photo

“The story that Dick Feynman could open safes whose combinations had been forgotten by their owners is true.”

Stanislaw Ulam (1909–1984) Polish-American mathematician

Source: Adventures of a Mathematician - Third Edition (1991), Chapter 8, Los Alamos, p. 169

Chinua Achebe photo

“We have heard stories about white men who make the powerful guns and the strong drinks and took slaves away across the seas, but no one thought the stories were true.”

[said Obierika]
"There is no story that is not true," said Uchendu. "The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others. We have albinos among us. Do you not think that they came to our clan by mistake, that they have strayed from their way to a land where everybody is like them?"
Source: Things Fall Apart (1958), Chapter 15 (p. 130)

Louis C.K. photo
Stephen L. Carter photo

“But that is the way of the place: down our many twisting corridors, one encounters story after story, some heroic, some villainous, some true, some false, some funny, some tragic, and all of them combining to form the mystical, undefinable entity we call the school.”

Not exactly the building, not exactly the faculty or the students or the alumni — more than all those things but also less, a paradox, an order, a mystery, a monster, an utter joy.
Source: The Emperor of Ocean Park (2002), Ch. 9, A Pedagogical Disagreement, II

Margot Asquith photo

“The affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature.”

Margot Asquith (1864–1945) Anglo-Scottish socialite, author and wit

Dorothy Parker, "Re-enter Margot Asquith - A Masterpiece from the French," The New Yorker, October 22, 1927.

Uwe Boll photo
Philip José Farmer photo
Phillip Guston photo

“I got sick and tired of all that Purity! Wanted to tell stories..”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

Guston's quote in 1967, referring to his swift from Abstract expressionism to figurative painting
Abstract Expressionism, David Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd London, 1990, p. 207
1961 - 1980

Richard Rodríguez photo

“His name was William Saroyan. He was the first writer I fell in love with, boyishly in love. I was held by his unaffected voice, his sentimentality, his defiant individualism. I found myself in the stories he told… I learned from Saroyan that you do not have to live in some great city — in New York or Paris — in order to write… When I was a student at Stanford, a generation ago, the name of William Saroyan was never mentioned by any professor in the English Department. William Saroyan apparently was not considered a major American talent. Instead, we undergraduates set about the business of psychoanalyzing Hamlet and deconstructing Lolita.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

In my mind Saroyan belongs with John Steinbeck, a fellow small town Californian and of the same generation. He belongs with Thornton Wilder, with those writers whose aching love of America was formed by the Depression and the shadow of war. … Saroyan's prose is as plain as it is strong. He talks about the pleasure of drinking water from a hose on a summer afternoon in California's Central Valley, and he holds you with the pure line. My favorite is his novel The Human Comedy... In 1943, The Human Comedy became an MGM movie starring Mickey Rooney, but I always imagined Homer Macaulay as a darker, more soulful boy, someone who looked very much like a young William Saroyan...
"Time Of Our Lives" (26 May 1997) http://www.cilicia.com/armo22_william_saroyan_6.html

Kancha Ilaiah photo
Rani Mukerji photo
Richard Wright photo
Eudora Welty photo
Rudolf Hess photo
John Muir photo
Lou Reed photo
Joseph Campbell photo
Jane Austen photo
Tracey Thorn photo
Daniel Abraham photo

“Long story, but the point is that if you hear hoofbeats in the distance, your first guess is that they’re horses, not zebras. And you’re hearing hoofbeats and jumping straight to unicorns.”
“So what are you saying?”

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

“I’m saying let’s go see if we can find some horses or zebras before we start a unicorn hunt.”
Source: Nemesis Games (2015), Chapter 8 (p. 86)

Daniel Kahneman photo

“No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story.”

Daniel Kahneman (1934) Israeli-American psychologist

Michael Lewis. "The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed the World". Penguin, 2016 (ISBN 9780141983035).

“I can only answer that I tried to tell the truth and, if not be objective, at least be fair; history is not served when reporters prize trepidation and propriety over the robust journalistic duty to tell the whole story.”

Randy Shilts (1951–1994) American journalist

The Life and Times of Harvey Milk Randy Shilts, Chronicler of AIDS Epidemic, Dies at 42; Journalism: Author of 'And the Band Played On' is credited with awakening nation to the health crisis http://articles.latimes.com/1994-02-18/news/mn-24467_1_randy-shilts
Quote

Daniel Abraham photo

“You think you know what I am, she thought, but all you’ve got is stories.”

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

Source: Nemesis Games (2015), Chapter 21 (p. 222)

James McBride (writer) photo
James McBride (writer) photo

“I tell them that a simple story is the best story, and that time and place is really crucial to good storytelling. Establish your stories in a specific time and place and get your characters set solidly within that framework before you let them start moving from one room to the next...”

James McBride (writer) (1957) American journalist

On the writing advice he gives to his students in "James McBride's Advice For New Writers: 'A Simple Story Is The Best Story'" https://www.npr.org/2020/02/29/810052791/james-mcbrides-advice-for-new-writers-a-simple-story-is-the-best-story in NPR (2020 Feb 29)

Uwem Akpan photo
Neil Gaiman photo
Philip Roth photo
Philip Roth photo
Nalo Hopkinson photo
Lynn Compton photo

“The theory of the nature of mathematics is extremely reactionary. We do not subscribe to the fairly recent notion that mathematics is an abstract language based, say, on set theory. In many ways, it is unfortunate that philosophers and mathematicians like Russell and Hilbert were able to tell such a convincing story about the meaning-free formalism of mathematics. In Greek, mathematics simply meant learning, and we have adapted this... to define the term as "learing to decide."”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Mathematics is a way of preparing for decisions through thinking. Sets and classes provide one way to subdivide a problem for decision preparation; a set derives its meaning from decision making, and not vice versa.

C. West Churchman, Leonard Auerbach, Simcha Sadan, Thinking for Decisions: Deductive Quantitative Methods (1975) Preface.
1960s - 1970s

Jason Reynolds photo
Céline Sciamma photo
Halldór Laxness photo

“...And I have seen stranger things in a long and colorful career. Exactly. So what is the problem in believing my story?”

“You’ve nothing to back it up with. Even if you’re right, I’m still right in not believing without evidence.”

Chapter 28 (p. 172)
Roadmarks (1979)

Zoya Akhtar photo

“I think the most important thing, when you are directing is perspective on the story. What is your take? What are you saying? What does it mean?”

Zoya Akhtar (1974) Indian film director

Luck By Chance - My First Film 29 Oct 2018, at 9 Min 03 Sec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B2wChETV5g
From interview with Film Companion

Donald J. Trump photo

“You gotta take care of the floors. You know, the floors of the forest. It's very important. You look at other countries where they do it differently, and it's a whole different story. I was with the president of Finland, and he said, "We have a much different— we're a forest nation."”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

He called it a forest nation. And they spend a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things, and they don't have any problem.

Paradise, California, , quoted in * 2018-11-20

#RakeNews: People in Finland Mock Trump With Leaf-Raking Photos After He Said the Country 'Rakes the Forest'

Ashley Hoffman

Time Magazine

https://time.com/5458605/trump-finland-raking-reactions/, and with video in * 2018-11-18

Trump Says California Can Learn From Finland on Fires. Is He Right?

Patrick Kingsley

New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/18/world/europe/finland-california-wildfires-trump-raking.html

Finnish President Sauli Niinistö said he didn't recall anything being said about raking. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/finnish-president-says-he-briefed-trump-on-forest-monitoring/2018/11/18/dd46a57e-eb32-11e8-8b47-bd0975fd6199_story.html
2010s, 2018, November

Céline Sciamma photo

“The last scene came really, really early, disconnected from even the idea of a woman painter…I wanted to write a love story and I thought, ‘What do I want to tell?’ And that scene came up really, really quickly, alone, by itself. The weird compass of the film was its last scene. That’s a compass, but it’s a high pressure one.”

Céline Sciamma (1978) French director and screenwriter

On her creative process for Portrait of a Lady on Fire in “‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ Filmmaker Céline Sciamma Is Trying to Break Your Heart” https://www.indiewire.com/2019/12/portrait-of-a-lady-on-fire-filmmaker-celine-sciamma-interview-1202193537/ in IndieWire (2019 Dec 05)

“Mine is a message of hope. As I said, as I was surrounded by a loving family, cherished by all of them, one thing was clear – if your heart has a reason to keep beating, it will. My hope is that stories like mine can inspire more potential donors.”

Sudhir Choudhrie (1949) Indian businessman

"Heart to heart: Sudhir Choudrie discusses life after a transplant" https://www.easterneye.biz/heart-heart-sudhir-choudrie-discusses-life-transplant/, EasternEye (February 8, 2017)

“The moral choices that Trump poses to anyone with a conscience or love of country are only made more clear by the ludicrous irony of his own story.”

Richard Wolffe (1968) American journalist

Let's drop the euphemisms: Donald Trump is a racist president (2018)

Alastair Reynolds photo
Zoya Akhtar photo

“Who told me to, stay true to the story. Told me not to lose my femininity, because I am directing. So if I want to go to work in a skirt and lipstick, I should. I don't have to be male, to be the boss. And to never hook up with the actors. Best piece of Advise.”

Zoya Akhtar (1974) Indian film director

as an answer to the question: Whats the most useful advise you ever got from a fellow director?

From Mira Nair.

On the Sets, at 25 Min 06 Sec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3deXjh9X0_U
Panel interview at MAMI(Mumbai Academy of Moving Image) Film Festival

Ekta Kapoor photo

“I could actually tell stories and narratives which were little alternative and radical. For whatever its worth, you can support imperfection.”

Ekta Kapoor (1975) TV and film producer

as an answer to the evolving tastes of the Indian Audience and the rise of the Digital Streaming Platforms

CNN News18 - Ekta Kapoor Interview with Rajeev Masand - 4 Oct 2019, at 14 Min 48 Sec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX-C4jRzxM4
From interview with Rajeev Masand

Alastair Reynolds photo
Alastair Reynolds photo

“…I was desperate to write a trans character for whom it wasn’t really an issue. After you come out, after the initial makeover and being on hormones for a few years, what happens next? That’s a story nobody tells…”

Juno Dawson (1981) British youth fiction author

On her novel Clean in “Juno Dawson: ‘Teenagers have seen things that would make milk curdle’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/01/juno-dawson-clean-interview-transgender-anorexia-drugs in The Guardian (2018 Apr 1)

Cenk Uygur photo

“You remember that time that the mainstream media wrote that positive story about @SenSanders? Oh right, neither do I.”

Cenk Uygur (1970) Turkish-American online news show host

Twitter post https://twitter.com/cenkuygur/status/1080722976276803584 (2 Jan 2019)

Joanna Trollope photo

“A combination of a desire to communicate, and a passionate belief in the power of story to build up relationships, to shape us. People-watching. But also being aware of situations that are currently preoccupying people. Codes of conduct change, but what the human heart wants really doesn’t.”

Joanna Trollope (1943) British writer

On what stirs her to write in “Interview with Joanna Trollope” https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/writers/advice/41/a-writers-toolkit/interviews-with-authors/interview-with-joanna-trollope in Writers & Artists

Haifaa al-Mansour photo
Giancarlo Giannini photo

“Seven Beauties was a film that nobody wanted to make, because it talks about a concentration camp. It is a true story. I managed to convince Lina [Wertmüller] to make it and it has been nominated for four Oscars.”

Giancarlo Giannini (1942) Italian actor, voice actor, director and screenwriter

Original: (it) Pasqualino Settebellezze era un film che non voleva far nessuno, perché parla di un campo di concentramento. È una storia vera. Sono riuscito a convincere Lina [Wertmüller] a farlo e ha avuto quattro candidature all'Oscar.

From the interview by Silvia Bizio "Il cinema è morto? Me lo diceva già Fellini" https://rep.repubblica.it/pwa/intervista/2019/02/15/news/giancarlo_giannini-219224198/?refresh_ce , Rep.repubblica.it, (February 15 2019). https://rep.repubblica.it/pwa/intervista/2019/02/15/news/giancarlo_giannini-219224198/?refresh_ce

Lai Pin-yu photo

“Politics need to bring people hope. We need more dreams and more stories that touch people.”

Lai Pin-yu (1992) Taiwanese social activist

Lai Pin-yu (2020) cited in " 'We need more dreams': Taiwan's 'Squad' rallies youth ahead of election https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/10/taiwan-election-squad-youth-china-tsai-ing-wen" on The Guardian, 10 January 2020.

Donald J. Trump photo

“I work from early in the morning until late at night, haven’t left the White House in many months (except to launch Hospital Ship Comfort) in order to take care of Trade Deals, Military Rebuilding etc., and then I read a phony story in the failing @nytimes about my work schedule and eating habits, written by a third rate reporter who knows nothing about me. I will often be in the Oval Office late into the night & read & see that I am angrily eating a hamberger & Diet Coke in my bedroom. People with me are always stunned. Anything to demean!”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

As quoted by * 2020-04-26

'Hambergers' and 'Noble prizes': Trump attacks press in furious Twitter rant riddled with spelling errors

Alex Woodward

Independent

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-latest-coronavirus-hamburger-nobel-prize-russia-a9485006.html
2020s, 2020, April

“Dreams are important. They are messengers…Characters have appeared to me. They say, ‘Here I am. Tell my story.'”

Rudolfo Anaya (1937) Novelist, poet

On how his subconscious informs his writing in “Rudolfo Anaya: Man of visions” https://www.abqjournal.com/1074636/man-of.html in Albuquerque Journal (2017 Oct 7)

Colin Powell photo
Mick Jackson (director) photo

“The idea was to take a movie which was about death...and use the iconography of life to tell the story.”

Mick Jackson (director) (1943) film director

The Director of the Scariest Movie We've Ever Seen Still Fears Nuclear War the Most

Robert Graves photo
Shu Takumi photo
Philip Kan Gotanda photo

“The play is my gut's response to stories that have to do with my own bloodline. I think it is a great luxury and adventure to be able to dive into one's own history, one's own lineage, psychology and story, and illumine and at the same time fictionalize it.”

Philip Kan Gotanda (1951) American film director and playwright

On his play Yachiyo in “Family Secret Revealed on Stage / Philip Kan Gotanda tells tragic story of aunt he never knew in `Yachiyo'” https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Family-Secret-Revealed-on-Stage-Philip-Kan-3020373.php in SF Gate (1995 Nov 5)

Jackie Kay photo

“…I like the idea that stories are active, that if you stepped on them they would become alive, like plants, and that the same memory can grow new shoots and flowers, and can change over the course of people’s lives…”

Jackie Kay (1961) Poet and novelist

On the living nature of stories in “The SRB Interview: Jackie Kay” https://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/2016/03/the-srb-interview-jackie-kay/ in the Scottish Review of Books (2016 Mar 21)

“I imagined in everybody I passed there was some story that they carried with them that would break your heart. So how could you have the temerity to approach that person and say, here's what's wrong with you?”

Barry Lopez (1945) American writer

On learning empathy after a cancer diagnosis in “Writer Barry Lopez Reflects On A Life Traveling Beyond The 'Horizon'” https://www.npr.org/2019/03/27/707358144/barry-lopez-shares-6-places-that-shaped-his-world-understanding-in-horizon in NPR (2019 Mar 27)

“Fanfiction lets you share the kind of story you like with other people who take delight in it, too, and lets you participate in making that sort of story for those people…”

Arkady Martine (1985) Science fiction author

On how fanfiction has affected her life in “AN INTERVIEW WITH ARKADY MARTINE” http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/articles/an-interview-with-arkady-martine/ in Stage Horizons (2019 Feb 25)

“…there should be an absolute identification between the individual's experience and the writer's so that [experience] serves as the starting point for being able to write a short story or a novel later on…”

Rosario Ferré (1938–2016) Puerto Rican writer

On not wanting to be deemed a woman author (as quoted in “ROSARIO FERRE: THE VANGUARD OF PUERTO RICAN FEMINIST LITERATURE” http://smjegupr.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/19.-Rosario-Ferr---The-Vanguard-of-Puerto-Rican-Feminist-Literature-por-Suzanne-S.-Hintz.pdf)

“Faith is for the part of the story that superficially isn’t believable.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: The Rock that Is Higher (1993)

Annie Besant photo

“The doctrines of the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ also form part of the Lesser Mysteries, being integral portions of "The Solar Myth," and of the life-story of the Christ in man.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Esoteric Christianity: Or, The Lesser Mysteries (1914), Chapter VIII. Resurrection and Ascension

Annie Besant photo

“The occult records partly endorse the story told in the Gospels, and partly do not endorse it; they show us the life, and thus enable us to disentangle it from the myths which are intertwined therewith.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Esoteric Christianity: Or, The Lesser Mysteries (1914), Chapter IV. The Historical Christ

Jack Kirby photo

“I enjoyed working on any story. I’m essentially a storyteller. You name the subject, and I’ll give a good story on it.”

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

Source: page 5 http://www.tcj.com/jack-kirby-interview/5/ 1990, Gary Groth interview

Jack Kirby photo

“No, we didn’t do horror in the sense of haunted houses or people with masks the way you might see them today; something lurking in an anteroom. Our stories were more like peasants sitting around a fire. We had the “Strange World of Your Dreams.””

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

Ours didn’t run to bloody horror. Ours ran to weirdness. We began to interpret dreams. Remember, Joe and I were wholesome characters. We weren’t guys that were bent on the weird and the bizarre. We were the kind of guys who wouldn’t offend our mother, who wouldn’t offend anyone in your family, and certainly not the reader. So we knew that we had to depart from adventure and that there were other ways to go and we came up with the “Strange World of Your Dreams”.
Context: page 4 http://www.tcj.com/jack-kirby-interview/4/ 1990, Gary Groth interview

Malcolm Gladwell photo

“…You can’t separate race from police shooting cases, but you also can’t say that’s the whole story. There’s something out of whack with the way we’ve structured relationships—not just between police officers and civilians, but between strangers of all kinds.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: On police shootings in “Oprah Talks to Revisionist History's Malcolm Gladwell” https://www.oprahmag.com/entertainment/a28568751/oprah-talks-to-malcolm-gladwell/ in O Magzzine (2019 Aug 7)

Kenneth Arrow photo
Jerry Seinfeld photo

“A [stand-up] bit is a bar of gold. A talk-show panel story is something that's too good to throw out but not good enough to use.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (2012 — Present), Season 3 (2014)

Gary Goldman photo
James K. Morrow photo
Alice Meynell photo
Zachary Laoutides photo

“I started to write a screenplay on people’s stories and what they were going through.”

Zachary Laoutides (1986) film actor

WGN Chicago 2016: Chicagoland’s own Latino film studio making its mark in cinema http://wgntv.com/2016/10/12/chicagolands-own-latino-film-studio-making-its-mark-in-cinema/

Mónica Esmeralda León photo

“It is a La Raza effort, the city and the people made this story happen.”

Mónica Esmeralda León (1991) actress

WBEZ Chicago 2017: Aurora Home To Only Latina-Owned Movie Studio In Midwest https://www.wbez.org/stories/aurora-home-to-only-latina-owned-movie-studio-in-midwest/f0e71eb9-ca0d-4f74-9960-605c42307e48/

Ming-Na Wen photo

“I really think as long as you have a good story that relates to a lot of people it doesn't matter what ethnicity it is.”

Ming-Na Wen (1963) Macau-born American actress

An Interview with Ming-Na https://www.ign.com/articles/2004/10/27/an-interview-with-ming-na (27 October 2004)

“I often made up these stories in my mind about people I idolized or wanted to be like. I always write happy endings for them and convinced myself that life would be so much easier if I could walk in their shoes. But I never realized that in those shoes their feet were scraped and bruised like mine.”

Ashlee Marie Preston American media personality, producer, and activist

As quoted in [Man, Chella, What It’s Like to Be Trans and Live With Gender Dysphoria, https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-its-like-to-be-trans-and-live-with-gender-dysphoria, 29 January 2019, Teen Vogue, September 21, 2018]

“When you get good at storytelling, people want to be a part of that story—and they want to help others become part of that story too.”

Ziad K Abdelnour (1960) Lebanese-born American investment banker, financier, activist and author

Source: StartUp Saboteurs Quotes

Lila Downs photo

“The border still doesn't make much sense in my mind. It's a place that has so many things going on, a lot of sad stories, a lot of positive ones, a lot of people who are looking to break the rules and I identify a lot with that. I like to break the rules.”

Lila Downs (1968) Mexican American singer-songwriter

On how the border between the U.S. and Mexico influenced her work in “Mex factor” https://www.theguardian.com/music/2003/feb/10/artsfeatures.popandrock in The Guardian (2003 Feb 10)
Heritage and indigenous peoples

Stephen Vincent Benét photo
Daniel Abraham photo
Donna Tartt photo
Jonathan M. Shiff photo

“The world is your oyster if you’re unafraid to tell your own story and keep it universally appealing. But you have reason to be afraid of making live action children’s drama in Australia if the system is dismantled.”

Jonathan M. Shiff Australian television producer

Source: Interview with Jonathan Shiff https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/sa/screen-news/2018/06-18-international-tv-sales-snapshot-for-2017/part-4-interview-with-jonathan-shiff (18 June 2018)

Jonathan M. Shiff photo

“I always think it’s exciting to be a part of a story that is set in such a beautiful aesthetic setting that is so far away!”

Ashleigh Brewer (1990) Australian actress

Source: B&B's Ashleigh Brewer Interview: Could This Forrester Gal Turn Into "Poison Ivy" To Keep Liam? https://michaelfairmantv.com/bbs-ashleigh-brewer-interview-could-this-forrester-gal-turn-into-poison-ivy-to-keep-liam/2014/11/25/ (November 25, 2014)

Bruno Heller photo

“When ecologists find a predictable life-span of a generation separating us from total extinction, it would seem that we have a duty to search for another interpretation of mankind’s life story.”

Vine Deloria Jr. (1933–2005) American writer

As quoted in "Daniel Quinn: Another Interpretation of the ‘Meaning of Life" by Nicolae Tanase, at Excellence Reporter (28 March 2016) https://excellencereporter.com/2016/03/28/daniel-quinn-another-interpretation-of-the-meaning-of-life/

Joe Biden photo
Joe Biden photo

“Journalism is just very structured…One day I turned in a story and [an editor] said to me, ‘You can’t compare inanimate objects with animate objects,’ and I realized I had to leave.”

Thanhha Lai (1965) American children's writer

On why she left journalism in “How former Register reporter Thanhha Lai turned childhood rage into a National Book Award” https://www.orangecoast.com/features/ha/ in Orange Coast Magazine (2012 Feb 11)

Cynthia Barnett photo