Quotes about story

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“If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can't survive.”

“A story isn't a charcoal sketch, where every stroke lies on the surface to be seen. It's an oil painting, filled with layers that the author must uncover so carefully to show its beauty.”

“Between childhood, boyhood, adolescence and manhood (maturity) there should be sharp lines drawn with tests, deaths, feats, rites, stories, songs, and judgments.”

“I will describe my eyes and then begin the story. My eyes are blue and resplendent. Now I will begin the story.”

“I'm telling you stories. Trust me.”

“So maybe it wasn't the fairy tale. But those stories weren't real anyway. Mine were.”

“Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself. In all matters of discovery and invention, even of those that appertain to the imagination, we are continually reminded of the story of Columbus and his egg. Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject, and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it.”

“The problem I have with haters is that they see my glory, but they don't know my story…”

“I choose this story above all others because it's a story I'm struggling to end.”

“For our stories are not yet finished, and perhaps will never be.”

“Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves…”

“A story lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken”

“Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.”

“Every word a woman writes changes the story of the world, revises the official version.”

“I prefer a story that has the good sense to stay on the page where it belongs.
- Elinor”

“All writers start with a layer of truth, don't they? If not, their stories would be nothing but spools of cotton candy, a fleeting taste wrapped around nothing but air.”

“It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.”

“I invent stories, confront one with another, and by this means I ask questions. The stupidity of people comes from having an answer to everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.”

“Mrs. Daugherty was keeping my bowl of cream of wheat hot, and she had a special treat with it, she said. It was bananas.

In the whole story of the world, bananas have never once been a special treat.”

“And this is the strangest of all paradoxes of the human adventure; we live inside all experience, but we are permitted to bear witness only to the outside. Such is the riddle of life and the story of the passing of our days.”

“Of course it's the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story.”

“Without conflict there is no plot, without hope there is no story”

“Only after a while did it occur to me (in spite of the chilly silence which surrounded me) that my story was not of the tragic sort, but rather of the comic variety.

At any rate that afforded me some comfort.”

“Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person.”

“Quietness is an essential part of all awareness. In quiet times and sleepy times, a child can dwell in thoughts of his own, and in songs and stories of his own.”

“Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.”

“You can never visit the same place twice. Each time, it's a different story. By the very act of coming back, you wipe out what came before.”

“All we have is the story we tell. Everything we do, every decision we make, our strength, weakness, motivation, history, and character-what we believe-none of it is; it's all part of the story we tell. But here's the thing:”

“Nothing was easy, and sometimes she failed, and sometimes she thought that the fairy stories were right, that there must indeed be easier ways of living happily ever after; but defeat is a poor ending to any tale, so she kept trying.”

“Books wrote our life story, and as they accumulated on our shelves (and on our windowsills, and underneath our sofa, and on top of our refrigerator), they became chapters in it themselves.”

“Danger lurks when people are dissociated and detached from their own story or feelings.”

“And then as always, I saw the prayer coming at me.
And, as always, Number 1 killed me! Set me on fire, cooked me to medium rare and then ate me!
I really, really, really hope I haven't just given away the ending of this story.”

“Draw your chair up close to the edge of the precipice and I’ll tell you a story.”

“Your heartbreak is just another version of the same old story.”

“And life goes on, which seems kind of strange and cruel when you're watching someone die. But there's a joy and an abundance of everything, like information and laughter and summer weather and so many stories.”

“No one can tell you what your life is goin to be, can they?

No.

It's never like what you expected.

Quijada nodded. If people knew the story of their lives how many would then elect to live them?”

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”

“If you have a past with which you feel dissatisfied, then forget it, now. Imagine a new story for your life and believe in it. Focus only on the moments when you achieved what you desired, and that strength will help you to get what you want.”

“You have to be a bit of a liar to tell a story the right way.”

“I will tell you the story of how we found ourselves in a realm where dreams are formed, destiny is chosen, and magic is as real as a handprint in the snow.”

“You say their stories, it is gift they give you.”

“The true story is vicious and multiple and untrue after all. Why do you need it? Don’t ever ask for the true story.”

“The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms.”

“Sometimes I think that maybe we are just stories. Like we may as well just be words on a page, because we're only what we've done and what we are going to do.”

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

“Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity.”

“A story can be new and yet tell about olden times. The past comes into existence with the story.”

“Never again shall a single story be told as though it were the only one.”

“A story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.”

“A story untold could be the one that kills you.”

“All love stories are the same.”

“Peter Rabbit, for all its gentle tininess, loudly proclaims that no story is worth the writing, no picture worth the making, if it is not a work of imagination.”

“My life story is the story of everyone I've ever met.”

“While there may not be a book in every one of us, there is so often a damned good short story.”

“All children mythologise their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind and soul? Ask him to tell you about when he was born. What you get won’t be the truth: it will be a story. And nothing is more telling than a story.”

“But the lesson of Abraham's story is that God demands the best we have to offer, that which is most precious to us.”

“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.”

“As far as I know, he never asked where she had been or why she had left and she never told. I guess some stories do not need telling.”

“I realized that despite how entertaining certain stories were, at the bottom of every item of gossip there was someone getting hurt.”

“Figure out what is real for you. No use leaning on someone else's story all your life.”

“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.”

“Cure for writer's block: blow something up(in the story)”

“If this were a made-up story, it would begin at night, with a storm blowing and owls hooting and rattling noises under the bed.”

“Honest. It's almost always best to go with honest. It means you never have to worry about getting your story straight.”

“If every event which occurred could be given a name, there would be no need for stories.”

“I'll write this all down for you," I said. "I'll put it in a story." I don't know if that's what he wanted to ask me, but it's something everybody wants--for someone to see the hurt done to them and set it down like it matters.”

“Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It's loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.”

“Remember that you don't write a story because you have an idea but because you have a believable character.”

“Somethings were meant to be and somethings were just meant to be good stories”

“I won't do this movie because I don't believe the love story," she told Selznick. "The heroine is an intellectual woman, and an intellectual woman simply can't fall in love so deeply.”

“Mrs. May looked back at her. "Kate," she said after a moment, "stories never really end. They can go on and on and on. It's just that sometimes, at a certain point, one stops telling them.”

“Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.”

“What are we but our stories?”

“You may do this, I tell you, it is permitted. Begin again the story of your life.”

“What are stories for if we don't learn from them?”

“All the stories are true”

“Julian spoke through his teeth. "Malcolm, this is not a love story."
"Every story is a love story.”

“The story is even Bill Wilson, a founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, couldn't overcome the sex monkey on his back, and spent his sober life cheating on his wife and filled with guilt.”

“Why does anybody tell a story? It does indeed have something to do with faith. Faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.”

“It occurred to me that everyone’s story matters to themselves, so the more I listened, the more she wanted to talk.”

“Historical novels are, without question, the best way of teaching history, for they offer the human stories behind the events and leave the reader with a desire to know more.”

“Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end”

“All stories are true,” Skarpi said. “But this one really happened, if that’s what you mean.”

“Technology is the campfire around which we tell our stories.”

“Stories took twists and turns down fairy-tale paths or down very human everyday ones. You think you’re at the end of the book, and it’s only the end of a chapter.”

“It is really hard to be lonely very long in a world of words. Even if you don't have friends somewhere, you still have language, and it will find you and wrap its little syllables around you and suddenly there will be a story to live in.”

“To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know.”

“I may do some good before I am dead--be a sort of success as a frightful example of what not to do; and so illustrate a moral story.”

“Fairy tales are such evil little stories for young children.”

“If you've heard this story before, don't stop me, because I'd like to hear it again.”

“It’s easier to be a character in a story than the star of your own tragedy.”

“But you have to learn to bend a little,” said Clary with a yawn. Despite the story’s content, the rhythm of Jace’s voice had made her sleepy. “Or you’ll break.” “Not if you're strong enough,” said Jace firmly.”

“It is after all so easy to shatter a story. To break a chain of thought. To ruin a fragment of a dream being carried around carefully like a piece of porcelain. To let it be, to travel with it, as Velutha did, is much the harder thing to do.”

“She told the story, however, with great spirit among her friends; for she had a lively, playful disposition, which delighted in any thing ridiculous.”

“We are not quite novels.
We are not quite short stories.
In the end, we are collected works.”

“Stories are like children. They grow in their own way.”

“What is important is the story. Because when we are all dust and teeth and kicked-up bits of skin - when we're dancing with our own skeletons - our words might be all that's left of us.”

“I believe it, Chronicler found himself thinking. Before it was just a story, but now I can believe it. This is the face of a man who has killed an angel.”

“No, it’s not a very good story - its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.”