Quotes about story
page 9

“Southerners make good novelists: they have so many stories because they have so much family.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

“For all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written plain as day in the faces of the people around him.”

Emma Donoghue (1969) Irish novelist, playwright, short-story writer and historian

Source: Slammerkin

People, Books, Reading

“Start telling the story of your amazing life, and the law of attraction must make sure you receive it!”

Rhonda Byrne book The Power

Source: The Power

Life, Law

“Don't be afraid, child,
The stories are always there.”

Mary E. Pearson book The Kiss of Deception

Source: The Kiss of Deception

“A little bit of one story joins onto an idea from another, and hey presto,… not old tales but new ones. Nothing comes from nothing.”

Salman Rushdie Haroun and the Sea of Stories

Source: Haroun and the Sea of Stories

Idea

“Stories," he'd said, his voice low and almost husky, "we are made up of stories. And even the ones that seem the most like lies can be our deepest hidden truths.”

Jane Yolen book Briar Rose

Source: Briar Rose

Truth

“Write about us,” Robinson urged. “Tell our story.” And I did it; I told our story. You hold it in your hands.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: First Love

“Just because life is hard and always ends in a bad way doesn't mean that all stories have to. Even if that's what they tell us in school and the New York Book Review.”

James Patterson book Sundays at Tiffany's

Source: Sundays at Tiffany's

Life, Books, School, Way

“That’s a wonderful story.”

“He was a wonderful man. And when a man is that special, you know it sooner than you think possible. You recognize it instinctively, and you’re certain that no matter what happens, there will never be another one like him.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Lucky One

Variant: He was a wonderful man. And when a man is that special, you know it sooner than you think possible. You recognize it instinctively, and you're certain that no matter what happens, there will never be another one like him.
Source: The Lucky One

Thinking

“All mountain landscapes hold stories: the ones we read, the ones we dream, and the ones we create.
-from the Editor's Note, The Alpinist (April 1, 2010)”

George Michael Sinclair Kennedy (1926–2014) British historian

Dreams, Mountain, Reading

“Fiction is truth, even if it is not fact. If you believe only in facts and forget stories, your brain will live, but your heart will die.”

Cassandra Clare book Lord of Shadows

Source: Lord of Shadows

Truth, Heart, Forgetting

“Listen, and you will realize that we are made not from cells or from atoms. We are made from stories.”

Mia Couto (1955) Mozambican writer

“By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you, I believe you're there, I believe you into being. Because I'm telling you this story I will your existence. I tell, therefore you are.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Chapter 41 (p. 268)
Source: The Handmaid's Tale

“Don't let the old story repeat itself now. Arm yourself with all that's happened.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

“Once you told yourself a story enough times, it was so easy to keep on believing it.”

Scott Westerfeld (1963) American science fiction writer

Time

“Every love story is a potential grief story.”

Julian Barnes (1946) English writer

Source: Levels of Life

Love

“What she said was always strange. It had happened long ago. It seemed insignificant. And yet it was something you remembered forever. The words as well as the story. The voice as much as the words.”

Marguerite Duras (1914–1996) French writer and film director

Source: Summer Rain

“Only library books speak with such wordless eloquence of the power good stories hold over us.”

Stephen King book 'Salem's Lot

Source: 'Salem's Lot

Books

“Whether it was a song, a person, or a story, there was a lot you couldn’t know from just an excerpt, a glance, or part of a chorus.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

Parting, Personality

“If we can forgive what's been done to us… If we can forgive what we've done to others… If we can leave our stories behind. Our being victims and villains. Only then can we maybe rescue the world.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Haunted

Source: Haunted (2005), Chapter 21

World, Forgiveness

“[I]t is the wine that leads me on,
the wild wine
that sets the wisest man to sing
at the top of his lungs,
laugh like a fool – it drives the
man to dancing… it even
tempts him to blurt out stories
better never told.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

Source: The Odyssey

Fools, Wine, Singing, Dance

“The world is dark and light is precious. Come closer, dear reader. You must trust me. I am telling you a story.”

Kate DiCamillo book The Tale of Despereaux

Source: The Tale of Despereaux (2004)

World, Light

“Fiction comes in all shapes and sizes. Secrets, lies, stories. We all tell them. Sometimes, because we hope to entertain. Sometimes, because we need to distract. And sometimes, because we have to.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

Secret, Hope

“Before a man's forty, girls cost nothing. After that you have to pay money, or tell a story. Of the two, it's the story that hurts most. Anyway I'm not forty yet.”

Ian Fleming book Diamonds Are Forever

Source: Diamonds Are Forever

Money, Girl, Hurt

“I'm only interested in stories that are about the crushing of the human heart.”

Richard Yates (1926–1992) Novelist, short story writer

Heart

“We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Way

“Stories distribute the suffering so that it can be borne.”

E.L. Doctorow (1931–2015) novelist, editor, professor

Suffering

“Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they add up to the story of life.”

Rob Sheffield (1966) American music journalist

Source: Love Is a Mix Tape

Life

“Oh, wonderful. I killed his father. He hates me. He knows how to make bombs. Come on, Wedge, how does this story end?”

Aaron Allston (1960–2014) American writer

Hate

“Stories are a different kind of true.”

Emma Donoghue Room

Source: Room (novel) (2010)
Context: "Are stories true?"
"Which ones?"
"The mermaid mother and Hansel and Gretel and all them."
"Well," says Ma, "not literally."
"What's—"
"They're magic, they're not about real people walking around today."
"So they're fake?"
"No, no. Stories are a different kind of true."

“In a place where everyone knew my story, it was nice to know there was a chapter that ONLY I HAD TO READ. :)”

Ally Carter I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Source: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Reading

“The problem with every story is you tell it after the fact. Every play-by-play description on the radio, the home runs and strikeouts, even that's delayed a few minutes. Even live television is postponed a couple seconds. Even Sound and light can only go so fast.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 1

Home, Problem, Light

“Its important to know stories. I felt the earth shift to make a place for you when you were born, and I came to tell you stories while you are young. And like me, you were born with a word on your tongue.”

Shannon Hale The Goose Girl

Source: The Goose Girl

“We are the Edema Ruh, and the thing we value most every man possesses. You can tell us your story.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

“The world is shaped by two things — stories told and the memories they leave behind.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: Dreams of the Compass Rose

World, Memory

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

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Variant: You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should've behaved better.
Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

People, Motivational

“Living with him is like being told a perpetual story: his mind is the biggest, most imaginative I have ever met. I could live in its growing countries forever.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Imagination, Country

“stories make you think and dream; books make you want to ask questions”

Michael Morpurgo (1943) British children's writer

Source: I Believe in Unicorns

Books, Dreams, Question, Thinking

“Someone has to write all those stories: why not me?”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

“Have your adventures, make your mistakes, and choose your friends poorly -- all these make for great stories.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

“Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 11

Death

“But what are our stories if not the mirrors we hold up to our fears?”

Wally Lamb book I Know This Much Is True

Source: I Know This Much Is True

Fear

“We sit and listen and are enthralled anew, for good stories, it seems, never lose their magic.”

Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

“My greatest wish -- other than salvation -- was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story. One I could read again and again, with new eyes and a fresh understanding each time.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Books, Understanding, Time, Reading

“Then I let the stories live
inside my head, again and again
until the real world fades back
into cricket lullabies
and my own dreams.”

Jacqueline Woodson book Brown Girl Dreaming

Source: Brown Girl Dreaming

World, Dreams

“I know what you want. You want a story that won't surprise you. That will confirm what you already know.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi (2001), Chapter 99, p. 336
Context: I know what you want. You want a story that won't surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won't make you see higher or further or differently. You want a flat story. An immobile story. You want dry, yeastless factuality.

“The only moral it is possible to draw from this story is that one should never throw the Q letter into a privet bush, but unfortunately there are times when it is unavoidable.”

Douglas Adams book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Time, Drawing

“Magnus had heard the story of how the Nephilim were created many times. They must have forgotten to leave out the bit that said: And the Angel descended from on high and gave his chosen ones fantastic abs.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Course of True Love [and First Dates]

Angels, Time

“All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, 'Sir, write me, I am beautiful.”

Umberto Eco book The Island of the Day Before

Source: The Island of the Day Before

Beauty

“Quit dwelling on other people's stories and make up some of your own.”

Alethea Kontis (1976) American writer

Source: Enchanted

People

“Stories do not end.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

“There are no new stories. It all depends on how you handle them. In romances the characters are going to fall in love with each other; you know that when you see the syrupy cover. It's how get there that's the fun.”

Jude Deveraux (1947) American writer

Love, Dependency

“There's the story, then there's the real story, then there's the story of how the story came to be told. Then there's what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too.”

Margaret Atwood book MaddAddam

Source: MaddAddam

Parting

“I don't think everyone wants to create the great American novel, but we all have a dream of telling our stories-of realizing what we think, feel, and see before we die. Writing is a path to meet ourselves and become intimate.”

Natalie Goldberg (1948) American writer

Source: Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

Dreams, Feeling, Thinking

“Whoever survives a test, whatever it may be, must tell the story. That is his duty.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

“A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Way

“In every outthrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is the story of the earth.”

Rachel Carson (1907–1964) American marine biologist and conservationist

“And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

World, Lovers

“And the story of love is a long sad tale ending in graves.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Love, Sadness

“As I walk back to the school on my own, I realise I'm crying. So I go back to the stories I've read about the five and I try to make sense of their lives because in making sense of theirs, I may understand mine.”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

School, Understanding, Sense, Reading

“All Stories are True.”

John Edgar Wideman (1941) Fiction writer, memoirist, essayist

“If we share our shame story with the wrong person, they can easily become one more piece of flying debris in an already dangerous storm.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

Personality, Flying

“A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.”

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic

Variant: A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end... but not necessarily in that order.

“You are the untold story. You are the impassioned truth wanting to scream its existence, to be forever trapped by a strong hand clapped firmly over the mouth of my soul.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Solipsist

Truth, Soul, Strong

“The story of her life. God gave you everything just to take it away. Just so you knew exactly what you were missing.”

Janet Fitch (1955) American writer

Source: Paint it Black

Life, God

“You try spending six months sitting at somebody's bedside, waiting for them to die and then tell me that the happy-ending love story isn't one of God's good gifts.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: Ain't She Sweet

Love, God, Happiness, Waiting

“Things can turn out differently, Apollo. That's the nice thing about being human. We only have one life, but we can choose what kind of story it's going to be.”

Rick Riordan book The Hidden Oracle

Source: The Hidden Oracle

Life

“Now all the mute objects of my life seem to tell my story, to stretch back in time, if I look closely enough.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

Source: Middlesex

Life, Time

“How we remember changes how we have lived.
Time runs both ways. We make stories of our lives.”

Guy Gavriel Kay book Under Heaven

Source: Under Heaven

Way, Change, Time

“You could put your confusion and upset and worries into whatever book you were reading. You could sort of set them down in there, and you could come out with your head on a little straighter. I don't why stories worked that way, but they did.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Story of Us

Books, Way, Reading

“All stories are love stories.”

Robert McLiam Wilson book Eureka Street

Source: Eureka Street

Love

“I was not a natural…. This is the story of becoming… the Hard Way.”

Cressida Cowell book How to Train Your Dragon

Source: How to Train Your Dragon

Way, Nature

“My books hold between their covers every story I've ever known and still remember, or have now forgotten, or may one day read; they fill the space around me with ancient and new voices.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Source: The Library at Night

Books, Reading

“Hell, at this point, I can’t imagine my story without Amy. She is my forever antagonist. We are one long frightening climax.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

Imagination, Hell

“If only these walls could talk…the world would know just how hard it is to tell the truth in a story in which everyone’s a liar.”

Gregg Olsen (1959) American writer

Source: Envy

Truth, World

“No one on earth is so boring and insignificant that he or she is not worth writing or reading about… One thing's for sure—no one but you can be the hero of your story.”

Jerry Spinelli (1941) American children's writer

Source: Today I Will: A Year of Quotes, Notes, and Promises to Myself

Reading

“What a sad story, I thought for so long. Not that I now think it was happy. But I think it is true, and thus the question of whether it is sad or happy has no meaning whatever.”

Bernhard Schlink book The Reader

Source: The Reader

Happiness, Sadness, Question, Thinking

“Pretty much always. We need to tell the story of our life to someone.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Haunted

Source: Haunted

Life

“If a story is in you, it has to come out.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

“Well then," Faye said. "Now that you've heard our story, we have just one question to ask you." She fixed Cassie with an odd half smile and said in a sweet, false voice, "Are you planning to be a good witch or a bad witch?”

L.J. Smith book The Initiation

Source: The Initiation

Smile, Question, Falseness

“Scars are stories, history written on the body”

Kathryn Harrison (1961) Author

History

“But that is another story and shall be told another time.”

Michael Ende book The Neverending Story

Source: The Neverending Story

Time

“We all create stories to protect ourselves.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“What do they do to students at the University who eavesdrop?” Bast asked curiously.
“I haven’t the slightest idea. I was never caught. I think making you sit and listen to the rest of my story should be punishment enough.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

Idea, Thinking, Universe

“I prefer winter and fall, when you can feel the bone structure in the landscape---the lonliness of it---the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it---the whole story dosen't show.”

Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009) Realist painter

Feeling, Winter, Waiting, Dead

“People who wade into discomfort and vulnerability and tell the truth about their stories are the real badasses.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: Rising Strong

People, Truth

“One of the biggest roles of science fiction is to prepare people to accept the future without pain and to encourage a flexibility of mind. Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

As quoted in The Making of Kubrick's 2001 (1970) by Jerome Agel, p. 300
1970s
Context: One of the biggest roles of science fiction is to prepare people to accept the future without pain and to encourage a flexibility of mind. Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories. Two-thirds of 2001 is realistic — hardware and technology — to establish background for the metaphysical, philosophical, and religious meanings later.

Pain, People, Science, Reading