storytelling Quotes

“Don’t plunge into the middle of it as you did before—and mix everything all up!”

“He hopes that the hand which stokes his forehead will never stop – will never die. He hopes that there will never come a time when the old folks won’t be sitting around the living room, talking about where they’ve come from, and what they’ve seen, and what’s happened to them and their kinfolk.”

“I tried to tell her all that had happened, all that I’d come to understand: the meaningless objectness of the world, the universal bruteness. She only stared, troubled at my noise. She’d forgotten all language long ago, or maybe had never known any.”

“Green pine trees, cranes and
turtles ...
You must tell a story of your
hard times
And laugh twice.”

“The world isn’t just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn’t that make life a story?”

If you are a dreamer, come in,
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer...
If you’re a pretender come sit by my fire
For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in!

“It can tell you the incredible story of Georges Méliès, his wife, their goddaughter, and a beloved clock maker whose son grew up to be a magician.”

“We tell ourselves there are reasons for the things that happen, but we’re just telling ourselves stories. We make them up. They don’t mean anything.”

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

“Winn-Dixie started to snore, and I nudged him with my foot to try to make him quit. I wanted to hear the rest of the story. It was important to me to hear how Littmus survived after losing everything he loved.”

“Before Laura finished talking, I had already decided that I would take her workshop. She said she would teach us how to tell our stories in a more compelling way. I was curious to find out how this white woman, born in New York City, had become a storyteller.”

“The prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them.”

“Newt remained curled in the chair. He held out his painty hands as though a cat’s cradle were strung between them. ‘No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat’s cradle is nothing but a bunch of X’s between somebody’s hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X’s….‘”

“Well, well, perhaps I am a bit of a talker. A popular fellow such as I am - my friends get round me - we chaff, we sparkle, we tell witty stories - and somehow my tongue gets wagging. I have the gift of conversation. I’ve been told I ought to have a salon, whatever that may be.”

“And if Aslan himself comes, (Cair Paravel) would be the best place for meeting him too, for every story says that he is the son of the great Emperor-over-the-Sea, and over the sea he will pass.”

″‘And look at those other steps—the broad, shallow ones—going up to that doorway. It must have been the door into the great hall.’

‘Ages ago, by the look of it,’ said Edmund.”

“Five Great Charters knit the land
together linked, hand in hand
One in the people who wear the crown
Two in the folk who keep the Dead down
Three and Five became stone and mortar
Four sees all in frozen water.”

“There are a lot of things you can do with film, but you don’t have unlimited access to your audience. In other words, keep it simple. You tell the story; you don’t look for the camera technician to tell the story for you. When you see a filmmaker getting too fancy, you can bet he’s worried either about his story or about his ability to tell it.”

“Sharing tales of those we’ve lost is how we keep from really losing them.”

“Because you’re like a story that hasn’t happened yet. Because I want to see what you will do. I want to be part of the unfolding of the tale.”

“Nice things don’t happen in storybooks,” Taryn says. “Or when they do happen, something bad happens next. Because otherwise the story would be boring, and no one would read it.”

“It was on that day that I knew I wanted to tell the story of my family. Because horror on Earth is real and it is every day. It is like a flower or the sun; it cannot be contained. ”

“I could see an old and beautiful olive tree just up ahead. ”

“If we don’t tell strange stories, when something strange happens we won’t believe it.”

“That’s what fiction is about, isn’t it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out the essence?”

“So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can’t prove the question either way, which story do you prefer?”

“I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.”

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

“Don’t adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on the story.”

“Once, so they say, he had to get home by swimming across a river in which there was a large and hungry pike. El-ahrairah combed himself until he had enough fur to cover a clay rabbit, which he pushed into the water. The pike rushed at it, bit it and left it in disgust. After a little, it drifted to the bank and El-ahrairah dragged it out and waited a while before pushing it in again. After an hour of this, the pike left it alone, and when it had done so for the fifth time, El-ahrairah swam across himself and went home. Some rabbits say he controls the weather, because the wind, the damp and the dew are friends and instruments to rabbits against their enemies.”

“Every great love starts with a great story. . .”

“If you have never wept bitter tears because a wonderful story has come to an end and you must take your leave of the characters with whom you have shared so many adventures, whom you have loved and admired, for whom you have hoped and feared, and without whose company life seems empty and meaningless.

If such things have not been part of your own experience, you probably won’t understand what Bastian did next.”

“Every real story is a never ending story.”

“Bastian looked at the book.
‘I wonder,’ he said to himself, ‘what’s in a book while it’s closed. Oh, I know it’s full of letters printed on paper, but all the same, something must be happening, because as soon as I open it, there’s a whole story with people I don’t know yet and all kinds of adventures, deeds and battles. And sometimes there are storms at sea, or it takes you to strange cities and countries. All those things are somehow shut in a book. Of course you have to read it to find out. But it’s already there, that’s the funny thing. I just wish I knew how it could be.’
Suddenly an almost festive mood came over him.
He settled himself down, picked up the book, opened it to the first page, and began to read...”

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

I may not live to see our glory
But I will gladly join the fight
And when our children tell our story
They’ll tell the story of tonight

Sometimes the right person tells the right story at the right moment, and through a combination of luck and design, a creative expression gains new force.

″‘Mount Eskel feels the boots of outsiders.’ They paused, and then now even Bena stayed silent for the final line. ‘Mount Eskel won’t bear their weight.‘”

“If a person wanted to get to the moon, there was a way; it all depended on whether you knew the directions—exactly which way to go and what to do to get there; it depended on whether you knew the story of how others before you had gone.”

“I could tell more, but I cannot see what help it will be to the world. As for me, I am past human help or hope.”

“Where there is an absence of story, or perhaps a bad story, a good storyteller walks in and changes reality. He doesn’t critique the existing story, or lament about his boredom, like a critic. He just tells something different and invites other people into the new story he is telling.”

“I wish that you will have children together, and I wish that once or twice you will tell them about their Uncle Carlo that they never saw.”

“I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.”

“It is the story of all life that is holy and good to tell, and of us two-leggeds sharing in it with the four-leggeds and the wings of the air and of green things; for these are children of one mother and their father is one Spirit.”

“One day one of their number would write a book about all this, but none of them would believe it, because none of them would remember it that way.”