storytelling Quotes

“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?”

“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?”

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

“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.”

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!

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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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.

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

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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. ”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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….‘”

“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.”

“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.”

″‘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.”

“So you’ll read to him from one of your books, and he’ll ask to see the pictures. When he looks at the pictures, he’ll get so excited he’ll want to draw one of his own.”

“By the time they woke up in the morning, breakfast was coming down. After a brief shower of orange juice, low clouds of sunny-side eggs moved in followed by pieces of toast. Butter and jelly sprinkled down for the toast. And most of the time it rained milk afterwards. ”

″ The only thing different about Chewandswallow was its weather. It came three times a day, at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Everything that everyone ate came from the sky”

“But it never rained rain. It never snowed snow. And it never blew just wind.”

“Many houses had been damaged by giant meatballs, stores were boarded up and there was no more school for the children.”

″ It’s funny, but even as we were sliding down the hill we thought we saw a giant pat of butter at the top, and we could almost smell the mashed potatoes. ”

″ So a decision was made to abandon the town of Chewandswallow. It was a matter of survival.”

I’ve learned that this tale is conceived with help from the kids of the Gaiman and McKean. Maddy Gaiman has a nightmare of wolves scratching the walls of their house. Gaiman helped Maddy cope with this fear by storytelling, making strategies to escape from the wolves or something like that—and these plotting became a part of the story.

The story falls flat on the scare factor as the wolves are only perceived as the usual unwelcome guests in the family’s home and the story is slow-paced as it took time for the family to decide to rush back to their home.

“And that makes a story that’s really not bad! But it still could be better. Suppose that I add…”

“There was so much to tell, I JUST COULDN’T BEGIN!”

“There was once, in the country of Alifbay, a sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name. It stood by a mournful sea full of glumfish, which were so miserable to eat that they made people belch with melancholy even though the skies were blue.”

“Different parts of the Ocean contained different sorts of stories, and as all the stories that had ever been told and many that were still in the process of being invented could be found here, the Ocean of the Streams of Story was in fact the biggest library in the universe.”

“It was Monday morning, it was pouring with rain, and it was everyone’s first day back at St Barty’s Primary School after the Christmas holidays. That’s why Class Three were in a bad temper.”

“Mr Majeika pointed a finger to him. And Hamish Bigmore vanished. There was complete silence. Class Three stared at the empty space where Hamish Bigmore had been sitting. Then Pandora Green pointed at the glass tank, and began to shout: ‘Look! Look! A frog! A frog! One of the tadpoles has turned into a frog!”

“It doesn’t matter,′ said Jack. ‘And I’m not telling you any more because I’m going to bed.’ A week passed and Jach ate lunch with Tashi every day. And every day he heard a marvellous adventure.”

“But at the end of the week he heard the best adventure of all. ‘Listen to what happened to Tashi yesterday,’ Jack said to Mum and Dad at dinner. ‘Last night there was a knock at Tashi’s door and when he opened it, guess who was standing there!”

“So the wolf huffed, and he puffed, and he blew the house in... and ate the pig up.”

“Mustafa rode on the donkey’s back, and Nasreddine walked behind. The path was still muddy from the last rainfall, so the young boy took oof his slippers to keep them from getting dirty.”

“Anancy Spiderman had no idea what he was going to do today. But he knew something would happen if he started moving. He left his house and started walking along the road.”

“I do remember,” he said, “only Pooh doesn’t very well, so that’s why he likes having it told to him again. Because then it’s a real story and not just a remembering.”

In after-years he liked to think that he had been in Very Great Danger during the Terrible Flood, but the only danger he had really been in was in the last half-hour of his imprisonment, when Owl, who had just flown up, sat on a branch of his tree to comfort him, and told him a very long story about an aunt who had once laid a seagull’s egg by mistake, and the story went on and on, rather like this sentence, until Piglet who was listening out of his window without much hope, went to sleep quietly and naturally, slipping slowly out of the window towards the water until he was only hanging on by his toes, at which moment luckily, a sudden loud squawk from Owl, which was really part of the story, being what his aunt said, woke the Piglet up and just gave him time to jerk himself back into safety and say, “How interesting, and did she?” when—well, you can imagine his joy when at last he saw the good ship, Brain of Pooh (Captain, C. Robin; 1st Mate, P. Bear) coming over the sea to rescue him.

Properly speaking, I oughtn’t to explain till the last chapter, but I always think that that’s so unfair.

Ruby Gillis is rather sentimental. She puts too much lovemaking into her stories and you know too much is worse than too little. Jane never puts any because she says it makes her feel so silly when she had to read it out loud. Jane’s stories are extremely sensible. Then Diana puts too many murders into hers. She says most of the time she doesn’t know what to do with the people so she kills them off to get rid of them.