telling your story Quotes

“There are probably a number of ways to tell your story right, and someone else may be able to tell you whether or not you’ve found one of these ways.”

“For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness.”

“The darkness outside is what the old folks have been talking about. It’s what they’ve come from. It’s what they endure. The child knows that they won’t talk any more because if he knows too much about what’s happened to them, he’ll know too much too soon, about what’s going to happen to him.”

“Some stories don’t need telling.”

“Reader, it is not to awaken sympathy for myself that I am telling you truthfully what I suffered in slavery. I do it to kindle a flame of compassion in your hearts for my sisters who are still in bondage, suffering as I once suffered.”

“You’re both the fire and the water that extinguishes it. You’re the narrator, the protagonist, and the sidekick. You’re the storyteller and the story told. You are somebody’s something, but you are also your you.”

“But I was beginning to learn that your life is a story told about you, not one that you tell. Of course, you pretend to be the author. You have to.”

“I was speaking loudly, I realized, and I sounded almost angry, certainly righteous, but it was such a relief. I’d started with a lie—the cat box—and turned that into a surprising burst of pure truth, and I realized why criminals talked too much, because it feels so good to tell your story to a stranger.”

“These giants of the forest are something to behold. Some have been growing for a thousand years, and each tree contains its own story of the centuries’ long struggle for survival. Looking at the annular rings of the wood, you can tell what seasons they have been through. In some drought years they almost perished, as growth is barely perceptible. In others, the growth was far greater.”

“I shall tell you what occurred, and let you judge for yourself.”

″[…] I’m glad He sent you,” she said, pointing to the sky. “This story just got to be told! Praise the Lord, people got to know about Henrietta!”

“From everything you told me, both of us did some pretty wrong stuff when we were younger. And both of us had second chances.”

You have no control. Who lives, who dies, who tells your 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.

“People talk easily to me. . . I am like a stranger on the bus and they get hooked on having a listener. They go too far because I am one listener who is in no position to judge or find fault . . . I listen eagerly, warmly, because I care. They tell me everything.”

“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.”

″... on this great day of deliverance, on this day of emancipation, let’s us tell ourselves our story...”