Quotes About Stories

The notion that we've made vast moral progress and are now a less violent species is belied by our awesome powers of destruction, our military might, police forces as well-armed as soldiers. Without the threat of such violent force behind it, all law would be meaningless. I prefer stories that remind us of that. At its core, history is a story of violence at work. It all comes down to the old saw that, however much you can gain with a kind word, you can gain more with a kind word and a gun.

That is how we always keep our beloved dead alive, isn't it? By telling stories about them; true stories.

For years I used to bore my wife over lunch with stories about funny incidents.

I think people might be willing to pay for the special odor of corruption which, I hope, floats over my stories.

Vergeßt die Zeit, die man Geschichte nennt. Taucht ein in die Zeit der Geschichten

Haltet die Uhren an. Vergesst die Zeit. Ich will euch Geschichten erzählen.

It has been my experience that most human stories are circular rather than linear. Regardless of the path we choose, we somehow end up where we commenced - in part, I suspect, because the child who lives in us goes along for the ride.

Reading stories forces us to exercise our empathy and imagination muscles, and that helps us conceive what the Bible depicts or demands, helps us connect with others, helps us illustrate what the text teaches, and helps us apply the text's truths.

In my years of counseling and speaking with LGBT men and women, I have heard countless stories of cruel and heartless comments made by priests in homilies or in private conversations that betray the most hateful attitudes toward LGBT people. Over and over, I would hear the same question: "How can I stay in a church that treats me like this?

Plato suggested that some of the poets be driven out of the Republic because they had the power to weaken the guardians. Poets can make it impossible to have a war-unless they tell stories that agree with the "general line" established by the state. Poets who have no metaphysics, and therefore no political line, make war impossible because they have the irresistible ability to show the guardians that what seems necessary is only possible.

people like stories because they are good, not because they are true.

All stories are ghost stories, about things lost, people, memories, home, passion, youth, about things struggling to be seen, to be accepted by the living.

She'd heard the stories so often that she knew them by heart, could repeat them if she wanted, sometimes even dash in a detail or two neglected in the retelling [...]. The stories were familiar much as stories from her mother's girlhood were familiar, or stories from books. But none of them seemed connected with her in any fundamental way

They're not just recipes. They are family stories and memories.

Why bother with fictional characters and plots when the world was full of more marvelous stories that were true, with characters so fresh, so powerful, so new, that they stepped from into the narratives under their own power?

Theodore) Roosevelt confessed early fascination with girls'stories such as Little Man and Little Women and An Old-Fashioned Girl.

With kindness, playfulness, wit, and wisdom, he would explain "things hard for us to understand by stories—maxims—tales and figures. He would almost always point his lesson or idea by some story that was plain and near as that we might instantly see the force & bearing of what he said." He understood early on that concrete examples and stories provided the best vehicles for teaching.

And of course these days I feel like there is a nation of us - displaced southerners and children of the working class. We listen to Steve Earle, Mary J. Blige, and k.d. lang. We devour paperback novels and tell evil mean stories, value stubbornness above patience and a sense of humor more than a college education. We claim our heritage with a full appreciation of how often it has been disdained. And let me promise you, you do not want to make us angry.

Stories open the door to the darkened room. Language can carry us past the horror to the sense of purpose in a life that refuses to surrender to that darkness.

No lies, I thought, but lots of stories. True stories. True lies. Powerful stories, heroic tales, and cautionary fables.

stories are the one sure way I know to touch the heart and change the world.

Writing it all down was purging. Putting those stories on paper took them out of the nightmare realm and made me almost love myself for being able to finally face them. More subtly, it gave me a way to love the people I wrote about—even the ones I had fought with or hated.

Sex was dangerous, a trap, trashy as drinking whiskey in a paper cup or telling dirty stories in a loud whisper. Sex was a sure sign of having nothing better to hope for.

What a hell of a welcome. I'm sorry. But there's so much still to do outside before the weather closes, and we have to tackle all the dreary minutiæ on weapons and theory where all your knightly warriors start losing their tempers and you have to go through a deadly routine of light relief with competitions and war jokes and community singing, and long, long stories of rape and battle and Generals I have Known.