Quotes About Stories

The way they knew that Bone Gap had gaps just wide enough for people to slip through, or slip away, leaving only their stories behind.

But what if this logical leap--these stressful things happened, and therefore life is crazy and unsustainable--limits our stories? The human brain is structured for loss aversion, and so negative moments stand out more starkly than positive moments, particularly if they fit a popular thesis.

I started wondering about life stories, how each one of us has one that isn't apparent at first glance, what we tell the world about ourselves and what we deliberately tuck away and never reveal.

The first series I wrote, 'L.A. Candy ' was always meant to be a three-book series, so when I started out it was all outlined that way and by the time I was done with the third book, I had become so involved and the process and the stories, I was a little bit sad to be done.

In the crisis moments, I was desperate to narrate. As I moved somewhere else spiritually, out of crisis and into a new odd calm, I was more peaceably floating through whatever was happening. I wanted to record moments, but not so intently to tell stories.

instead of spelling stories you spread silence, which was outside the alphabet.

Through stories and tales, we can bypass the egoistic conscious mind and see through the veil of our Limited Selves to a larger view of reality.

Why did I tell you so many stories? Because I wanted the world to make sense to you. I wanted to make sense of the world, for you. I wanted the world to make sense.

She was always doing that, telling him stories. Prying open cracks for magic to seep in, making the world a place of possibility. After she left, he had stopped believing all those fantasies. Wispy, false dreams that disintegrated in the morning's light. Now it occurs to him that, perhaps, there might be truth in them after all.

if there's one thing he remembers from stories, it's that people who offer help along your way—whether directing you to treasure or warning you of danger—should not be ignored.

Listen, I've been thinking. 8 million people. All those stories passing from mouth to ear. Would one person be compelled. One out of 8 million. A fraction of a fraction. But not nothing. Absorbing that story. Passing it on. Listen. Somewhere out there, saying to others at last. Listen. This isn't right. None of them are sure how this will work. Where they will go. How they will find their way. But it is not impossible and right now that feels like enough.

As the search continues for an understanding of the archetypal images, Jung would probably have us remember that an archetype is a hypothetical model, something like the 'pattern of behaviour' in biology. The portraits of the Goddesses in patriarchal mythology are, indeed, patterns of behaviour: They are stories told by men of how women react under patriarchy.

When a dog bites a man that is not news, but when a man bites a dog that is news.

As the poet says, all happy couples are alike, it's the unhappy ones who create the stories. I'm no longer a story. Happiness has made me fade into real life.

We're all made of stories. When they finally put us underground, the stories are what will go on. Not forever, perhaps, but for a time. It's a kind of immortality, I suppose, bounded by limits, it's true, but then so's everything.

There is probably a smell of roasted chestnuts and other good comfortable things all the time, for we are telling Winter Stories - Ghost Stories, or more shame for us - round the Christmas fire; and we have never stirred, except to draw a little nearer to it.

The fire? It has been alive as long as I have. We talk and think together all night long. It's like a book to me – the only book I ever learned to read; and many an old story it tells me. It's music, for I should know its voice among a thousand, and there are other voices in its roar. It has its pictures too. You don't know how many strange faces and different scenes I trace in the red-hot coals. It's my memory, that fire, and shows me all my life.

Stories, like all beings, have a life span. In their youth, their immune system is strong, but as time goes on they become increasingly unable to withstand the contrary evidence and experiences that pile up. In the end, I could no longer believe my own story. Who I had to be to maintain it—cynical, dismissive, patronizing, holding back from new experiences—became intolerable.

For four years, I listened to stories of intelligence failures, and it wasn't due to incompetence of anyone in the system, but that the system is so arcane.

Nicht die Kinder bloß, speist man mit Märchen ab.

History is not the past. It is the stories we tell about the past. How we tell these stories - triumphantly or self-critically, metaphysically or dialectally - has a lot to do with whether we cut short or advance our evolution as human beings.

Perhaps we will not only improve our understanding and analysis but we might also learn better ways to be human, better ways to live in the world. If we do not hope for something like that it seems to me that we ought not to be taking up so much of other people's time with our questions and our stories (G. Harvey 2011b).

I can tell you a dozen different stories. This is what we are: a collection of stories that we share, in common. This is what we are to each other.

I've lived here all my life and it's a fascinating part of the world. There are so many legends and fairy stories about it - spooks and demons and witches. That's natural, I suppose, considering the landscape. You can go out on a foggy morning and imagine that you're the only human being in the world, but you can hear weird animal noises quite close by and see shadows flitting around, behind the fog