Quotes About Stories

I like both Greek and Egyptian. More Greek stories have survived, so we know more about them. They've always been my favorite. On the other hand, I like the Egyptian stories because they're not as commonly known and they have an exotic flavour.

It's a human desire to be scared. On some level, that's how we survived - that sense of fear and danger. Our lives are much safer, so we gravitate to those stories that makes us feel those things and learn lessons, even if it's just, 'What are you doing? Don't go in the basement!'

College is the reward for surviving high school. Most people have great fun stories from college and nightmare stories from high school.

You see the images that the public is demanding. Why more reality-based TV? You'd think that after the first Survivor it would have gone away, but it hasn't. The public demands it because they get all caught up in the personal stories, and want to see more and more.

Survivor has been such a hit, and out of that have come so many interesting stories from people that we don't see on the big screen. We have helped make them incredible celebrities.

Why more reality-based TV? You'd think that after the first 'Survivor' it would have gone away, but it hasn't. The public demands it because they get all caught up in the personal stories and want to see more and more. Every new 'Survivor' is going to show you more.

My grandparents, like many genocide survivors, took most of their stories to their graves.

I suspect that we get used to particular sorts of stories being presented in particular sorts of ways, and we're so used to interpreting them and understanding what it is they're doing that we think of those forms and styles as faithful, complete depictions of reality.

I still read romance, and I read suspense. I read them both. And part of it is, I like stories with strong characters, and I like stories where there's closure at the end. And I like stories where there's hope. That's a kind of empowerment. I think romance novels are very empowering, and I think suspense novels are, too.

I could not - and I still cannot - see a sustainable career as a filmmaker in which I focus fully on our gay stories.

I know there are a lot of tough stories out there about Sinatra, but he was so sweet to Bobby and me. He even had us replace him one night in the main room. He didn't get Sammy or Dean; he said, 'I want the kids to do it.' Man, what an honor.

I'm quite adept at writing two or sometimes even three stories at once. So if I get stuck on one story, I switch the next and let my subconscious work on unraveling any plot problems from another story.

Playing with different genres and perspectives and ways of telling stories is one of the perks of being a novelist, but at the same time, I want precision. And in order to be precise about stuff, you have to get personal. Symbolism is very boring.

I write on sacred stories, symbols and rituals of all cultures - European, American and Chinese - but my audiences, typically, like me to focus on India.

The first writing I did was short short stories for a newspaper syndicate for which I was paid five dollars a piece on publication.

The first syndicating I tried was when two partners and I created a production company in 1952. We wanted to syndicate famous Bible stories and sell them for $25 a show.

I've heard some writers say that they are obsessed with certain ideas and that they find themselves writing around the same obsession again and again, but telling different stories to get at that same idea. I'm beginning to think that I suffer from this syndrome, too.

When it all boils down, it's about embracing each others' stories and maybe even finding that synergy to collaborate for the common good.

Much as there are things about our own life stories that we can learn only from the systematic study of our dreams, there are things about the human condition that we can learn only from a systematic study of literature.

When someone doesn't show up, the people who wait sometimes tell stories about what might have happened and come to half believe the desertion, the abduction, the accident. Worry is a way to pretend that you have knowledge or control over what you don't--and it surprises me, even in myself, how much we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown. Perhaps fantasy is what you fill up maps with rather than saying that they too contain the unknown.

The stars we are given. The constellations we make. That is to say, stars exist in the cosmos, but constellations are the imaginary lines we draw between them, the readings we give the sky, the stories we tell.

Stories are compasses and architecture, we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice.

This often has a lot to do with racism and sexism, and the stories we are "allowed" to tell as people of colour.

Everyone has a story to tell. You just have to listen.