Quotes About Stories

Stories wanted to be read, David's mother would whisper. They needed it. It was the reason they forced themselves from their world into ours. They wanted us to give them life.

Before she became ill, David's mother would often tell him that stories were alive. They weren't alive in the way that people were alive, or even dogs or cats. People were alive whether you chose to notice them or not, while dogs tended to make you notice them if they decided that you weren't paying them enough attention. Cats, meanwhile, were very good at pretending people didn't exist at all when it suited them, but that was another matter entirely.

Stories were different, though: they came alive in the telling. Without a human voice to read them aloud, or a pair of wide eyes following them by flashlight beneath a blanket, they had no real existence in our world.

And the Crooked Man heard her dreams, because that was where he wandered. His place was the land of the imagination, the world where stories began.

On Sundays, the priest would often explain the Bible story that had just been read out loud. David didn't always listen because the priest was very dull indeed, but it was surprising what the priest could see in stories that seemed quite simple to David. In fact, the priest appeared to like making them more complicated than they were, probably because it meant that he could talk for longer.

The stories in books hate the stories contained in newspapers.

Lenda é uma coisa, realidade é outra. Aquela, nós contamos; esta escondemos. Criamos monstros na esperança de que as lições contidas nas histórias nos sirvam de guia quando nos deparamos com o que há de mais terrível na vida. Inventamos nomes para nossos medos e rezamos para não encontrar nada pior do que aquilo que nós mesmos criamos.

he would talk to them of stories and books, and explain to them how stories wanted to be told and books wanted to be read, and how everything that they ever needed to know about life and the land of which he wrote, or about any land or realm that they could imagine, was contained in books.

Newspaper stories were as insubstantial as smoke, as long-lived as mayflies. They did not take root but were instead like weeds that crawled along the ground, stealing the sunlight from more deserving tales.

These stories were very old, as old as people, and they had survived because they were very powerful indeed. These were the tales that echoed in the head long after the books that contained them were cast aside. They were both an escape from reality and an alternative reality themselves.

He would talk to them of stories and books, and explain to them how stories wanted to be told and books wanted to be read, and how everything that they ever needed to know about life and the land of which he wrote, or about any land or realm that they could imagine, was contained in books. And some of the children understood, and some did not.

Stories wanted to be read, David's mother would whisper. They needed it. It was the reason they forced themselves from their world into ours. They wanted us to give them life.

I could be listening to Painted Red weave the stories of the saints in her rich roomy voice, and beginning to see how all those stories were in some way one story: a simple story about being alive, and being a man; a story that, simple as it was, couldn't itself be told.

Stories were the way People lived. Like paths, they could be traveled in any direction, yet always ran from beginning to end.

Stories inside, each one nested within all the others; as though all the stories we had ever been inside of lay still nested inside of us, back to the beginning, whenever that is or was. Stories are what the history not made of time is made of. Funny

Dar Oakley said nothing. Stories were the way People lived. Like paths, they could be traveled in any direction, yet always ran from beginning to end.

We're made of stories now, brother. It's why we never die even if we do.

We're made of stories now brother. Its why we don't die even when we do.

My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.

The stories of wine lords who trade wine on intimidation or food critics who trade free meals for reviews those are the stories of my life. I am telling the stories of my life in a true way.

Be serious. Life hurts. Reflect what hurts. I don't mean that you can't also be funny, or have fun, but at the end of the day, stories are about what you lose.

But you will be hard-pressed to find more than a few novels, films, news stories, and TV shows that dare to depict life as a gift whose purpose is to enrich the human soul.

Good writers show rather than tell. Stories are told in action. Life stories are no different.

I wrote to explain my own life to myself, stories are the vessels I use to interpret the world to myself.