Quotes About Storytelling

I want to encourage kids to speak up, to tell their stories. That is the only way people will know what we have to go through. Believe in yourself. Someone once told me being different isn't bad - different is just different!

Simply by recounting their stories and breaking that silence, survivors of sexual assault strike a powerful blow against their assailants.

Launching into a long story involving a French tourist, a Buddhist monk, and a particularly shaggy yak, Hall delivered the punch line with an impish squint, paused a beat for effect, then threw his head back in a booming, contagious laugh, unable to contain his delight in his own yarn. I liked him immediately.

A short story is a sprint, a novel is a marathon. Sprinters have seconds to get from here to there and then they are finished. Marathoners have to carefully pace themselves so that they don't run out of energy (or in the case of the novelist-- ideas) because they have so far to run. To mix the metaphor, writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage.

Your story is your soul. The longer you're with someone, the more you trust them, the more you're willing to tell. I believe when you find your real partner, you tell them everything until there's nothing left. Then you start from the beginning again, only this time it's their story as well as yours.

To tugboat was to try Minna's patience. Any time you pushed your luck, said too much, overstayed a welcome, or overestimated the usefulness of a given method or approach, you were guilty of having tugged the boat. Tugboating was most of all a dysfunction of wits and storytellers, and a universal one. Anybody who thought himself funny would likely tug a boat here or there. Knowing when a joke or verbal gambit was right at its limit, quitting before the boat had been tugged, that was art.

Response to the question by The Atlantic: Who is the Greatest Fictional Character of All Time? God is the author of all the other characters, and of all the other authors of all the other characters, unless he doesn't exist--and said existence, in its disputation, is one of the greatest ongoing narratives in human storytelling.

I have so much to say to you. I want to begin at the beginning, because that is what you deserve. I want to tell you everything, without leaving out a single detail. But where is the beginning? And what is everything?

I will describe my eyes and then begin the story. My eyes are blue and resplendent. Now I will begin the story.

Our stories are so fundamental to us that it's easy to forget that we choose them.

He invented stories so fantastic she had to believe. Of cours, she was only a child, still removing the dust from her first death. What else could she do? And he was already accumulating the dust of his second death. What else could he do?

Food serves two parallel purposes: it nourishes and it helps you remember. Eating and storytelling are inseparable—the saltwater is also tears; the honey not only tastes sweet, but makes us think of sweetness; the matzo is the bread of our affliction.

It's just that sometimes we make things up just to talk

I was thankful, said my father, for the make-believe.

I love that story, because it shows how ignorant people can be. And also because I love tortoises.

Jonathan Safran Foer

Gli abitanti del villaggio diventarono incarnazioni di quella leggenda che avevano ascoltato tante volte.

We could retell our stories and make them better, more representational or aspirational. Or we could choose to tell different stories. The world itself had another chance.

I want to tell you everything, without leaving out a single detail. But where is the beginning? And what is everything?

Kindern erzählt man Geschichten zum Einschlafen - Erwachsenen, damit sie aufwachen

The years go by, and I've told the story so many times that I'm not sure anymore whether I actually remember it or whether I just remember the words I tell it with.

The famed author Robert Lewis Stevenson declared that he'd trained his Brownies to be writers. As he slept, they would whisper fantastic plots in his ear -- for example, the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and the diabolical Mr. Hyde, and that episode in Olalla when a young man from an old Spanish family bites his sister's hand.

Ah,' said the journalist, 'so the entire thing is your own invention. I thought it was true because you gave the name of the street.' I did not dare tell him that the naming of streets is not much of a feat.

The years pass and I've told this story so many times I no longer know whether I remember it as it was or whether it's only my words I'm remembering.