Quotes About Storytelling

Sometimes, violent details have been eliminated from fairy tales simply because they were deemed too graphic. So one does not, at the end of Disney's version of 'Cinderella,' see the stepsisters' eyes get pecked and pecked by doves, because Disney wanted to market the story for wholesome family viewing.

My advice for telling someone else's story is to try not to consciously bend the story in any particular direction - to listen with an open mind, to include the good with the bad, to attempt to quell one's biases and allow the person you're writing about to emerge as wholly as possible, warts and all.

To those of us who have seen all of Eric Rohmer's films, it is impossible not to remember when, where, with whom we saw each one. I even remember the second and third time I saw his films.

When you're a storyteller, part of the process of storytelling is the kind of communion you form with the audience to whom you're telling your story. If some segment of the audience doesn't like that story, it doesn't feel good.

I thought I was going to write fiction but I fell backwards into non-fiction. It started when I got locked out of two apartments in one day and I told the story to some friends, one of whom worked in the 'Village Voice' and asked me to turn it into an essay.

When faced with a challenge, happy families, like happy people, just add a new chapter to their life story that shows them overcoming the hardship. This skill is particularly important for children, whose identity tends to get locked in during adolescence.

I'm just a simple television and film producer who started off from her garage and whose only idea was to tell a story.

Geisha because when I was living in Japan, I met a fellow whose mother was a geisha, and I thought that was kind of fascinating and ended up reading about the subject just about the same time I was getting interested in writing fiction.

Journalists, whose job is to pull back and tell dramatic stories that bring power into focus, find it impossible because things like economic theory are both incomprehensible and, above all, boring. The same is true of 'management science.'

It's also possible to have two third person singular points of view, as represented by two characters through whose eyes the story is told in alternating chapters, say.

There is no reason why challenging themes and engaging stories have to be mutually exclusive - in fact, each can fuel the other. As a filmmaker, I want to entertain people first and foremost. If out of that comes a greater awareness and understanding of a time or a circumstance, then the hope is that change can happen.

I'm not interested in hearing yet another rapper tell me why he's the best. Why not tell a story set in a specific time and place? Create some characters, add a little bit of action and you're good to go.

Most fiction series are written so that the reader can come in at any point and not feel lost, but if you can start at the beginning, why not?

I was working for a Swedish TV show - I'm Swedish - who basically did kind of spectacular stories. It was almost like CBS '60 Minutes,' but a Swedish version where we actually did travel quite a lot. After a while, I realized that travel is the most fun part of this, so why not do it for a longer time and just go off and explore?

The thing is you can never sugarcoat anything, If you're going to tell a story, tell the truth. If you're going to tell something, why not tell it all?

The thing that I took away as an early fan from Bob Dylan was the storytelling aspects. He can tell some wicked stories.

Eric Ashcroft, a gentle, kind, popular man with a wicked sense of humour, was always modest about his wartime exploits, but eventually, with much prompting from his persistent son, he told me of his terrifying experience on D-Day.

I've made a couple of films that were a little too wide and non-specific - like 'The Doctor.'

Television has embraced so much in terms of storytelling and in terms of a wide array of characters conveying stories from different points of view.

Storytelling is the only studio movie where the censorship is perfectly clear, the only studio movie with a big red box covering up a shot. I take pride in that - and, of course, in having avoided the fate of Eyes Wide Shut.

When a character has as wide an audience and as rich a history as Batman, it's truly exciting to see him introduced into an all-new storytelling medium. BATMAN LIVE will bring a completely new experience to fans of the character - it's great to be able to give them something they haven't seen before.

HBO is undeniably a leader in meaningful storytelling in a wide array of formats. I'm honored to join the REAL SPORTS team and look forward to continuing my fervor for uncovering unique and impactful stories.

The 'Lost' pilot was wide enough and included enough things so that when Season Five came, and we spent half of the year in 1973, nobody cried foul. It felt like it was already a part of the DNA.

Great theater continues to bind us, one to the other, and most of us will travel far and wide to see a good story told well.