Quotes About Storytelling

Yahweh was, among many other things, an allegorist.

Some would sing as they killed the bear, so that the bear, while dying, could say: "I like that song.

Lettore, io ti voglio raccontare, nero su bianco, una nuova storia. Su bianco e nero, oltre a ragionare, è bene che ci sia buona memoria, perché chi vive senza ricordare, vive una vita cieca e senza gloria.

Do you do this because you live such short lives? Tell yourselves wild tales of what might happen tomorrow, and feel all the feelings of events that will never happen? Perhaps to make up for the pasts you cannot recall, you invent futures that will not exist.

I found myself speaking softly as if I were telling an old tale to a young child. And giving it a happy ending, when all know that tales never end, and the happy ending is but a moment to catch one's breath before the next disaster.

Well,the fun part of being a writer is that it's like making a wonderful film, with no limit on my budget. I can design the sets, the costume, the lightings, I write the script, and then I get to perform all the roles as I step into each character's skin, zip up, and adopt that point of view. So, to me, they are all compelling and fascinating.

I found myself speaking softly as if I were telling an old tale to a young child. And giving it a happy ending, when all know that tales never end, and the happy ending is but a moment to catch one's breath before the next disaster. But I didn't want to think about that. I didn't want to wonder what would happen next.

I've been the reader sending that letter or small gift to a writer I've never met. I sent them because I wanted that writer to know that I'd met their characters. Their characters had become my friends. I hadn't read a story; I'd shared a life.

The story is always better than your ability to write it.

Doesn´t matter who you are or what you believe. Everybody has a ghost story

Make your mess your message.

They live both above and below ground, joining Skyworld to the earth. Plants know how to make food from light and water, and then they give it away. I like to imagine that when Skywoman scattered her handful of seeds across Turtle Island, she was sowing sustenance for the body and also for the mind, emotion, and spirit: she was leaving us teachers. The plants can tell us her story; we need to learn to listen.

Children hearing the Skywoman story from birth know in their bones the responsibility that flows between humans and the earth.

I love to hear elder Tom Porter hold a circle of listeners in the bowl of his hand.

In winter, when the green earth lies resting beneath a blanket of snow, this is the time for storytelling. The storytellers begin by calling upon those who came before who passed the stories down to us, for we are only messengers.

What if you were a teacher but had no voice to speak your knowledge? What if you had no language at all and yet there was something you needed to say? Wouldn't you dance it? Wouldn't you act it out? Wouldn't your every movement tell the story? In time you would be so eloquent that just to gaze upon you would reveal it all. And so it is with these silent green lives.

Writing had always helped her, before. It always clarified her feelings and her thoughts, and she never felt like she could understand something fully until the very minute that she'd written about it, as if each story was one she told herself and her readers, at the same time.

No coincidence, no story.

It's about the players, their journey, how they begin, how they evolve, and the point at which their stories cease to be told. There is always another monster to be slain, another trial to overcome. There is always another chapter.

If a storyteller worried about the facts - my dear Lucian, how could he ever get at the truth?

Any fool can tell a story. Take a few odds and ends of things that happen to you, dress them up, shuffle them about, add a dash of excitement, a little color, and there you have it.

Children may not understand all that's happening below the surface of a story. It doesn't matter. Because even though they may not be able to define or verbalize it, they sense there's something more than meets the eye; on an almost subliminal level, they're aware of a richness of texture, or meaning and emotion -- a richness that, in a great book, is inexhaustible. And the child may well come back to it again and again, perhaps long after he's stopped being a child.

The muse in charge of fantasy wears good, sensible shoes.

And you know what, Thin Elderly? Sad parts are important. If I ever get to train a new young dreamgiver, that's one of the things I'll teach: that you must include the sad parts, because they are part of the story, and they have to be part of the dreams.