Quotes About Storytelling

So many versions of just one memory, and yet none of them were right or wrong. Instead, they were all pieces. Only when fitted together, edge to edge, could they even begin to tell the whole story.

See, he began, leaning back into the booth, I was at this car dealership today, and I saw this girl. It was an across-a-crowded-room kind of thing. A real moment, you know? I rolled my eyes. Chloe said, And this would be Remy? Right. Remy, he said, repeating my name with a smile. Then, as if we were happy honeymooners recounting our story for strangers he added, Do you want to tell the next part? No, I said flatly.

There was no short answer to this; like so much else, it was a long story. But what really makes any story real is knowing someone will hear it. And understand.

The worst part was that I had things I wanted to tell my mother, too many to count, but none of them would go down so easy. She'd been through too much, between my siters-I could not add to the weight. So instead, I did my best to balance it out, bit by bit, word by word, story by story, even if none of them were true.

Sitting there, watching my sister, I wondered which was harder, in the end. The act of telling, or who you told it to. Or maybe if, when you finally got itout, the story was really all that mattered.

There was no way to take the story back, folding it neatly into the place I'd kept it all this time. No matter what else happened, from here on out, I would always remember Wes, because with this telling, he'd become part of that story, of my story, too.

Well, there are other versions of the story," I say, thinking out loud. "Besides the throwing and the kissing." "Like what?" Frederic asks. I bite my lip. This is going to be worse than the frog-legs conversation. "Well, there's the one where the princess chops off the frog's head, and then he turns into a prince," I say all in a rush. Frederic's eyes almost pop out of his head. "I do not wish to try that one.

FEE, FI-- Magnus begins. Oh wait, I already said that, he adds.

Don't make a wall of glass between your play and the people watching. Don't forget they were once children, who enjoyed being read to, or sung to sleep.

To my faithful readers, because a book is like a pie—the only thing more satisfying than cooking up the story is knowing that somebody might be out there eating it up with a spoon.

I marvel at these young people: drinking their coffee, they tell clear, plausible stories. If they are asked what they did yesterday, they aren't embarrassed: they bring you up to date in a few words. If I were in their place, I'd fall over myself. It's true that no one has bothered about how I spend my time for a long while. When you live alone you no longer know what it is to tell something: the plausible disappears at the same time as the friends.

But if your story is about the inner workings of competitive quilting, you'd better make it short and extra witty. People drift off when you stop talking about stuff that isn't, well, them. The

Sono felice e soddisfatto, e dunque un pessimo narratore.

Let's not despise story-telling. Like all novelists, I have this low desire to tell people stories.

Reading these books raises what will be a recurring theme: given that they tell a story rather than give instruction on what to believe or to do, the path from the biblical text to religious belief and practice in Judaism or Christianity today is far from straightforward.

Would you care to sit down here and tell me all about it?

Keep a diary, but don't just list all the things you did during the day. Pick one incident and write it up as a brief vignette. Give it color, include quotes and dialogue, shape it like a story with a beginning, middle and end—as if it were a short story or an episode in a novel. It's great practice. Do this while figuring out what you want to write a book about. The book may even emerge from within this running diary.

When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own.

Those who read or listen to our stories see everything as through a lens. This lens is the secret of narration, and it is ground anew in every story, ground between the temporal and the timeless. If we storytellers are Death's Secretaries, we are so because, in our brief mortal lives, we are grinders of these lenses.

Much of what happens to us in life is nameless because our vocabulary is too poor. Most stories get told out loud because the storyteller hopes that the feeling of the story can transform a nameless event into a familiar or intimate one.

Like most adventures, it was best experienced in the telling, rather than the execution.

Once upon a time – for that is how all stories should begin – there was a boy who lost his mother.

Sometimes the snake's-hands in a story are the best part, if the story is a long one.

When you return home, you'll tell the story of how you sought it and failed, and that story will be told and told again. And when you're dead yourself, the story will go on being told, and in that telling you'll speak and act and be alive again.