Quotes About Storytelling

And later I thought, I can't think how anyone can become a director without learning the craft of cinematography.

Girls are the best readers in the world. Reading is really a way of kind of escaping so deeply into yourself and pursuing your own thoughts within the construct of a story.

At the end of the day, my life isn't about other people's work. I've got to stop giving stuff away. I've got my own stories to tell, and a great need to tell them. I've got these images, these thoughts in my head, and I need to find a way to cope with them.

If somebody gave you several thousand dollars and nothin' to do but write, would you be a writer then? Would you tell your stories, your family's stories, then?

How can even the best novelist or playwright invent someone like Augustus Caesar or Catherine the Great, Galileo or Florence Nightingale? How can screenwriters create better action stories or human dramas than exist, thousand upon thousand, throughout the many centuries of recorded history?

While someone with the first person knowledge is still alive, while records are still available, while relatives of witnesses can come forward, the stories must be told.

Referring to an event in an untold story is a powerful technique rarely used.

battle the clock with a set of focusing questions: Why does the story matter? What's the point? Why is the story being told? What does the story say about life, the world, the times we live in?

Great Stories for Children

William Henry Davies wrote these lines in 1911, and they ring true even over a century later. It is the truth; we really don't have the time to stand and stare. I always think of this when I don't have the luxury of time and am told to travel by airplanes, usually for book fairs and literature festivals. I wish I could take the train to every destination I travel to. There would be so much more to see, and many more stories to tell. The first

My major allegiance has been to storytelling, not to history.

I want to make movies that pierce people's hearts and touch them in some way, even if it's just for the night while they're in the cinema in that moment, I want to bring actual tears to their eyes and goosebumps to their skin.

a gang of unpredictable ruffians by day who turned to enthralling storytellers after dark. "I would sometimes join them, and listen for a great part of the night to some of the finest fairy tales and most romantic legends it has ever been my fortune to hear.

I have just described an unforgettable event in my life, and yet I hardly ever get a chance to speak of it. It doesn't fit the framework of social discourse.

big stories love little words to fly around in

Sometimes when she told stories about the past her eyes would get teary from all the memories she had, but they weren't tears. She wasn't crying. They were just the memories, leaking out.

If the character is true, the movie will fall into place. Or at least that's what you hope.

you know: CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF HUGS IS THE ENTIRE REASON I EVER ENGAGE IN ANY NARRATIVE, FICTIONAL OR OTHERWISE??

Why didn't you tell us you were the Alexander Black who can stand atop a cantering horse and shoot a hole through a plum at a hundred paces?" With a snort, Alec jerked his gaze away. "More like a cantaloupe. The thing shrinks with every retelling. Soon they'll have me shooting at a mustard seed.

Postcritical naivete is the ability to hear the biblical stories once again as true stories, even as one knows that they may not be factually true and that their truth does not depend upon their factuality.

If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending... But if it's a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don't tell a story only to yourself. There's always someone else. Even when there is no one.

There's the story, then there's the real story, then there's the story of how the story came to be told. Then there's what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too.

By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you, believe you're there, I believe you into being. Because I'm telling you this story I will your existence. I tell, therefore you are. So I will go on. So I will myself to go on.

I would like to believe this is a story I'm telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.