Quotes About Storytelling

Fiction and non-fiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons I do not fully understand, fiction dances out of me. Non-fiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning.

I would like to write one of those sophisticated stories in which even though nothing much happens there's lots to write about.

She remembers, for instance (though she hadn't been there), what the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man did to Estha in Abhilash Talkies. She remembers the taste of the tomato sandwiches—Estha's sandwiches, that Estha ate—on the Madras Mail to Madras.

NOTHING I would like to write one of those sophisticated stories in which even though nothing much happens there's lots to write about. That can't be done in Kashmir. It's not sophisticated, what happens here. There's too much blood for good literature. Q 1: Why is it not sophisticated? Q 2: What is the acceptable amount of blood for good literature?

Nas Grandes Histórias você sabem quem vive, quem morre, quem encontra o amor, quem não encontra. E, mesmo assim, você quer ouvir de novo.

You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don't. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won't. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn't. And yet you want to know again.

All we ask is to be allowed to remain the writers of our own story. That story is ever changing. Over the course of our lives, we may encounter unimaginable difficulties. Our concerns and desires may shift. But whatever happens, we want to retain the freedom to shape our lives in ways consistent with our character and loyalties.

For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens. Measurements of people's minute-by-minute

All we ask is to be allowed to remain writers of our own story. That story is ever changing. Over the course of our lives, we may encounter unimaginable difficulties. Our concerns and desires may shift. But whatever happens, we want to retrain the freedom to shape our lives in ways consistent with our character and loyalties.

For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments. (...) And in stories, endings matter. (...) Endings matter, not just for the person but, perhaps even more, for the ones left behind.

Our most cruel failure is in how we treat the sick and the aged is the failure to recognise that they have priorities beyond merely being safe and living longer; that the chance to shape one's story is essential to sustaining meaning in life.

Kahneman termed the "Peak-End rule": an average of the pain experienced at just two moments—the single worst moment of the procedure and the very end. [...] Your remembering self is attempting to recognize not only the peaks of joy and valleys of misery but also how the story works out as a whole. That is profoundly affected by how things ultimately turn out.

were passed on to later generations in bowdlerized and abridged versions as stories for children. The same happened to Gulliver's Travels and to Moby Dick, to Robinson Crusoe, to—Children appreciate a good story. They don't enquire about symbolism or archetypes, and they never read critics.

History existed to be retold, with more panache but not necessarily greater accuracy.

in the absence of facts, myth rushes in

Stacy Schiff

To me, Writing is Fun. It doesn't matter what you're writing, as long as you can tell a story.

To my way of thinking, whether it's a superhero movie or a romance or a comedy or whatever, the most important thing is you've got to care about the characters. You've got to understand the characters and you've got to be interested. If the characters are interesting, you're half-way home.

Nosotros contamos la verdad por cuanto en los cuentos siempre triunfa la verdad.

I sat down and tried to write a story. Ian MacArthur is a wonderful sweet fellow who wears glasses and peers out of them with delight. That was the first sentence. The problem was that I just couldn't think of the next one. After cleaning my room three times, I decided to leave Ian alone for a while because I was starting to get mad at him.

I really want to be a writer but I don't know what to write about You could write about us

And he made a home run, and his team won the state championship. The greatest thing about this story is that every time my dad tells it, it never changes. He's not one to exaggerate.

Not one word of the following is true

It is probably best for us not to concentrate in too literal a fashion on the temporal structure of myth.