Quotes About Storytelling

I think that technological tools that filmmakers use to tell stories, in a perfect world, need to become invisible. When it's brand new and it's never been seen before and you're birthing this stuff, it's very much on people's minds.

Sometimes when I find myself very irritated about a topic, I know it's my next book.

As far as the balance between being a journalist, being an artist, being a storyteller - documentary filmmakers are all three of those things. The balance between them is affected by the film itself, the topic of the film.

When I do feature films, I usually have a very strong sense of what I want to do. I have topics and subjects, so I go for it. I even know technically what I want to. But in the case of documentary, the story comes to me.

I have very happy memories of fairy tales. My mother used to take me to the library in Toronto to check out the fairy tales. And she was an actress, so she used to act out for me the different characters in all these fairy tales.

The Joker that Christopher Nolan created in 'The Dark Knight' had the scar across his mouth, and the first time you heard his explanation for it, he makes you believe that's how he got it. But then you get into the film, and every time he talks about his scar, it's a totally different story.

A saying, since a saying arises always from the mouths of adults when a person was just a listening child, was supposed to carry you back there, like a magic trick or a scrap of a story, or something with something else still sticking to it.

Once you've established where you are, you go to the character and elaborate on expressions and action.

Anyone can write a story based on the kind of horror where you see a guy in car and then there's the bad guy in the back seat. It's infantile to rely on that for telling a story. That's like going to bed and thinking there's a monster under your bed. It's silly.

una historia de mí; quizá no sea correcta, pero cuéntame de mí. Necesito una versión de mí».

Father may have been wanting in some things, but here he was masterful. Night upon night, I marveled at his power to hold listeners in rapt attention. He could tell a story with such detail, such flourish, that afterwards a man could swear it had been his own memory, and not a tale at all.

Slow or fast, no matter how you dance, as long as each step narrates the emotions of the heart

The radio returned our culture to the experience of the tribal campfire with its shared stories, songs, and banter.

We all tell stories--to ourselves and to each other. Some of learn to tell only the most interesting bits.

... If we don't tell strange stories, when something strange happens we won't believe it.

Saying my story makes me want to change it, make it sound pretty the way I do with the stories I tell the workers. I'd like it to have a beginning as grand as a ball and an ending in a whisper, like a mother tucking in a child for sleep.

In some ways, I don't feel as if I had a choice. Looking back at my childhood, even before I could read and write, I was making up stories. I love reading and I love telling stories, and the times in my life when I've tried to ignore that part of me, I've gone a little crazy. Characters start tugging on my sleeves, words start haunting me, and I feel generally unsatisfied. Really, being a writer sounds more like a mental illness than a professional choice.

Her eyes were distant, and she seemed to be listening to that voice that first told her the story, a mother, sister, or aunt. Then her voice, like her singing, cut through the crickets and crackling fire.

I mean, without the antagonist, there would be no story! It'd be like: 'Once upon a time there was a girl who wanted to be loved, so she met a prince and got married and lived Happily Ever After, The End'? That's not a story; that's a bumper sticker.

Ani told them all...telling more than needed telling, the stories clarifying and unifying themselves in her mind as she let them spill out of her mouth.

I wish stories were kinder to their characters," Maddie said. "But I guess trouble is more interesting to read about.

1 Pardon this highly unusual footnote, but I must break the Narrator's "fourth wall" to explain that this story will be "tricksy" in more than one way. Kitty Cheshire does not like being narrated. She seems to be aware of my watching her, and she resists. At times her thoughts and feelings squirm away from my inspection. I shall do my best, however, to narrate a completely true story about Ever After's most elusive character.

If we don't tell strange stories, when something strange happens we won't believe it.

Lush, detailed, total-immersion storytelling.–Kirkus Review