Quotes About Storytelling

In kindergarten, we'd tell stories with our toys. We'd set a timer for two hours because we knew that was how long a movie was.

Flaubert called himself a human pen; I would say that I am a human ear. When I walk down the street and catch words, phrases, and exclamations, I always think - how many novels disappear without a trace! Disappear into darkness.

In a novel, it's hard to keep track of everybody.

What you never want to do is have a story that doesn't track emotionally, because then you're going joke to joke and you're going to fatigue the audience. The only thing that's going to string them to the next joke is how successful the previous joke is.

There are just things you can explore in a movie that you can't in 22 minutes with a laugh track.

By the very nature of his art, which depends on invention and innovation, a story teller must depart from the beaten track and, having done so, occasionally startle and disagree with some of his associates. Healthy disagreement we must have.

Anyone who's been reading my stuff can see that there's a lot of tracks being laid for future stories.

I really believe in albums, even though some people believe the year of the album has passed. I love singular pop songs or tracks, but what really affects me most deeply is if there's an hour of music or 45 minutes of music that flows really well and tells a story.

Freedom to tell any story I want, with all the imaginary tools of my trade, is why I love writing novels. I love taking an idea, fleshing it out into a new world - and going on adventures with characters who day-dream themselves into existence and take on lives of their own.

If I just sit here, what am I going to do? I don't have a trade. I don't teach or anything. I just love to make up characters and gradually build a story around them.

I think what makes a good actor's director is the same thing that makes a good director. Acting is just one of the trades necessary to make a movie.

On historical you take the known facts, dramatize them, and then stitch them together by invention. It's a projective thing.

I've been putting together the story with Rob and putting all the details of it together and looking at all the various designs they have for the toys and stuff, it's pretty exciting.

When you're putting together a story, sometimes you just have to skip over the boring bits.

The muscles that writers need for film are very different from TV muscles. Now, when I hire the writers and put the writers' room together, I know where their muscles need to be.

One has to be able to twist and change and distort characters, play with them like clay, so everything fits together. Real people don't permit you to do that.

As far as the writing goes, I started telling stories as soon as I could talk, and started writing them down as soon as I could string words together.

I don't have a great respect for reality or getting the 'facts' as a means of putting together a story.

Filmmaking is a very complex form - ya know, acting, lighting, screenwriting, storytelling, music, editing - all these things have to come together.

I have not told the half of what I saw.

The world isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn't that make life a story?

If you can't travel to the developing world, look at helping to fund a woman with a small loan and follow her. Learn her story. Learn about the difference that you're making.

I believe the adventure game genre will never die any more than any type of storytelling would ever die.

Fiction is a sort of inter-human magic, allowing you to travel into a scene and feel it tingle on your skin.