Quotes About Storytelling

Most science fiction seemed to be written for people who already liked science fiction; I wanted to write stories for anyone, anywhere, living at any time in the history of the world.

Writers, unlike most people, tell their best lies when they are alone.

The fundamental purpose of storytelling is to pass the time, which is infinite, slow, and weighs heavy in our hands. When the first storyteller, having told the first story, fell silent, somebody sitting there by the fire said, Then what happened? and the Age of Sequels began.

Horror grows impatient, rhetorically, with the Stoic fatalism of Ecclesiastes. That we are all going to die, that death mocks and cancels every one of our acts and attainments and every moment of our life histories, this knowledge is to storytelling what rust is to oxidation; the writer of horror holds with those who favor fire. The horror writer is not content to report on death as the universal system of human weather; he or she chases tornadoes. Horror is Stoicism with a taste for spectacle.

Of all the tricks played by storytellers on their willing victims, the cheapest is the deception known in English as The End. An ending is an arbitrary thing, an act of cowardice or fatigue, an expedient disguised as an aesthetic choice or, worse, a moral commentary on the finitude of life.

Sorrow, irritation, doubt, anxiety, or any other turbulent emotion that might otherwise keep her from sleeping, eating, or, in extreme cases, speaking coherently or getting out of bed, would disappear almost completely when she was in the act of telling a story.

The truth is that comic-book creators have simply lost the habit of telling stories to children. And how sad is that?

Michael Chabon

I love movies. Movies have influenced me as a writer.

I must be able to tell more than what happened. I must tell why. It's breadth and depth again—the ol' B and D—and I am used to that.

The internal psychological pressure to make up a story, to explain the ruins before one's eyes, is powerful indeed.

But now reporters came to the story with the lead fixed in their minds; they saw their job as proving what they already knew. They didn't want information so much as evidence of villainy. In this mode, they were openly skeptical of your point of view, since they assumed you were just being evasive. They proceeded from a presumption of universal guilt, in an atmosphere of muted hostility and suspicion.

You must live your story.

Me gustaría saner qué pasa realmente en un libro cuando está cerrado [...] algo debe pasar, porque cuando lo abro aparece de pronto una historia entera.

even something long past could be born again if it occurred in a story

Me gustaría saber qué pasa realmente en un libro cuando está cerrado. Naturalmente, dentro solo hay letras impresas sobre el papel, pero sin embargo algo debe pasar, porque cuando lo abro aparece de pronto una historia entera.

that Fantastica is the land of stories? A story can be new and yet tell about olden times. The past comes into existence with the story.

A man who can tell a good story can make a good living as a broker.

I set out to write this book only because I thought it would be better to tell the story than to go on living the story.

Telling a story that is consistent with everything that happened before

You can't have made-up things in made-up stories. But in real life, you can.

It's not true that everyone wants to confess a crime, but most people do want to tell something of their story, to stop hiding for just a while.

Mythic imagination can break the spell of time and open us to a level of life that remains timeless. Myth is not about what happened in past times; myth is about what happens to people all of the time.

You must remember," she said, putting a bony hand on mine, "that true stories do not always end as we would wish them to. Would you like to hear the truth of what happened, or shall I make something up for you just to keep you happy?