Quotes About Storytelling

There's a big confusion in this country over what we want versus what we need, Morrie said. You need food, you want a chocolate sundae. You have to be honest with yourself. You don't need the latest sports car, you don't need the biggest house. The truth is, you don't get satisfaction from those things. You know what really gives you satisfaction?...Offering others what you have to give...I don't mean money, Mitch. I mean your time. Your concern. Your storytelling. It's not so hard.

He was doing what a man does when left with nothing. He was telling himself his own life story.

Because there was a ghost involved, you may call this a ghost story. But what family isn't a ghost story? Sharing tales of those we've lost is how we keep from really losing them.

Because there was a ghost involved, you may call this a ghost story. But what family isn't a ghost story? Sharing tales of those we've lost is how we keep from really losing them.

He was doing what man does when left with nothing. He was telling himself his own life story.

As happens with all miracles, once life goes on, those who believe retell them with wonder. Those who do not, do not.

I am, after all, telling you a history, and in history, as I suspect you—an American—will agree, it is the thrust of one's narrative that counts, not the accuracy of one's details.

You have become acquainted with the characters. You have joined them in the imaginary world wherein they dwell, consented to the laws of their society, breathed its air, tasted its food, traveled its highways. Now you must follow them through their adventures.

To read a story well you must have your finger on the pulse of the narrative, be sensitive to its very beat.

If anyone comes along," said Miss Brodie, "in the course of the following lesson, remember that it is the hour for English grammar. Meantime I will tell you a little of my life when I was younger than I am now, though six years older than the man himself.

A well-told story, true or not, reminds you that, yes, the world is an exotic and magical place, and yes, it can be yours for a price. Enchantment always has a price--and sometimes the cost is love.

When a writer puts words on paper, it is an intimate act. The reader hears your words in his voice and he becomes the bones of your story. The reader is the foundation that you wrap in muscle and sinew. You build the hero on the reader's delicate frame until your story is his story. Your sorrow is his; your joy is a communion you both celebrate.

this kind of story intrinsically satisfying.

A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction. —Oscar Wilde

MATTHEW'S RULES OF SURVIVAL 1. Sometimes, the people who mean you harm are the ones who say they love you. 2. Fear is your friend. When you feel it, act. 3. Protect the little ones. 4. If you coped before, you can cope now. 5. Always remember: In the end, the survivor gets to tell the story.

Because that's what the story's really about: getting out of paying your debts.

If I could have remembered, at least some of the words would have been wrong: like hearing again a half-remembered favorite tale from childhood and finding it unsatisfying, or at least not as I'd remembered it.

could only buy it by giving in sooner, giving in all the time; like Scheherazade, humbly asking my murderous husband to go on sparing me night after night. And

We dropped our troubles into the lap of the storyteller, and they turned into someone else's.

In these evenings he sat by our beds weaving folktales like vivid little scarves.

As a child, you sat in a circle around your teacher and looked at her face as she read a story, and you felt the magic of human narrative in a collective context.

As it unfolded, the structure of the story began to remind me of one of those Russian dolls that contain innumerable ever-smaller dolls within. Step by step the narrative split into a thousand stories, as if it had entered a gallery of mirrors, its identity fragmented into endless reflections.

Tell our stories to the world, and never forget that we exist so long as someone remembers us.

Una historia es, en definitiva, una conversación entre quien la narra y quien la escucha, y un narrador solo puede contar hasta donde le llega el oficio y un lector solo puede leer hasta donde lleva escrito en el alma.