Quotes About Storytelling

whoever tells a story wanders through many stations in his adventures, but only pitches a tent at each, waiting for further directions, and soon feels his own heart pounding, in part out of desire, but in part also out of fear and the apprehension in his bones, yet always as a sign that the road now opens onto new adventures that he must experience precisely, in all their incalculable detail, for that is the will of the restless spirit.

asleep. He fell asleep during Nibelungen.

I encourage you to set foot on a journey to a more authentic life, the same journey I wrote about in my memoir, The Box of Daughter: Healing the Authentic Self. Sharing our stories helps us heal ourselves, and as we share, we begin to heal ourselves, and in doing so, we help to heal the world.

Feel the feelings. Drop the story. PEMA CHODRON

Good storytelling is one thing rural whites and Indians have in common. But native Americans have learned through harsh necessity that people who survive encroachment by another culture need story to survive. And a storytelling tradition is something Plains people share with both ancient and contemporary monks; we learn our ways of being and reinforce our values by telling tales about each other.

Since the earliest days of the Christian church, there has been a curious tension between Semitic storytelling, which admits a remarkable diversity of voices, perspectives, and experience into the canon, and Greek philosophy, which seeks to define, distinguish, pare down. It is the latter most people think of when they hear the word "theology," because at least in the Christian West, it is that tendency that has prevailed.

Perfume should tell a story –

once described fiction as a monumental lie that has to have the absolute ring of truth if it is to succeed. And that ring of truth invariably comes from research, which in turn gives a novel its authenticity. It is this kind of authenticity plus good storytelling that made Forever Amber a bestseller 56 years ago. Now

But if something funny happens, I can't resist. I have to tell the people.

You'll start talking, and pretty soon we'll all start nodding, and then the next thing you know, I'm hang gliding off the Eiffel Tower at night, being chased by ninja vampires

You see if you tell yourself the same tale over and over again enough times then the tellings become separate stories and you will generally fool yourself into forgetting you started with one solitary season out of your life.

Connecting your story with a known entity—be it a politician, celebrity, or famous businessperson—acts as a de facto slant. Bottom line: The media want recognizable faces in their pages.

An audience will remain interested if the story is advancing in some sort of organised manner, but they want to see routines interrupted, and the action continuing between the actors.

The fourteenth-century preacher, John Bromyard, used to tell the story of the shepherd who, asked if he knew who the Father, Son and Holy Ghost were, replied, 'The father and the son I know well for I tend their sheep, but I know not that third fellow; there is none of that name in our village.

When his writing is going well, Gordon Strangle Mars likes to wake up at 6 a.m. and go out driving. He works out new plot lines about giant spiders and keeps an eye out for abandoned couches, which he wrestles into the back of his pickup truck. Then he writes for the rest of the day.

Real life is never so neat as the stories we choose to tell about it

Every day we forget stories. I saw a funny video about a cat on the Internet this morning, but when I tried to tell a friend about it, I suddenly had no idea how it ended.

Show me a congenital eavesdropper with the instincts of a peeping Tom and I will show you the makings of a dramatist.

Rodney wasn't what you'd call eloquent, but he had a couple guys he used to drink with, so we got these bits of quadruple-drunk story: Rodney drunk when he told it, his friends drunk when they heard, then drunk again when they retold it to a bunch of drunks.

THE YEAR WAS 1988. I had taken a job helping young people on the Red Lake Ojibwe Reservation in northern Minnesota to collect the memories of the tribal elders. It was a wonderful job, and tremendously rewarding. As well as working with young people, I had the good fortune to meet and share time with the elders. I sat at their tables, heard their stories, shared their laughter, and felt their sadness. It was a profoundly human time, and I valued it more than I can express.

History gets reinterpreted as time goes on. Many times, the participants are lost in the retelling of the story.

A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.

Jim Harrison's novels, John McPhee's nonfiction, Flannery O'Connor's short stories, and the crime novels of John Sandford, Ken Bruen, and T. Jefferson Parker.

The best storytellers eliminate photographs before they even begin shooting. They pre-edit. They determine what isn't worth their effort to free up their time for the things that may prove to be remarkable.