Quotes About Storytelling

I was planning to make 'Hate Story 2,' but I stepped out of that project. I don't want to repeat the genre.

I have an idea for a story, and if the idea is going to work, then one of the characters steps forward, and I hear her voice telling the story. This is what has happened with all the books I've written in the first person.

Every dramatist will tell you that they know deep down what happened in the course of making that film and to what degree they took steps that were convenient and to what degree they took steps in telling their story that were dishonest. You know in your heart of hearts.

we have a penchant to pay close attention to information that comes to us in the form of a story or personal account.

Most of us think that history is the past. It's not. History is the stories we tell about the past. That's all it is.

The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense.

Every story needs to be told in just the right way.

But the christian story of God the Father putting his son to death, or employing people to do it, (for that is the plain language of the story,) cannot be told by a parent to a child; and to tell him that it was done to make mankind happier and better, is making the story still worse; as if mankind could be improved by the example of murder; and to tell him that all this is a mystery, is only making an excuse for the incredibility of it .

He liked her stories for the same reason she told them—they should have happened.

Thornton W. Burgess

The theatre is supremely fitted to say: Behold! These things are. Yet most dramatists employ it to say: This moral truth can be learned from beholding this action.

would always advise any young writer for the theater to do everything—to adapt plays, to translate plays, to hang around theaters, to paint scenery, to become an actor. . . . There's a bottomless pit in the acquisition of how to tell an imagined story to listeners and viewers.

Soothing stories have been plentiful in all ages. . . . To survive, a story must arouse wonder, wonder in both the senses in which we now employ the word: astonishment at the extent of man's capability of good and evil, and speculation as to the sources of that capability.

You're a legend 'cause you write about me.

These partygoers hadn't been the cool kids growing up. They'd spent their adolescence buried in art books, scrawling poems into steno pads during recess, living full stories in their heads. Distracted by their artistic micro-obsessions, many forgot to learn how to engage with the world. They were too busy studying life, storing up their notes to use later in a novel, a song, a script, a painting. They were observers, not joiners.

the flanger setting ... makes it sound as if the chord is being chewed over thoughtfully by a large genie accustomed to telling long, implausible stories

History has an imagination greater than any writer," said Serge.

Church kids took seats around him on the ground. "What else do you have?" "Well," said Serge, putting his left shoe back on. "There's Casey Kasem's American Top Forty. You know where the oldest lyrics ever to be heard on his show came from?" Heads shook. "Book of Ecclesiastes." He stood. "Adapted for the Byrds' mega-hit 'Turn! Turn! Turn!'" "Cool.

my life's motto: If you're not willing to invent cool-sounding bullshit about yourself, don't expect others to.

There is no reason why a serious film, one about life, can't be enjoyable, maybe even fun. Emotions can be very entertaining, you know. I try to use them generously in my films.

There is no wrong design. There are no rules. Anybody can get it right by giving it a sort of story.

I would make a genuinely terrible guide. I can't remember things. I would get half way through telling a story or explaining something and I would get distracted. Oh, and I have absolutely no sense of direction at all.

The thing I don't like on television is when somebody does something that makes absolutely no sense just for the shock of it.

I've always wanted to write a book. And it turned out that it was more about finding a story that I felt I was necessary for, that no-one else could write.