Quotes About Storytelling

Later, years later even, sometimes I might say, How about the duel on the cliff with Inigo and the man in black? and my father would gruff and grumble and get the book and lick his thumb, turning pages till the mighty battle began.

The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.

Technically, our name, to those who speak science, is Homo sapiens— wise person. But we have been described in many other ways. Homo narrans, juridicus, ludens, diaspora: we are storytelling, legal, game-playing, scattered people, too. True but incomplete. That old phrase has the secret. We are all, have always been, will always be, Homo vorago aperientis: person before whom opens a vast & awesome hole.

You can tell it any way you want, he said, you can be I or he or she or we or they or you and you won't be lying, though you might be telling two stories at once.

A few mad exaggerations, alright, within a couple of days: swear to fucking god, they were like throwing grenades and pulling out all kinds of crazy knackery, it was out of control. Whatever. As if the story, if big enough, reflected glory on the teller.

I wanted to do a book that was extremely suspicious of storytelling... it ("Embassytown") is very skeptical of the liberating potential of narrative. [I present] the idea that narrative may just as well be a shackle as [well] as a key.

People have wanted to narrate since first we banged rocks together & wondered about fire. There'll be tellings as long as there are any of us here, until the stars disappear one by one like turned-out lights.

There is no story that is not true.

Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.

Journalists obsess about their leads. Don Wycliff, a winner of prizes for editorial writing, says, "I've always been a believer that if I've got two hours in which to write a story, the best investment I can make is to spend the first hour and forty-five minutes of it getting a good lead, because after that everything will come easily.

Let's face it: Most PowerPoints aren't creating a lot of emotion.

That's what sticky ideas do – they make people feel something. Change comes from feeling, not facts. Not

a Simple Unexpected Concrete Credentialed Emotional Story. A clever observer will note that this sentence can be compacted into the acronym SUCCESs. This

Mental simulation is not as good as actually doing something. But it's the next best thing. And the right kind of a story is a simulation.

It's communication - that's what theatre is all about.

Were the stories we told each other true? Who knows? At the best of times, a story is a slippery thing. Perhaps that was why it changed with each telling. Or is that the nature of all stories, the reason for their power?

Mostly their troubles were minor ones, for they followed a healthy lifestyle, waking at sunrise to bathe in the river, then spending long hours in study or prayer, followed by daily chores, simple meals, storytelling

Todas las historias tienen muchas versiones distintas. La versión elegida nos revela más acerca del narrador que acerca de la historia.

And that is how, poised in the sky between our new life and our old one, the life we cannot yet imagine and the one we've already begun to forget, I tell her a tale to make her heart strong, to graft her life onto. For of all things in this world it seems to me that that is what women most need.

The idea itself is the ten percent inspiration; the hammering it into a viable, successful, memorable story is the ninety percent perspiration that follows.

I ask you right here to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must see all scars as beauty... because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived. Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this story teller is alive. The next think you know, something fine will happen to her, something marvelous, and then she will turn around and smile.

I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.... Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive.

Leaning forward, Bergstrom said, "I'm asking you. Come on, give me a folk legend. Anything. You have to have a story hidden away somewhere." David shook his head. "You're not serious, surely?" Bergstrom studied him carefully for a moment. "You forget, I live and work among the Inuit. Stories