Quotes About Storytelling

I'm amazed at our impulse to express ourselves, explain ourselves, tell stories to one another.

I start with very short pieces, usually no more than a handwritten page. I try to focus on something specific: a person, a moment, a place. I do what I ask my student to do when I teach creative writing. I explain to them that such fragments are the first steps to take before constructing a story. I think a writer should observe the real world before imagining a nonexistent one.

If you want to burrow a message into a human mind. Work it into a story

My work is to know the characters intimately and to tell their story.

I picture my books as movies when I get stuck, and when I'm working on a new idea, the first thing I do is hit theaters to work out pacing and mood.

Things are going to happen whether you are there or not, you still need someone to push the button on the camera and get it and know it's going to work of the story.

Stories are made up by people who make them up. If they work, they get retold. There's the magic of it.

There are a lot of artists who've said they'd like to work with me. To be honest, I'm not sure there is such a thing as an inappropriate artist. The trick is matching the artist with a story.

The worst thing you can do is animate something, and then throw it out because it doesn't work, story wise.

I can do my part of the storytelling. I can carry it. I can paint it. I can maneuver it. I can massage it. But if I don't have anything to work with, then there's nothing.

The key is to work with people who are passionate about storytelling and who have a similar sensibility of the type and nature of the stories that you want to tell.

I work on words, mostly, toward them being poetry or short stories, and then some of those become songs.

The way I write is really like putting one foot in front of the other. I really let the characters do most of the work, they start talking and they just lead the way.

It's a whole other way of working when you work in films: You know exactly the arc of your character.

I work with people and we come up with ideas for movies, television and things like that. It's fun and I love doing it.

I think many people need, even require, a narrative version of their life. I seem to be one of them. Writing memoir is, in some ways, a work of wholeness.

I love to fool my readers, but in a good way. If you've read any of my work, there's a good chance that at some point I surprised you.

Each story has a different approach for me and I try to work with lighting that will tell you visually the story better than if it was shot in available light.

When you get into making movies, then the physical mundane reality of life must be presented. But in comics you can jack it up and work in shorthand.

The writer of Kaafir,' Bhavani Iyer had to keep the story with her for 13 years, the producer, Siddharth Malhotra, could only provide justice to the story after struggling for eight years.

If I'm stuck in the midst of a story, I take a nap. It often works, and if it doesn't, I still feel better.

I don't like getting stuck into someone's definition of what you can or can't do with a story.

Though Nathalie Dupree did not remember much about my presence in her class, it marked me forever. I remain her enthusiast, her evangelist, her acolyte, and her grateful student. She taught me that cooking and storytelling make the most delightful coconspirators.

The move to creating stories was a natural progression for me, but the most pivotal time was probably in 6th grade: That year, a friend introduced me to the stories of Ray Bradbury, and a student teacher introduced me to creative writing.