Quotes About Storytelling

a fundamental rule of journalism, which is to tell a story and stick to it. The narratives of journalism (significantly called "stories"), like those of mythology and folklore, derive their power from their firm, undeviating sympathies and antipathies. Cinderella must remain good and the stepsisters bad. "Second stepsister not so bad after all" is not a good story.

By definition, fiction writers lie for a living.

Some stories are real. And a lot of stories that aren't real are still true.

I'm obsessed with trying to recount events as accurately and honestly as possible, but in practice the only thing I'm really any good at is telling you how I feel.

Tener un contrincante te proporciona también una fantástica historia para contar a tus clientes. Tener una opinión marcada te hace destacar. La gente se anima cuando hay pelea. Toman partido. Los ánimos se encienden. Y esa es una forma estupenda de hacerse ver.

Narratives were far easier to shape than battles.

seemed so epic. But I mentioned the challenges to Adrian's mother and she gave me some good advice. She said I shouldn't try to write a book, I should just sit down at my laptop and tell the story, one sentence at a time, using the same language I'd use to tell a friend over coffee. She said it was okay not to sound like J. K. Rowling. It was fine if I sounded like Mallory Quinn from Philadelphia.

All good tales are true tales, at least for those who read them, which is all that counts.

What happened is the least of it. It's a novel, and once you've finished a novel, what happened in it is of little importance and soon forgotten. What matter are the possibilities and ideas that the novelist's imaginary plot communicates to us and infuses us with, a plot that we recall far more vividly than real events and to which we pay far more attention.

Raccontare è quasi sempre un regalo, compreso quando porta e inietta veleno il racconto è anche un vincolo e un concedere fiducia e rara è la fiducia che prima o poi non si tradisca, raro il vincolo che non si aggrovigli o non si annodi, e perciò finisca per stringere e si debba tirare di coltello e di lama per reciderlo.

Los hechos de guerra suenan pueriles en los tiempos de relativa paz, y que algo haya ocurrido no es suficiente para admitir su relato, no basta con que sea cierto para resultar plausible. La verdad se vuelve inverosímil a veces con el paso del tiempo; se aleja, y entonces parece fábula, o ya no más la verdad.

todo puede ser ridículo o trágico según quién lo cuente y cómo se cuente

Es más bien que estar junto a alguien consiste en buena medida en pensar en voz alta, esto es, en pensarlo todo dos veces en lugar de una, una con el pensamiento y otra con el relato, el matrimonio es una institución narrativa.

La vida no es contable, y resulta extraordinario que los hombres lleven todos los siglos de que tenemos conocimiento dedicados a ello, empeñados en contar lo que no se puede, sea en forma de mito, de poema épico, de crónica, anales, actas, leyenda o cantar de gesta, romances de ciego o corridos, de evangelio, santoral, historia, biografía, novela o elogio fúnebre, de película, de confesiones, memorias, de reportaje, da lo mismo.

Stop Arguing About Who's Right: Explore Each Other's Stories

I am led to the proposition that there is no fiction or nonfiction as we commonly understand the distinction: there is only narrative.

The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.

I am thus led to the proposition that there is no fiction or nonfiction as we commonly understand the distinction: there is only narrative...A novel is a printed circuit through which flows the force of a reader's own life.

Any "story" can be told in dozens of different ways. For that very reason, I believe, every time you go back and reexamine an important chapter in your life, you learn something new about it.

And telling a story, I suppose, is like winding a skein of spun yarn- you sometimes lose track of the beginning.

Though Harmon Gow developed the tale as far as his mental and moral reach permitted there were perceptible gaps between his facts, and I had the sense that the deeper meaning of the story was in the gaps.

When history gives out, fiction takes over.

It's fun telling you tall Texas tales. You always look like a little girl who's hearing Cinderella for the first time.

I had not the heart to tell her that great love stories told of the pain and separateness between men and women.