Quotes About Storytelling

By this time, I had become fond of the story that nobody wanted. I revised it again and had 200 twenty-four-page pamphlets printed at my own expense. I sent these out as Christmas cards for Christmas, 1943.

À ceux-là, en général, j'explique que la vraisemblance importe plus que la vérité, que la justesse compte davantage que l'exactitude et surtout qu'un lieu, ce n'est pas une topographie mais la manière dont on le raconte, pas une photographie mais une sensation, une impression.

J'ai fait de ma fille un être de papier. J'ai tous les soirs transformé mon bureau en théâtre d'encre où se jouaient encore ses aventures inventées.

Part of the storytelling ability is simply the anticipation of boredom.

My TV show enraged people. I had prostitutes on, and I treated them like real people.... I was fired from Maclean's after I wrote a piece called 'Let's Stop Hoaxing The Kids About Sex'. Now I'm the 'beloved author,' the 'beloved historian of Canada,' an icon. I get standing ovations.... I never set out to be a patriot or a popular historian. I just liked storytelling. [interview promoting Marching as to War (2002)]

One often calms one's grief by recounting it.

Whatever film it is, the geography has to be right. If I cannot establish it, I'll get lost. I wouldn't even understand it in the first place! I hence visit a place and decide what can be conveyed from where; how that can be incorporated in the story.

You can't visit readers where you think they are. You have to invite them home to where you are and try to lure them into your universe. That's the art of storytelling.

The main characters for 'The Seer and the Sword' made an appearance one night and then haunted me for over five years before I began to write them down. Does that count as inspiration? For me, characters tend to show up, stay on to help with the work of writing their stories, and then occasionally deign to visit after a book is finished.

I often visit Maria Tatar's 'The Grimm Reader' for a cold dose of courage. Her translations come from the Brothers Grimm, whose now-famous collection of 'Kinder- und Hausmarchen' ('Children's and Household Tales') was first published in 1812. The book was not intended for young readers.

As a child, I would demand that visitors to our house tell me a story. I was intensely interested in everything - still am.

When you're talking about Tim Burton, you're talking about a guy that has such a visual sense, an aesthetic, a storytelling style. It's like he's got his own genre.

It's kind of the filmmaker's job to use visual, cinematic language in a way possible to tell a story that reaches and touches as many people as possible.

A visual understanding of great composition and how to use a camera and expensive lenses can be learned, but drive and a real hunger for making photos and telling stories... I don't think that part can be learned. You either have that inside, or you don't.

I learned first of all not to be intimidated by any visual effects that I don't understand. It can all be learned. You can then use them as tools to tell your story. I also learned that you have to be really vigilant, the more complex the movie, to not lose yourself and to not lose sight of the priority.

Film is much more visual, a scene is typically a lot shorter, you're dealing with a lot more characters, a lot more locations, and you're able to rely on things that you just can never do on the stage.

I wanted to write something visual that I could read to the children. This was when I created the idea of Redwall Abbey in my imagination. As I wrote, the idea grew, and the manuscript along with it.

I love storytelling, I love being a visual person, and it just made perfect sense to be an underwater photographer and explore the ocean and work with scientists.

Before I became an actor, I was a visual artist, and I've always hankered for the storytelling behind the camera.

I don't really have a drive toward being a director at all. Not that I wouldn't rule it out, but I just don't think my instincts lie necessarily in a very visual way. But I am very interested in storytelling, narrative and character development, so writing is something that I absolutely want to do.

I am always telling students that a story is not just words. You can tell a story with dance or paint or music. Kids and adults are visual learners, auditory learners. There are those of us who need to touch it. Storytelling encompasses so much more than words on paper.

I was very intimidated by the visual effects world. But I began to realize that you don't have to know everything. You have to be able to talk about story.

Great visual effects serve story and character and in doing so, are, by their very definition, invisible.

Visual effects have always been a part of this art form. And CG is simply a tool on the filmmaker's tool belt to tell a story, but when the end result is bad - maybe it's not the tool's fault.