Quotes About Storytelling

I'm not a big shoot-em-up, bang-bang. I like romantic films.

I do agree you can't just make movies three hours long for no apparent reason. For a romantic comedy to be three hours long, that's longer than most marriages.

That to me is the way any good romantic would look at his life: Live it first, then write it down before you go.

I think people try to jam a lot of artificial plot devices into a lot of romantic comedies, and they don't treat it with the respect I believe it deserves.

Romantic comedies are particularly hard to make.

If you keep telling the same sad small story. You will keep living the same sad small life.

All art that is not mere storytelling, or mere portraiture, is symbolic, and has the purpose of those symbolic talismans which medieval magicians made with complex colours and forms, and bade their patients ponder over daily, and guard with holy secrecy; for it entangles, in complex colours and forms, a part of the Divine Essence.

This collection of Japanese fairy tales is the outcome of a suggestion made to me indirectly through a friend by Mr. Andrew Lang. They have been translated from the modern version written by Sadanami Sanjin. These stories are not literal translations, and though the Japanese story and all quaint Japanese expressions have been faithfully preserved, they have been told more with the view to interest young readers of the West than the technical student of folk-lore.

At all times, among my friends, both young and old, English or American, I have always found eager listeners to the beautiful legends and fairy tales of Japan, and in telling them I have also found that they were still unknown to the vast majority, and this has encouraged me to write them for the children of the West. Y. T. O. Tokio, 1908.

Bygone troubles are a pleasure to talk about.

Bandage any part of your body If people ask about it, make a story and tell If people do not ask about it, draw their attention to it and tell If people forget about it, remind them of it and keep telling. Do not talk about anything else

Humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers, or equations, and the simpler the story, the better.

The wandering bands of storytelling Sapiens were the most important and most destructive force the animal kingdom had ever produced.

Telling effective stories is not easy. The difficulty lies not in telling the story, but in convincing everyone else to believe it.

Our narrating self would much prefer to continue suffering in the future, just so it won't have to admit that our past suffering was devoid of all meaning. Eventually, if we want to come clean about past mistakes, our narrating self must invent some twist in the plot that will infuse these mistakes with meaning.

This ability to speak about fictions is the most unique feature of Sapiens language.

History isn't a single narrative, but thousands of alternative narratives. Whenever we choose to tell one, we are also choosing to silence others.

Contar histórias eficazes não é fácil. A dificuldade está não em contar a história, mas em convencer todos os demais a acreditarem nela.

Con la aparición de la escritura empezamos a oír la historia a través de los oídos de sus protagonistas. Cuando los vecinos de Kushim lo llamaban, podían haber gritado realmente «¡Kushim!». Es revelador que el primer nombre registrado en la historia pertenezca a un contable, y no a un profeta, un poeta o un gran conquistador.

El libre albedrío existe únicamente en los relatos imaginarios que los humanos hemos inventado.

We identify with the inner system that takes the crazy chaos of life and spins out of it seemingly logical and consistent yarns. It doesn't matter that the plot is full of lies and lacunas, and is rewritten again and again, so that today's story flatly contradicts yesterday's. The important thing is that we always retain the feeling that we have a single unchanging identity from birth to death (and perhaps even beyond).

La repetición eterna confiere poder al relato, pues implica que este es el devenir natural de las cosas, y que si Arjuna evita el combate o si Simba rehúsa convertirse en rey, estarán rebelándose contra las leyes mismas de la naturaleza.

Los humanos pensamos más en relatos que en hechos, números o ecuaciones, y cuanto más sencillo es el relato, mejor.

none of these things exists outside the stories that people invent and tell one another. There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings.