Quotes About Storytelling

Fiction isn't bad. It is vital.

Much of history revolves around this question: how does one convince millions of people to believe particular stories about gods, or nations, or limited liability companies? Yet

However, fiction has enabled us not merely to imagine things, but to do so collectively.

I'm interested in everything. I don't see why Borges can't work along with Neil Gaiman, or Stephen King can't be mixed with Balzac. It's just storytelling, it's different ways of using codes and images and words and sounds.

Go to any lengths to avoid preachiness! If you have to choose between the message and the story, always choose the story.

As Cherokee writer Thomas King says, "Take it. It's yours. Do with it what you will. But don't say in the years to come that you would have lived your life differently if only you had heard this story. You've heard it now.

When you tell the children tales of the Baba Yaga on a cold winter's night, you might remember to mention that whether or not the witch is wicked often depends on who is telling the story.

Have you ever met a dragon that couldn't talk?

The judges' primary objective was to conduct a scrupulously fair legal proceeding that would win the respect of the world. Hausner's goal was to tell the story of the Holocaust in all its detail, and in so doing, to capture the imagination not just of Israel's youth and world Jewry, but of the entire world . -- The Eichmann Trial, page 121

Deborah Moggach

There are no new plots, but there are plenty of fresh new characters with whom you can grab the reader. Characterization is the key to successful commercial fiction. Characterization starts with goal, motivation, and conflict. Character

The whites told only one side. Told it to please themselves. Told much that is not true. Only his own best deeds, only the worst deeds of the Indians, has the white man told. —YELLOW WOLF OF THE NEZ PERCÉ

My horse is plodding down a path unspooling under her hooves like a ball of wool, only wider, while I think of ways to wake kings or small children or writers, all of whom seem to be constantly sleeping and dreaming of me in the seventh square on a horse with a mind of her own.

There is a film called 'A Separation.' If you see it playing, go see it. It's beautiful. It's so well written and the acting is amazing. It's one of those films that you would love to be a part of.

That got a big laugh. For the rest of the journey, whenever there was a pause or the mood dipped, someone would repeat the punchline and everyone would laugh. This went on until the garrotting in the toilet.

It can be very seductive to tell our story to others who will listen because, lets face it, who doesn't love to 'commiserate' (in this context, meaning to share their misery) with other likeminded people. It justifies our attachment to the drama. The interesting thing about telling our story over and over is that it becomes even more deeply ingrained in our minds each time we tell it, and the universe delights in keeping whatever we claim as our story alive.

You have no idea the power generated each time somebody is told a story. When a conscious, sentient mind willingly ignores what is real, what is fact, and instead chooses to invest in people and places that never existed...It's magnificent.

Many Southern writers must have learned the art of storytelling from listening to oral tales. I did. It gave me the knowledge that the simplest incident can make a story.

Yes, in all my research, the greatest leaders looked inward and were able to tell a good story with authenticity and passion.

In learning the art of storytelling by animation, I have discovered that language has an anatomy.

Tell me a fact, and I'll learn. Tell me a truth, and I'll believe. But tell me a story, and it will live in my heart forever.

You don't always have to have the most amazing story. It's learning to share the story you have that counts.

A good writer gets better only by learning to cut, to remove the ornamental, the descriptive, the narrative, and especially the deeply felt and meaningful. What remains? The story remains.

Writing sketches, youre also learning about a journey and characters, and you translate that to bigger things.