Quotes About Story

Listen, my father had written. Listen to hear if they are telling the truth or only part of the truth, for that is the lesson of history: that the victors tell the tale of their triumph in a manner to grant accolades to themselves and heap blame upon their rivals. Ask yourself if part of the story is being withheld by design or ignorance.

We are talking about someone who has lived. It must be honored in every respect. The fictional can take any kind of channel - according to the actor's marriage to the character.

I've always believed in the Nero Wolfe theory of knowledge. You can just sit quietly in your room - according to Pascal, the activity that if practiced more assiduously would free humanity from most of its troubles, but that was before e-mail - and through sheer mental effort force the tiniest snippets of information to yield the entire story of which they are a fragment, because the whole truth is contained in every particle of it, the way every human cell contains our DNA.

Desire is story itself.

Maybe story is just for the assembling of things -- history, imagination, fact -- without which . . . our lives will dissipate, losing meaning and coherence.

There is nothing that is not both narrative and language. Even the paradoxical physics by which the universe is held together is both. We are ourselves story, just as we are language. That is the nature of both narrative and love.

But how could you live and have no story to tell?

Is all one generation can do to set the stage for the comic, sad story of the next?

The greatest untold story is the evolution of God.

Above all, mine is a love story. Unlike most love stories, this one involves chance, gravity, a dash of head trauma. It began with a coin toss. The coin came up tails. I was heads. Had it gone my way, there might not be a story at all. Just a chapter, or a sentence in a book whose greater theme had yet to be determined. Maybe this chapter would've had the faintest whisper of love about it. But maybe not. Sometimes, a girl needs to lose.

You can't avoid orphan stories, child. Every story is an orphan story. We are all orphaned sooner or later.

Isn't that about an orphan?" I asked. I hated those kinds of books. "You can't avoid orphan stories, child. Every story is an orphaned story. Life is an orphan story. We are all orphaned sooner or later." "In my case, sooner." "Yes, in your case, sooner. But you are strong, and God never gives us more than we can bear.

Novels certainly have their charms, but the most elegant creation in the prose universe is a short story.

He wanted to ask her to work with him at a special place—the occasion of their prospective creative union should be memorable. Even then, he felt that if they made a game, and if the game became what he knew it could be, he would want there to be a story about the day Sam Masur and Sadie Green had decided to work together. He was already imagining Sam-and-Sadie lore, and he didn't even have a definitive idea for a game yet.

This fabric is not just a fabric. It's the story of failure and of perseverance, of the discipline of a craftsman, of the life of an artist.

No designer had ever used red or yellow in an indigo discharge dyeing technique before. He must have had to start over many times to get the colors right. This fabric is not just a fabric. It's the story of failure and of perseverance, of the discipline of a craftsman, of the life of an artist.

Read these and know my heart. We are not quite novels.

Proto-postmodernist story of a habitual gambler and his bested frog. The plot isn't much, but it's worth reading because of the fun Twain has with narrative authority. (In reading Twain, I often suspect he is having more fun than I am.)

But the point is not to spin the narrative; that defeats the purpose, in some way, of story itself. You can't change the tale so that you turned left one day instead of right, or didn't make the mistake that might have saved your life a day later. We don't get those choices. The story is what got you here, and embracing its truth is what makes the outcome bearable.

Americans love the story of the immigrant who comes through Ellis Island with no possessions but struggles to success and happiness. It is the story that most defines us, and we tell it to ourselves over and over. But for the real immigrants, each story was different, and the happiness of the ending changed with every telling.

And the degree to which you hold back surrendering everything to love is the degree to which you suffer. The degree to which you try to maintain the story about who you think you are is the degree to which you feel isolated from love. Until you realize, "I want truth, which is love, more than anything," you will experience yourself as separate from love. Love is the constant. Love is not an aspect of truth. Truth, God, and self are aspects of love.

No matter what the world is reflecting, whether circumstances are beautiful or terrifying, if your internal story is one of victimhood, you will suffer. It is very simple. If you are quite certain that you aren't telling yourself a story of victimization, and yet you continue to suffer, then I suggest you are lying to yourself.

Every dent, every scratch, every mark, tells a story. A story that ends with me, winning.

My intent, here, is to tell our story in a dramatically truthful way. While the facts may be less than accurate, please understand that the emotion is true. The intent is true. And, dramatically speaking, intention is everything.