Storytelling Quotes

I learned to separate the story from the writing, probably the most important thing that any storyte...

If he did not speak his tale, it grew dank and musty, it shrank inside him, while with the telling t...

It would seem that the more irresponsible and crafty one is, the more likely one is to have a talent...

It will be worth it if I am remembered, if not flatteringly, then at least with some small amount of...

It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That ...

Kvothe continued, smiling himself “I see you laugh. Very well, for simplicity’s sake, let us assume ...

After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.

I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read.

I think it's a shame that something as creative and vital to the nature of the human species as stor...

No matter how good a story is, there is more at stake in the telling.

...What happens is of little significance compared with the stories we tell ourselves about what hap...

Hip-hop is storytelling.

As we grow older, our bodies get shorter and our anecdotes longer.

If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.

Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, to rethin...

Iff replied that the Plentimaw Fishes were what he called 'hunger artists' — 'Because when they are ...

These stories become what we know, what we understand, and what we are, or, perhaps we should say, w...

[I]f you set out to mention everything you would never be done, and that's what counts, to be done, ...

[Y]ou cannot mention everything in its proper place, you must choose, between the things not worth m...

The reader should be carried forward, not merely or chiefly by the mechanical impulse of curiosity, ...

funny how a beautiful song could tell such a sad story

The more history I learn, the more the world fills up with stories.

You see it is likely that, when my brother told the story, that night when we got home and my mother...

The 3 types of terror: The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, ...

There are books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read sometimes for the stor...

It's in The Lord of the Rings, I think, where one of the characters says that "way leads on to way";...

I think the best stories always end up being about the people rather than the event, which is to say...

The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) m...

How does it happen that a writer who's not even very good - and I can say that, I've read four or fi...

Storytelling was the most honored of all talents, for it benefited everyone.

Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're he...

and their days make no story for they were good and joyful and without event

Whenever he told the story, Rat had a tendency to stop now and then, interrupting the flow, insertin...

To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened...

Thus I rediscovered what writers have always known (and have told us again and again): books always ...

All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are...

I always wondered why the makers leave housekeeping and cooking out of their tales. Isn't it what al...

A people that doesn't live at the center of the world, as defined and described by its poets and sto...

Every morning brings us news of the globe, and yet we are poor in noteworthy stories. This is becaus...

This process of assimilation, which takes place in depth, requires a state of relaxation that is bec...

Henry Luce to his Time magazine writers: "Tell the history of our time through the people who make i...

This is the man who will be my grandfather—the man who will be the man who was my grandfather. The t...

I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to...

Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.

The present is never tidy, or certain, or reasonable, and those who try to make it so once it become...

Probably every subject is interesting if an avenue into it can be found that has humanity and that a...

Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity.

Doesn't the telling of something always become a story?

A story is a wedding in which we listeners are the groom watching the bride coming up the aisle. It ...

Pheoby's hungry listening helped Janie to tell her story.

He was telling an interesting anecdote full of exciting words like "encyclopedia" and "rhododendron"...

Scratch the surface in a typical boardroom and we're all just cavemen with briefcases, hungry for a ...

Emotional position is part of it, but as an individual you are not your emotions, neither are you yo...

402Emotional position is part of it, but as an individual you are not your emotions, neither are you...

Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found som...

It was always the best way of finding out information; just go and ask a woman who keeps her eyes an...

In many of the films now being made, there is very little cinema: they are mostly what I call 'photo...

Remember that writing things down makes them real; that it is nearly impossible to hate anyone whose...

Crusoe and Friday. Ishmael and Ahab. Daisy and Gatsby. Pip and Estella. Me. Me. Me. I am not alone. ...

I have from the first felt sure that the writer, when he sits down to commence his novel, should do ...

The truth is that, just as in the other imitative arts one imitation is always of one thing, so in p...

Now, before you make a movie, you have to have a script, and before you have a script, you have to h...

I make books because I love them as objects; because I want to put the pictures and the words togeth...

I believe in all human societies there is a desire to love and be loved, to experience the full fier...

The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upo...

We're wired for story. In a culture of scarcity and perfectionism, there's a surprisingly simple rea...

When unconscious storytelling becomes out default, we often keep tripping over the same issue, stayi...

What may be myth in one world may always be fact in some other.

It is my opinion that a story worth reading only in childhood is not worth reading even then.

In the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be...

I enjoy writing fiction more than writing anything else. Wouldn't anyone?

You can do more with a castle in a story than with the best cardboard castle that ever stood on a nu...

I don't judge a scene or a line of dialog by whether or not it advances the plot, for example. Imagi...

Making a story from the messy thoughts and half-thoughts in her head, building a world and lives and...

Once upon a time there was what there was, and if nothing had happened there would be nothing to tel...

What tale do you like best to hear?' 'Oh, I have not much choice! They generally run on the same the...

A few mad exaggerations, alright, within a couple of days: swear to fucking god, they were like thro...

People have wanted to narrate since first we banged rocks together & wondered about fire. There’ll b...

You can tell it any way you want, he said, you can be I or he or she or we or they or you and you wo...

In Western culture, virtually everything is understood through the process of storytelling, often to...

There will always be reservations, things one must leave out, events one can’t explain without handi...

Things in life have no real beginning, though our stories about them always do.

Roger left the cricket stumps and they went into the drawing room. Grandpapa, at the first suggestio...

There are two conversations going on at the same time: the story and a conversation about how the st...

If you are able to talk about your life and the joys and sorrows you have experienced, if you know y...

There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.

If you just go get one of these little fine arts degrees or writing program degrees, it never forces...

…After all, it isn't really difficult to write books. Especially if you either write a rotten story ...

I got this story from someone who had no business in the telling of it.

These were our bedtime stories. Tales that haunted our parents and made them laugh at the same time....

I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebaske...

Then there is the other secret. There isn't any symbolysm [sic]. The sea is the sea. The old man is ...

Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than...

It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by peopl...

I’m a liar, but an honest one. People reproach me for not always telling the same story in the same ...

Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part on the myth-making ...

I can see how I could write a bold account of myself as a passionate man who rose from humble beginn...

A world without fairy tales and myths would be as drab as life without music

But I hasten to finish my story. Brevity is justified at once to those who readily understand, and t...

Storytelling is about two things it's about character and plot.