Chicago Stories Quotes

My standards were, after all, abnormally high." - the fictional ghost of Hugh Hefner, lamenting on sex in the after-life. ~ Michael Czyzniejewski

What makes my work my own is where I'm writing from. And I feel like I have a million stories to write about Chicago. ~ Joe Meno

The child came to a stop beside her mother and stared up at her face as if she had never seen it before. It was the face of the new misery she felt, but on her mother it looked old and it looked as if it might have belonged to anybody, a Negro or a European or to Powell himself. The child turned her head quickly, and past the Negroe's ambling figures she could see the column of smoke rising and widening unchecked inside the granite line of trees. She stood taut, listening, and could just catch in the distance a few wild high shrieks of joy as if the prophets were dancing in the fiery furnace, in the circle the angel had cleared for them. ~ Flannery O'Connor

The stories themselves aren't what moves him now ... What moves him are the shadowy people behind the stories, the workers weary from their days, gathering at night in front of a comforting bit of fire ... The world then was no less terrifying than it is now, with our nightmares of bombs and disease and technological warfare. Anything held the ability to set of fear ... a nail dropped in a the hay, wolves circling at the edge of the woods ... ~ Lauren Groff

Audience turn to archetype packed stories to enjoy, whether consciously or unconsciously, the device of repeated plots with small variations. Dispositio rather than elocution. That's why the serial, even the most trite television serial, can become a cult both for a naïve audience and for a more sophisticated one. ~ Arturo Perez Reverte

Today's ghost stories tend to be much more physically or psychologically violent. The Victorians were much more leisurely about what might or could happen, building suspense layer by layer rather than punching you in the face. ~ Otto Penzler

If you change the way you tell your own story, you can change the colour and create a life in technicolour. ~ Isabel Allende

You tell the people the stories the best you know. If there is something you don't know, you be up front and make that clear. You always give the aggrieved party the chance to respond before you publish or go to air. That's just my kind of old-fashioned news values. ~ Wolf Blitzer

(...) maybe in our bodies there's a whole world of mythology? Maybe there exists some sort of reflection of the great and the small, the human body joining within itself everything with everything - stories and heroes, gods and animals, the order of plants and the harmony of minerals? ~ Olga Tokarczuk

I've read all of the old stories now – "Red Blood and Dirty Gold", "The Winter Witch", "The Scarlet Varulv" – and I want more. Though I want fantasy – made-up, impossible things – I don't want stories that step out of the pages and into the world around me. ~ Melinda Salisbury

Rosalind was the kind of girl who didn't have to try very hard; she just drew men like moths to a flame. A natural ash blonde with unbelievably dark blue eyes, she had a near perfect figure, always wore the trendiest gear and said exactly the right witty things.
Not like me. I'm no raving beauty by any stretch of the imagination. I've got masses of dark unruly hair which just sort-of hangs around, and I buy only clothes which suit me regardless of fashion. I wouldn't be seen dead in a mini-skirt – as I'm rather tall with long slim legs, I think I'd look like Olive Oyl. ~ Bernie Morris

Fiction started up, and we started burning brain cells on stories about things that didn't happen to people who didn't exist. Why? The only answer can be that humans deeply, deeply desired it. ~ Lee Child

Someone once told me people write down stories because they would like to forget, and those who read are those who would like to remember. Maybe I'm not ready to forget, and maybe you're not ready to remember. This is what I recall; I'm sorry if it is a little spotty. I suppose it is what I have the strength to forget… ~ John Zelazny

I see the tool set being the same and maybe doing virtual movies and that's fine for some stories but not for others. And maybe make all CG movies but they are already doing it. ~ Dennis Muren

I always have some way of putting the stories together that works for the book. I've always switched points of view in my books. I'm a Gemini. ~ Louise Erdrich

If you always start with the worst hand, you never have a bad-beat story to tell. ~ Chuck Thompson

The news business is simple but it's not easy to do well. You know the story, you have to cover it, you need pictures, you need good writers, you have to get it to the screen but it's obviously not easy to do well. ~ Jai Courtney

It's precisely the disappointing stories, which have no proper ending and therefore no proper meaning, that sound true to life. ~ Max Frisch

A story isn't about a moment in time, a story is about the moment in time. ~ Walter D. Wetherell

I find that children have very little trouble understanding non-literal stories. ~ John Shelby Spong

in Chicago in 1893. While they introduced the American people to such new words as reincarnation, nirvana, and Karma, the new religions also echoed the creed of self-reliance that had been an article of faith in American religion and culture for almost a century. ~ George Pendle

It takes a special reader to experience a special book, and allow the inspiration, inevitable in the process, to move him to action. ~ Cameile Graham

In facing our shattered life stories, we must reach deep inside our pain -- for it is here that we can break our silence and find our new voice. ~ Sandra Marinella

Then, just at the peak of complacency, when it was assumed that the climate of the world had changed forever, when the conductor of the philharmonic played Vivaldi's Four Seasons and left out an entire movement, and when to children of a young age stories of winter were told as if they were fairy tales, New York was hit by a cataclysmic freeze, and, once again, people huddled together to talk fearfully of the millennium. ~ Mark Helprin

The last element in drama is high stakes. War, of course, is life and death - survival, not only for the story's characters, but often for the society itself. That's why I'm drawn to stories that are built around wars, even if they're not technically "war stories." ~ Steven Pressfield

Many of the stories centered around me hunting bandits and rescuing young girls. But none of them came terribly close to the truth. No story can move a thousand miles by word of mouth and keep its shape. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

A short story is not a portrayal of life. When life becomes disconsolate and the fear for the unknown seeps through the holes on the walls that we thought could protect us, telling a story could greatly help. The tradition of storytelling was oral, once. It's history. The wisdom in this history was the possibility to abide. Stories were medicines to drive away the ghosts of loneliness, boredom and ignorance. ~ Anu Lal

Seeing 'Pretty Little Liars' fans adapt and create their own stories is both exciting and flattering, and I think what Amazon Publishing is offering through Kindle Worlds is a great way to reward their ingenuity. ~ Sara Shepard

Writing a story is kind of like surfing, as opposed to the novel, where you use a GPS to get somewhere. With surfing, you kind of jump. ~ Etgar Keret

The core belief of the [Day of the Dead] is so poetic and simple: as long as we remember those who have passed away, as long as we tell their stories, sing their songs, tell their jokes, cook their favorite meals, THEN they are with us, around us, and in our hearts. The moment we forget them, [...] then they are truly gone.
(The Art of the Book of Life, Introduction) ~ Jorge R. Gutierrez

We are living in complex, difficult times and I wanted Syriana to reflect this complexity in a visceral way, to embrace it narratively. There are no good guys and no bad guys and there are no easy answers. The characters do not have traditional character arcs; the stories don't wrap up in neat little life lessons, the questions remain open. The hope was that by not wrapping everything up, the film will get under your skin in a different way and stay with you longer. This seemed like the most honest reflection of this post 9-11 world we all find ourselves in. ~ Stephen Gaghan

A tree trunk the size of a man grows from a blade as thin as a hair. A tower nine stories high is built from a small heap of earth. ~ Laozi

When I sit at that typewriter, I have to be frightened of what I'm trying to do. I'm frightened by my own belief that I can actually get a story down on paper. ~ Barry Lopez

I want to share my story, and I want to know yours. I believe with all my heart that sharing our stories, the real, ugly, broken ones, is one of the most powerful things in the world, because to share our story we must first accept it. We must own it. We must stop running from it or shoving it into the corner when company comes over. To share our story is to admit that we've been changed. ~ Anna White

Left to themselves, people remake their origin stories every few generations to suit present circumstances. ~ Jo Walton

Life tells you many stories... but allows you to write your own.
Its your job to make it good"
Victor Ghoshe ~ Victor Ghoshe

I think of something quite different from a snapshot. I know of a lot of poems, some very fine ones, that are like snapshots, but I'm more interested in poetry that is like an endless film, long stories, things that weave together many different strands, like a big piece of cloth, not like a photograph. ~ Robert Bringhurst

Aureliano Segundo was deep in the reading of a book. Although it had no cover and the title did not appear anywhere, the boy enjoyed the story of a woman who sat at a table and ate nothing but kernels of rice, which she picked up with a pin, and the story of the fisherman who borrowed a weight for his net from a neighbor and when he gave him a fish in payment later it had a diamond in its stomach, and the one about the lamp that fulfilled wishes and about flying carpets. Surprised, he asked Ursula if all that was true and she answered him that it was, that many years ago the gypsies had brought magic lamps and flying mats to Macondo.
"What's happening," she sighed, "is that the world is slowly coming to an end and those things don't come here any more. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

In stories, when someone behaves uncharacteristically, we take it as a meaningful, even pivotal moment. If we are surprised again and again, we have to keep changing our minds, or give up and disbelieve the writer. In real life, if people think they know you well enough not only to say, 'It's Tuesday, Amy must be helping out at the library today,' but well enough to say to the librarian, after you've left the building, 'You know, Amy just loves reading to the four-year-olds, I think it's been such a comfort for her since her little boy died' - if they know you like that, you can do almost anything where they can't see you, and when they hear about it, they will, as we do, simply disbelieve the narrator. ~ Amy Bloom

Actors tell stories and we play different characters, and not all of them are healthy. ~ Andrea Roth

I enjoy heroines who grow and come into their own during the course of a story. ~ Maggie Shayne

The Quakers have a saying: "An enemy is one whose story we have not heard." To communicate to post-Christians, I must first listen to their stories for clues to how they view the world and how they view people like me. Those conversations are what led to the title of this book. Although God's grace is as amazing as ever, in my divided country it seems in vanishing supply. ~ Philip Yancey

Secondly, you can spend your whole life being a story that happens to somebody else. You can twist and cram and shave down every aspect of your personality that doesn't quite fit into the story boys have grown up expecting, but eventually, one day, you'll wake up and want something else, and you'll have to choose.
Because the other thing about stories is that they end. The book closes, and you're left with yourself, a grown fucking woman with no more pieces of cultural detritus from which to construct a personality. I tried and failed to be a character in a story somebody else had written for me. What concerns me now is the creation of new narratives, the opening of space in the collective imagination for women who have not been permitted such space before, for women who don't exist to please, to delight, to attract men, for women who have more on our minds. Writing is a different kind of magic, and everyone knows what happens to women who do their own magic - but it's a risk you have to take. ~ Laurie Penny

To be completely honest, I just like whatever tells a good story. Put me in whatever setting, scenario, genre. If you're telling a good story, it's great and it's fun to get caught up in. ~ Drew Roy

When I write this in bed, I can almost hear the echo of the wind over the sand, or the groans of wooden panels around me. I can almost smell the dustiness of the camel, taste the bitterness of saltbush. And when I dream, your warm hands cover my shoulders. Your whispers carry stories and sound like the rustle of spinifex. I still wear that ring, you know ... at night, when no one is watching. ~ Lucy Christopher

I don't know your story or your dreams or the things that steal your sleep, but I know they matter. I hope you story is rich with characters, rich with friends and conversation. I hope you know some people who carry you, and I hope you have the honor of carrying them. I hope that there's beauty in your memories, and I hope it doesn't haunt you. And if it does, then I hope there is someone who will walk you through the night and remind you of the promise of the sunrise, that beauty keeps coming, that there are futures worth waiting and fighting for, and that you were made to dream. ~ Jamie Tworkowski

I'm quite interested in the absolute roots of narrative, why we tell stories at all: where the monsters come from. ~ Anne Enright

If we can tame or restrain our addiction to the blinding overabundance of technical widgets, we can "tool down" our mental frame. It's, by opening our mind to the infinite potential of the world around, that we can take time for the others and learn to listen and interpret their captivating stories. ("Should I shave first?") ~ Erik Pevernagie

You could use a moth like that as a symbol in a novel, but it was trite, wasn't it? The old moth-to-the-flame image had been used and used again. It was the stuff of amateur poetry. And she, having so little experience crafting a story, would be the most in danger of falling into trite approaches. If she wrote a novel, it probably would be about her father. And the male Luna moth would haunt its pages. Everyone would recognize the work as that of a first novelist. "She wrote about herself through the lens of her father."
The really good novelists, Laura thought, put their fathers, and maybe their mothers too, deeper into the stories. Which, she suddenly thought, might redeem Melville just the littlest bit. ~ L.L. Barkat