Life Is A Story To Be Written Quotes

Life is not a dream to be dreamed but a story to be written. ~ Debasish Mridha

I don't want to be somebody who stands still and sings pretty. Each song is a world. Each song is a story. I don't achieve nearly what I want. ~ Renee Fleming

Life is a glass of wine and having your feet washed - it's a biblical event, might I add. This is part of mankind's story. You are always looking for a moment to take a break. ~ Mick Fleetwood

I want to live in this moment just a little bit longer. After all, it's my fucking fairytale.

This isn't about Cinderella and her strange feet that are different from everyone else's feet in the kingdom.

This isn't about Rapunzel and her super strong neck muscles that can support the weight of a grown man.

This isn't about Snow White and her seven little men kink - although I'm more like her than the others.

This story is about me - Winter Tews.

So cue the music.

Light the fireworks.

Pour the scotch.

Because this shit is really happening.

This is the ending to a fairytale I never imagined could be mine.

I give Jinx a pleading look. "One more time?"

"For fuck's sake," he rushes out, exasperated.

He cradles my face in his hands. Kisses me crazy. Doesn't pull away until I'm breathless. Then he says it again. "I love you."

I only have one thing to say.

"Ditto."

And we lived happily ever after. ~ Kim Jones

Here's a story of a girl
Who grew up lost and lonely
Thinking love was fairy tale
And trouble was made only for me
Even in the darkness every color can be found
And every day of rain brings
Water flowing
To things growing in the ground
Grief replaced with pity
For a city barely coping
Dreams are easy to achieve
If hope is all I'm hoping to be
Any time you're hurt
There's one who has it worse around
And every drop of rain will keep you growing
Seeds you're sowing in the ground ~ Joss Whedon

One more item slipped out of the bag. It was the metal identification tag from Maureen's cremation, the one I had burned with her just a few weeks before. These tags say with the body through the whole cremation, and leave stuck in with the ashes, which is how sacks of cremated remains found in old storage lockers and attics can still be identified years later. The tag I found was identical (except for the ID number) to the one I was putting in with Matthew now. I imagined his hands sinking into the grey mulch of Maureen's bones and finding the tag. I imagined him pulling the tag out and brushing the dusty metal against his cheek. It was a bizarre honor to have been a part of their last private moment together, the last act of their love story.
I cried (sobbed, if we're being honest) standing over Matthew's body, moments before it was loaded into the chamber. Even if all we love will die, I still ached for a love like theirs, to be adored so completely. Had not Disney guaranteed all of us such an ending? ~ Caitlin Doughty

They're not seething with discontent and rebellion, not incessantly wrangling over what should be allowed and what forbidden, not forever accusing each other of not living the right way, not living in terror of each other, not going crazy because their lives seem empty and pointless, not having to stupefy themselves with drugs to get through the days, not inventing a new religion every week to give them something to hold on to, not forever searching for something to do or something to believe in that will make their lives worth living. And - I repeat - this is not because they live close to nature or have no formal government or because they're innately noble. This is simply because they are enacting a story that worked well for three million years and that still works well where the Takers haven't managed to stamp it out. ~ Daniel Quinn

If you seem to be happy in this place of solitude, you will acquire a great reputation for wisdom, and I know, by my own experience, that under the cloak of a great reputation it is possible to hide whole treasures of folly. ("The Story of Princess Zulkais and the Prince Kalilah") ~ William Beckford

I am beyond thrilled to be hitting the road with 'Singin' in the Rain.' As a huge fan of the original movie, the chance to bring this story to life on stage is something I couldn't pass up, and it'll be great visiting some of the beautiful theatres on the tour; some I've been to previously; some are going to be a brand new experience for me. ~ Maxwell Caulfield

Horror is a reaction; it's not a genre. Somebody's life would have to be in danger for it [story] to be a horror story. ~ John Carpenter

There's no point in it unless it's a story that you really want to tell. It's a nebulous job. Unless you're doing it well, you're not doing anything. And there are a few of those. It's perfectly possible to be a passenger on a film set because if somebody else has written it, you can make nothing of that role and that's exactly what bad directors do. ~ Colin Firth

When you're operating on uninvestigated theories of what's going on and you aren't even aware of it, you're in what I call "the dream." Often the dream becomes troubling; sometimes it even turns into a nightmare. At times like these, you may want to test the truth of your theories by doing The Work on them. The Work always leaves you with less of your uncomfortable story. Who would you be without it? How much of your world is made up of unexamined stories? You'll never know until you inquire. ~ Byron Katie

My life after childhood has two main stories: the story of the hustler and the story of the rapper, and the two overlap as much as they diverge. I was on the streets for more than half of my life from the time I was thirteen years old. People sometimes say that now I'm so far away from that life - now that I've got businesses and Grammys and magazine covers - that I have no right to rap about it. But how distant is the story of your own life ever going to be? The feelings I had during that part of my life were burned into me like a brand. It was life during wartime. ~ Jay-Z

FAILURE IS INEVITABLE. I will fail. We all will. And having failed, and gotten back up, and failed again, taught me that I can survive failure. This is a downfall in most modern stories: the hero always wins. Because while this story is inspiring, it's also false. In reality, not everyone wins. It's 100% true that no one wills all the time, and we expect that - every hero must fall at least once. But it's also 100% true that some people never win at all, and that's the thing we try so hard to ignore behind the pretty stories. I could spend the rest of my life trying to be a prima ballerina, and it would not happen. I would fail at that for the rest of my life. FAILURE TEACHES US WHO WE ARE. Because even though I know I would fail forever at being a prima ballerina, I also know that I am not someone who should be a prima ballerina. It's not who I am, it's not what I want. Of course I would fail at it. ~ Beth Revis

Still. Four words.
And I didn't realize it until a couple of days ago, when someone wrote in to my blog:
Dear Neil,
If you could choose a quote - either by you or another author - to be inscribed on the wall of a public library children's area, what would it be?
Thanks!
Lynn
I pondered a bit. I'd said a lot about books and kids' reading over the years, and other people had said things pithier and wiser than I ever could. And then it hit me, and this is what I wrote:
I'm not sure I'd put a quote up, if it was me, and I had a library wall to deface. I think I'd just remind people of the power of stories, and why they exist in the first place. I'd put up the four words that anyone telling a story wants to hear. The ones that show that it's working, and that pages will be turned:
... and then what happened? ~ Neil Gaiman

To me, the single biggest mark of the amateur writer is a sense of hurry.

Hurry to finish a manuscript, hurry to edit it, hurry to publish it. It's definitely possible to write a book in a month, leave it unedited, and watch it go off into the world and be declared a masterpiece. It happens every fifty years or so.

For the rest of us, the single greatest ally we have is time. There's no page of prose in existence that its author can't improve after it's been in a drawer for a week. The same is true on the macro level – every time I finish a story or a book, I try to put it away and forget it for as long as I can. When I return, its problems are often so obvious and easy to fix that I'm amazed I ever struggled with them.

Amateur writers are usually desperate to be published, as soon as possible. And I understand that feeling – you just want it to start, your career, your next book, whatever. But I wonder how many self-published novels might have had a chance at getting bought, and finding more readers, if their authors had a bit more patience with them? ~ Charles Finch

A book can only end one of two ways: truthfully or artfully. If it ends artfully, then it never feels quite right. It feels forced, manipulated. If it ends truthfully, then the story ends badly, in death. It's the reason most theories and religions and economic systems break down before you get too far into them
and the reason Buddhism and the Beach Boys make sense to teenagers, because they're too young to know what life really is: a frantic struggle that always ends the same way. The only thing that varies is the beginning and the middle. Life itself always ends badly. ~ Jess Walter

The thing that's helped me from wrestling is sometimes when you do live television, things change immediately, so you can be immersed in one story and then the story shifts. Ultimately, if you just get the point of what you're trying to accomplish, if you know the story, then you can put forth a good product. ~ John Cena

You mean we won't get to run through burning buildings?" I could see he wanted to laugh, but instead he watched me intently. "What? Why are you staring at me?"
"I'm not staring. I'm observing."
I smiled through my tears. "And what do you observe?"
He brushed his lips against my ear. "A brave young woman who has always fought for what was right, even when it was unpopular. A woman who can't return to the land of her birth, but is wlcome to cross the seas and rebuild Alexandria in mine. And a woman who has suffered enough in Rome and deserves happiness for a change. Will you come to Mauretania and be my queen?"
He drew back to look at me, but I held him closer. "Yes."
"Just yes?"
I nodded and pressed my lips against his. ~ Michelle Moran

Twenty-first-century attitudes towards time and our expectations of story are very different from the shape of Mary Anning's life. She spent day after day, year after year, doing the same thing on the beach. I have taken the events of her life and condensed them to fit into a narrative that is not stretched beyond the reader's patience. Hence events, while in order, do not always coincide exactly with actual dates and time spans. Plus, of course, I made up plenty. For instance, while there was gossip about Mary and Buckland and Mary and Birch, there was no proof. That is where only a novelist can step in. ~ Tracy Chevalier

And then it developed that Campbell was not going to go unanswered after all. Poor old Derby, the doomed high school teacher, lumbered to his feet for what was probably the finest moment in his life. There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters. But old Derby was a character now. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

You can't expect that because you find a story and report it out that your newspaper and broadcasting company is going to want to publish and broadcast it - and you're going to be a hero. ~ Lowell Bergman

The promulgation of the great doctrines of religion, the being, and attributes, and providence of one Almighty God: the responsibility to him for all our actions, founded upon moral freedom and accountability; a future state of rewards and punishments; the cultivation of all the personal, social, and benevolent virtues-these these never can be a matter of indifference in any well-ordered community. It is, indeed, difficult to conceive how any civilized society can exist without them. ~ Joseph Story

Life (according to the faith) is very like a serial story in a magazine: life ends with the promise (or menace) "to be continued in our next. ~ G.K. Chesterton

It is a great evil to look upon mankind with too clear vision. You seem to be living among wild beasts, and you become a wild beast yourself. (""The Story of Prince Alasi and the Princess Firouzkah") ~ William Beckford

If the passage absolutely demands cursing, be moderate. A little of it goes a long way. I've seen beginning writers pepper curse words through sentence after sentence.

'If you don't -blanking- get your -blanking-blank-blank- in to this house this -blanking- minute, I'm going to -blank- your -blank- and nail it to the -blanking- door.'

Two things happen when I read this junk: I get bored and I get angry. I didn't pick up your book to read garbage. If this is as clever as you can be, I don't want to read your prose. In life if you met someone who spoke like this, you'd want to flee. Then why put this stuff on the page?

As near as I can determine, this abomination occurs because a writer is corrupted by the awful -blanking- dialog that movies inflict on us these days. It's also a sign of insecurity. The writer wonders if the dialog is strong enough and decides a lot of -blanking-blank- will do the trick.

Someone might object that this kind of dialog is realistic in certain situations--intense scenes involving policemen or soldiers for example. I can only reply that in my research I spend considerable time with policemen and soldiers. Few of them curse any more than a normal person would. This garbage isn't realistic. It merely draws attention to itself and holds back the story. Use it sparingly. ~ David Morrell

I think of writing as a partnership with the reader. My goal is to feed their imagination, but only partially. If you give them everything, you limit their ability. It's borderline insulting. The key with description is to give the reader just enough so they experience what's going on, but leave a little out so they're encouraged to fill in the blanks. This is where the magic happens. Let them breathe life into your story in a way only they can. ~ S.J. Pierce

And what about the question which looms up continually within Christian discussion, about how human behavior as a whole relates to the overwhelming grace of God? This is the point at which the story of the rich young man, and the other scenes in Mark 10, seem to be saying, No: what matters isn't simply keeping a bunch of rules; what matters is character. Not just any old sort of character, either, but a particular sort: the sort Jesus was urging and modeling - the character of patience, humility, and above all generous, self-giving love. And the message of Mark at this point seems to be that you don't get that character just by trying. You get it by following Jesus. ~ N. T. Wright

Your dad's story is over. In six months or a year, this will be done for him. He won't be dealing with the consequences of what you choose to do now. You will. So you make this decision based on what you need. ~ Jason Schmidt

Evan Connell said once that he knew he was finished with a short story when he found himself going through it and taking out commas and then going through the story again and putting the commas back in the same places. I like that way of working on something. I respect that kind of care for what is being done. That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones, with the punctuation in the right places so that they an best say what they are meant to say. If the words are heavy with the writer's own unbridled emotions, or if they are imprecise and inaccurate for some other reason
if the worlds are in any way blurred
the reader's eyes will slide right over them and nothing will be achieved. Henry James called this sort of hapless writing 'weak specification'. ~ Raymond Carver

It's natural to be skeptical of a story like Noah. However, the greatest miracle in the Bible is not Noah and the flood. The greatest miracle in the Bible is recorded in the first verse: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." If that miracle is true, then every miracle in the Bible is at least possible (including Noah's Ark). If God created the universe, then He can do whatever He wants inside it. ~ Frank Turek

The belief that science proceeds from observation to theory is still so widely and so firmly held that my denial of it is often met with incredulity. I have even been suspected of being insincere- of denying what nobody in his senses would doubt.
But in fact the belief that we can start with pure observation alone, without anything in the nature of a theory is absurd; as may be illustrated by the story of the man who dedicated his life to natural science, wrote down everything he could observe, and bequeathed his priceless collection of observations to the Royal Society to be used as evidence. This story should show us that though beetles may profitably be collected, observations may not.
Twenty-five years ago I tried to bring home the same point to a group of physics students in Vienna by beginning a lecture with the following instructions : 'Take pencil and paper; carefully observe, and write down what you have observed!' They asked, of course, what I wanted them to observe. Clearly the instruction, 'Observe!' is absurd. (It is not even idiomatic, unless the object of the transitive verb can be taken as understood.) Observation is always selective. It needs a chosen object, a definite task, an interest, a point of view, a problem. And its description presupposes a descriptive language, with property words; it presupposes similarity and classification, which in their turn presuppose interests, points of view, and problems. ~ Karl Popper

THIS BOOK DOES not claim to be an account of facts and events but of personal experiences, experiences which millions of prisoners have suffered time and again. It is the inside story of a concentration camp, told by one of its survivors. This tale is not concerned with the great horrors, which have already been described often enough (though less often believed), but with the multitude of small torments. In other words, it will try to answer this question: How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner? ~ Viktor E. Frankl

I turn my head a little. The radio's caroling "Tonight," velvety smooth and young and filled with plaintive desire. Maria's song from West Side Story. I remember one beautiful night long ago at the Winter Garden, with a beautiful someone beside me. I tilt my nose and breathe in, and I can still smell her perfume, the ghost of her perfume from long ago. But where is she now, where did she go, and what did I do with her?
Our paths ran along so close together they were almost like one, the one they were eventually going to be. Thin fear came along, fear entered into it somehow, and split them wide apart.
Fear bred anxiety to justify. Anxiety to justify bred anger. The phone calls that wouldn't be answered, the door rings that wouldn't be opened. Anger bred sudden calamity.
Now there aren't two paths anymore; there's only one, only mine. Running downhill into the ground, running downhill into its doom.
("New York Blues") ~ Cornell Woolrich

I always set out to tell a good story, to create a character that young people can relate to, place them in a situation that will be interesting, intriguing, eventually suspenseful. But what I find is that after I do that, then there are themes that emerge, which teachers can then use to provoke discussion and debate. ~ Lois Lowry

It is as if, oddly, you were waiting for someone but you didn't know who they were until they arrived. Whether or not you were aware that there was something missing in your life, you will be when you meet the person you want. What psychoanalysis will add to this love story is that the person you fall in love with really is the man or woman of your dreams; that you have dreamed them up before you met them; not out of nothing - nothing comes of nothing - but out of prior experience, both real and wished for. You recognize them with such certainty because you already, in a certain sense, know them; and because you have quite literally been expecting them, you feel as though you have known them for ever, and yet, at the same time, they are quite foreign to you. They are familiar foreign bodies. ~ Adam Phillips

That's one reason I was so passionate about establishing the Magdalene community. Mary Magdalene was the name of the first person to preach about resurrection, and she experienced deep healing from old wounds. In the accounts of the resurrection stories offered in the Gospels, it seems like in each story Jesus lingers to meet Magdalene. In the account of the resurrection in the Gospel of John, two disciples run into the tomb and see the shroud that Jesus had been wrapped in. They leave scared, and Magdalene is left alone. As she stands outside the tomb, she bends over to look into the tomb. Jesus speaks to her. The bond and power of grace seem to bring her into the heart of God. I wanted to name the community in her honor and for it to be a sanctuary. I knew that in order to heal people, women needed a place to speak their truth in love without fear of being judged, in part because I needed that place. ~ Becca Stevens

When strangers on a train or a plane ask what I do for a living, I say, "I kill people." This response makes for a short conversation. No eye contact and no sudden movement from my seat-mate. Only peace and quiet. Rare is the fellow passenger who asks why I do it.

I suppose I got tired hanging out in a book all day waiting for a story to begin. I write the kind of novels I want to read. And why the theme of solving murders? Violent death is larger than life and it's the great equalizer. By law, every victim is entitled to a paladin and a chase, else life would be cheapened.

And the real reason I do this? My brain is simply bent this way. There is nothing else I would rather do. This neatly chains into my theory of the writing life. If you scratch an artist, under the skin you will find a bum who cannot hold down a real job. Conversely, if you scratch a bum... but I have never done that.

The heart of my theory has puritan roots: if you love what you do, you cannot call it honest work. ~ Carol O'Connell

One is reminded in this connection of a story concerning Kobori-Enshiu. Enshiu was complimented by his disciples on the admirable taste he had displayed in the choice of his [art] collection. Said they, "Each piece is such that no one could help admiring. It shows that you had better taste than had Rikiu, for his collection could only be appreciated by one beholder in a thousand." Sorrowfully Enshiu replied: "This only proves how commonplace I am. The great Rikiu dared to love only those objects which personally appealed to him, whereas I unconsciously cater to the taste of the majority. Verily, Rikiu was one in a thousand among tea-masters. ~ Kakuzo Okakura

What happened at the end of our last story is something called misdirection. It's what happens when you are led to believe that something is true, but in reality it's not true at all. Misdirection happens a lot in real life- especially in politics, history, education, medicine, marketing, science, religion, and the Oprah Winfrey Network. ~ Dav Pilkey

The story is the story of Howard Roark's triumph. It has to show what the man is, what he wants and how he gets it. It has to be a triumphant epic of man's spirit, a hymn glorifying a man's "I." It has to show every conceivable hardship and obstacle on his way - and how he triumphs over them, why he has to triumph. ~ Ayn Rand

We have, alas, belittled the cross, imagining it merely as a mechanism for getting us off the hook of our own petty naughtiness or as an example of some general benevolent truth. It is much, much more. It is the moment when the story of Israel reaches its climax; the moment when, at last, the watchmen on Jerusalem's walls see their God coming in his kingdom; the moment when the people of God are renewed so as to be, at last, the royal priesthood who will take over the world not with the love of power but with the power of love; the ~ N. T. Wright

Your story may not have such a happy beginning, but that doesn't make you who you are. It is the rest of your story, who you choose to be.
-Soothsayer ~ KungFuPandaMakers

Okay. The story is about a little wave, bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. He's enjoying the wind and the fresh air-until he notices the other waves in front of him, crashing against the shore. "My God, this is terrible," the wave says. "Look what's going to happen to me!"
Then along comes another wave. It sees the first wave, looking grim, and it says to him, "Why do you look so sad?"
The first wave says, "You don't understand! We're all going to crash! All of us waves are going to be nothing! Isn't it terrible?"
The second wave says, "No, you don't understand. You're not a wave, you're part of the ocean. ~ Morrie Schwartz.

The general public doesn't expect romance authors to be Harvard graduates. Which is funny, because there are actually quite a lot of us. But this disconnect means that journalists see me as an interesting story. The tricky part is making sure they understand that there are many, many talented writers who don't have 'fancy' educations. ~ Julia Quinn

At the Rodgers that night, the president all but anointed Hamilton as the keeper of the flame. His "primary message," he said, was to remind people of the need to keep hoping and to work together, but "this performance undoubtedly described it better than I ever could." The most important affinity that Hamilton will carry into its future isn't a specific message, though, political or otherwise: It's an underlying belief in stories, and their power to change the world.
Good community organizer that he is, the president knows that stories can be an engine for empathy, and a way to show people what they share. It's why he introduced himself, in that first big speech in 2004, by telling his own story. In the years to come, some of the many, many kids who are going to see and even perform Hamilton will be newly inspired to tell their stories too. Every time they do, the newly kaleidoscopic America will understand itself a little more.
"I can do that," they'll say. And if they're like Alexander Hamilton, they'll add, "And I can do it better. ~ Jeremy McCarter

The professionalism of wire service reporters is constantly being tested because reporters know that if they're late or sloppy on a story, it will show up because the competition is likely to be not late and not sloppy. ~ Bob Greene

But I did not bring the Wild Boy to England simply so he could learn from us. I also brought him here so we could learn from him; so we can remember what it means to be young- to be innocent. You are still young now, but there will come a time when you will be grown-up, and it is easy, so easy, to forget how precious, how dear, life is. Then you forget to smile, to laugh, to cry, to dream. I hope knowing Peter will help you to hold on fiercely to your own innocence, to live joyfully, even in the midst of difficult times. ~ Christopher Daniel Mechling

Slow' and 'down' are modes of the soul; they are connective modes, ways of keeping connected to oneself and to one's environment. 'Slowing downwards' refers to more than simply moving slowly, it means growing down towards the roots of one's being. Instead of outward growth and upward climb, life at times must turn inward and downward in order to grow in other ways. There is a shift to the vertical down that re-turns us to root memories, root metaphors, and timeless things that shape our lives from within. Slowing downwards creates opportunities to dwell more deeply in one's life, for the home we are looking for in this world is within us all along. The lost home that we are seeking is ourselves; it is the story we carry within our soul. ~ Michael Meade