Life Stories Quotes

The historical novel gives us perspective on our modern lives and helps us connect with the story, which we are continuing ourselves. ~ Mary Pope Osborne

Anytime you share life stories with other people, you know, you are acknowledging their humanity and kind of accessing some things about yourself, and other people start to expect things about themselves. It's kind of like a fellowship. ~ Jill Scott

Living is not the story of your life. Living is the process of experiencing right now. ~ Werner Erhard

I tried, it was hard, I quit, the end. Story of my life. ~ Jen Lancaster

The Great stories give us the hope and the courage to survive life. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

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

Are you feeling helpless when you think about the dark roads of the future? Then read the biographies of the great men! Learn their life stories; they will lead you to the light! Buddha will lead you to the light; Gandhi will lead you to the light! Men of wider horizons will broaden our own horizons! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Alphabet Juice is the book Roy Blount was born to write, which considering his prodigious talent, is saying a lot. Did you know that the word LAUGH is linguistically related to chickens and pie? This is the book that any of us who urgently, passionately love words-to read them, roll them over the tongue and learn their life stories while laughing and eating chicken and pie-were lucky enough to be born to read. ~ Cathleen Schine

That's what art is. You don't make up stories. You live your life. ~ Maurice Sendak

All the movies that I make in some ways have to be the story of my life. There are different chapters in my life. ~ Jodie Foster

At school I pretended I had a normal life, but I felt lonely all the time and different from everyone else. I never felt like I fit in, and I wasn't allowed to participate in after-school activities, go to sports events or parties or date boys. Many times I had to make up stories about why I couldn't do anything with my classmates. ~ Joyce Meyer

What is a life? That is what we were left with: stories. They were our clothes. ~ Edward Carey

The world is made of stories, which bind us all together, and impossible stories are the best of all, for they bind us in impossible ways. ~ Seth Dickinson

It's difficult to write a really good short story because it must be a complete and finished reflection of life with only a few words to use as tools. There isn't time for bad writing in a short story. ~ Edna Ferber

believe that this way of living, this focus on the present, the daily, the tangible, this intense concentration not on the news headlines but on the flowers growing in your own garden, the children growing in your own home, this way of living has the potential to open up the heavens, to yield a glittering handful of diamonds where a second ago there was coal. This way of living and noticing and building and crafting can crack through the movie sets and soundtracks that keep us waiting for our own life stories to begin, and set us free to observe the lives we have been creating all along without ever realizing it.
I don't want to wait anymore. I choose to believe that there is nothing more sacred or profound than this day. I choose to believe that there may be a thousand big moments embedded in this day, waiting to be discovered like tiny shards of gold. The big moments are the daily, tiny moments of courage and forgiveness and hope that we grab on to and extend to one another. That's the drama of life, swirling all around us, and generally I don't even see it, because I'm too busy waiting to become whatever it is I think I am about to become. The big moments are in every hour, every conversation, every meal, every meeting.
The Heisman Trophy winner knows this. He knows that his big moment was not when they gave him the trophy. It was the thousand times he went to practice instead of going back to bed. It was the miles run on rainy days, the healthy meals when a burg ~ Shauna Niequist

You can't skip to the end of the story just because you're tired of being in the middle. You'd never survive. ~ Seanan McGuire

Country music to me is heartfelt music that speaks to the common man. It is about real life stories with rather simple melodies that the average person can follow. Country music should speak directly and simply about the highs and lows of life. Something that anyone can relate to. ~ George Jones

In some way there is no real life. It's always the story of your life that you're living. ~ Aleksandar Hemon

All we have is the story we tell. Everything we do, every decision we make, our strength, weakness, motivation, history, and character-what we believe-none of it is real; it's all part of the story we tell. But here's the thing: it's our goddamned story! ~ Jess Walter

There will always be reservations, things one must leave out, events one can't explain without handing over a full map of one's life, unfolding it, making clear that all the lines and contours stand for long days and nights when things were bad or good, or when things were too small to be described at all: when things just were. This is a life. ~ Colm Toibin

There will be other words some other day; that is the story of my life. ~ Billy Joel

I think sometimes the stories we need are the ones about taking the hobbits to Isengard and dog-human dudes with space heelies and trashy King Arthurs and gay ice-skating animes and Zuko redemption arcs and space princesses with found families and galaxies far, far away. We need those stories, too. Stories that tell us that we can be bold and brash and make mistakes and still come out better on the other side. ~ Ashley Poston

I categorically resist this idea that films are supposed to be autobiographical and the only stories you tell are about your own life. ~ Stephen Daldry

In life, be a kid in a candy store. ~ A.D. Posey

I can't write my life story without Emmitt and Troy. They can't write their life stories without me. We're tied together forever. This is a day to remember for the rest of our lives. ~ Michael Irvin

There are always two sides to a story. ~ Una McCormack

I write from real life. I am an unrepentant eavesdropper and a collector of stories. I record bits of overheard dialogue. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Our stories make us who we are. And each story has its own purpose and its own reward. Each story rings true and each story is worthy of the ages. There is no such thing as an insignificant life. ~ Laurence Overmire

If Rylin had learned anything by now, it was that in real life, you never quite knew what was coming. You had to take the bad with the good. You had to take a chance, hold your breath, and trust people. After all, the fun of real life stories is that they're still being written. ~ Katharine McGee

If the world is an objective reality that exists independently of us, then humans themselves, even in their own eyes, are nothing more than objects, and their life stories merely a series of disconnected historical accidents, which they may wonder at, but which they themselves have nothing to do with. ~ Imre Kertesz

How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but - mainly - to ourselves. ~ Julian Barnes

Without a best friend to tell stories to, it almost didn't matter if they even happened. ~ Leila Howland

Sometimes I feel like relationships consist of telling your same life stories to different people until someone finally appreciates them. ~ Kate Rockland

So yes I know how angry, or naive, or self-destructive, or messed up, or even deluded I sound weaving my way through these life stories at times. But beautiful things. Graceful things. Hopeful things can sometimes appear in dark places. Besides, I'm trying to tell you the truth of a woman like me. ~ Lidia Yuknavitch

We read literature for a number of reasons, but two of the most compelling ones are to get out of ourselves and our own life stories and - especially important - to find ourselves by understanding our own life stories more clearly in the context of others. ~ Maureen Corrigan

The imitation lives we see on TV and in the movies whisper the idea that human existence consists of revelations and abrupt changes of heart; by the time we've reached full adulthood, I think, this is an idea we have on some level come to accept. Such things may happen from time to time, but I think that for the most part it's a lie. Life's changes come slowly…the whole idea of curious cats attaining satisfaction seemed slightly absurd. The world rarely finishes its conversations. ~ Stephen King

I learned a long time ago that life introduces young people to situations they are in no way prepared for, even good girls, lucky girls who want for nothing. Sometimes, when you least expect it, you become the girl in the woods. You lose your name because another one is forced on you. You think you are alone until you find books about girls like you. Salvation is certainly among the reasons I read. Reading and writing have always pulled me out of the darkest experiences in my life. Stories have given me a place in which to lose myself. They have allowed me to remember. They have allowed me to forget. They have allowed me to imagine different endings and better possible worlds. ~ Roxane Gay

Alertness is a requirement of the writing life, staying nimble on your feet, open to the stories that will rise up and flower around you while you are walking your dog on the beach or taking the kids to soccer practice. The great stories often make their approach with misdirection, camouflage, or smoke screens to hide their passage through your life. ~ Pat Conroy

Human souls enfold the elemental elements that we configure to provide our own distinctive explanation of what it means to be alive. By opening our hearts and minds, by engaging in intuitive self-exploration, by telling our life stories full of prejudices and mindboggling idiosyncrasies, and by listening to the multivariate stories of our brethren, we add a ray of light to the spiraling consciousness of humankind. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Learn with Alex and Anna are charming every-day life stories for children. ~ Peter Hayward

It's good to be reminded that the world is full of stories that are, potentially, at least as painful as yours. ~ Stephanie Butland

Though my stories aren't autobiographical, I do sometimes use things from my life. ~ Kim Edwards

There is only the actuality of what happens in life. The rest is just a story, no matter who's telling it. ~ Gary Crowley

I'd love to have a program like 'Dr. Laura.' I studied psychology at the University of Miami, and when I rode the bus home from school, perfect strangers would strike up conversations with me and end up telling me their life stories. I think they could sense that I was studying to help people. That, or I have a face like a priest. ~ Gloria Estefan

Stories do not change, only the lives they live in do. ~ Cameron Conaway

Life consists of many different stories. A person has not just one but countless life stories that weave in between each other and together create exactly that specific life and that specific human being. ~ Iben Dissing Sandahl

Good writers show rather than tell. Stories are told in action. Life stories are no different. ~ Donald Miller

American cold war culture represented an age of anxiety. The anxiety was so severe that it sought relief in an insistent, assertive optimism. Much of American popular culture aided this quest for apathetic security. The expanding white middle class sought to escape their worries in the burgeoning consumer culture. Driving on the new highway system in gigantic showboat cars to malls and shopping centers that accepted a new form of payment known as credit cards, Americans could forget about Jim Crow, communism, and the possibility of Armageddon. At night in their suburban homes, television allowed middle class families to enjoy light domestic comedies like The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best, and Leave It to Beaver. Somnolently they watched representations of settled family life, stories where lost baseball gloves and dinnertime hijinks represented the only conflicts. In the glow of a new Zenith television, it became easy to believe that the American dream had been fully realized by the sacrifice and hard work of the war generation.

American monsters in pop culture came to the aid of this great American sleep. Although a handful of science fiction films made explicit political messages that unsettled an apathetic America, the vast majority of 'creature features' proffered parables of American righteousness and power. These narratives ended, not with world apocalypse, but with a full restoration of a secure, consumer-oriented status quo. Invaders i ~ W. Scott Poole

We have, each of us, a life story, whose continuity, whose sense, is our lives. ~ Oliver Sacks

Other people's life stories are not a topic for debate. One should hear them out, and reciprocate in the same coin. ~ Olga Tokarczuk

Do you ever think about how many stories are out there?' she asks, placing a finger on the glass. 'How many dramas are unfolding around us right at this very moment? I wonder how long a book you would need to record them. You'd probably need an entire library to hold a single evening in Manhattan. An hour. A minute. ~ Erin Morgenstern

I read mostly historical fiction - lots of stuff set in ancient Rome and ancient Greece. I also liked sci-fi and fantasy: David Gemmell, Raymond E. Feist. It's a nice escape from the world. As much as I do love real-life stories, they can often make you hurt in a way I'd rather not hurt. ~ Henry Cavill

People only know what you tell them.And it was true.People gave out their whole life stories to anyone and everyone without a second's thought.Stand at a bus stop,sit in a strange pub,get banged up,and someone would always give you their life story.It was as if they were trying to prove they existed ~ Martina Cole

Memorable stories of every culture tell us what principles the citizenry saved their smiles for and shed their sorrowful tears lamenting. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Can you imagine a world without books to read? ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

At the Foley Center for the Study of Lives at Northwestern University, McAdams studies the stories that people tell about themselves. We all write our life stories as if we were novelists, McAdams believes, with beginnings, conflicts, turning points, and endings. And the way we characterize our past setbacks profoundly influences how satisfied we are with our current lives. Unhappy people tend to see setbacks as contaminants that ruined an otherwise good thing ("I was never the same again after my wife left me"), while generative adults see them as blessings in disguise ("The divorce was the most painful thing that ever happened to me, but I'm so much happier with my new wife"). Those who live the most fully realized lives - giving back to their families, societies, and ultimately themselves - tend to find meaning in their obstacles. In a sense, McAdams has breathed new life into one of the great insights of Western mythology: that where we stumble is where our treasure lies. ~ Susan Cain

Once upon a time,' is code for 'I'm lying to you.' We experience stories as lies and truth at the same time. We learn to empathize with real people via made-up people. The most important thing that fiction does is it lets us look out through other eyes, and that teaches us empathy - that behind every pair of eyes is somebody like us. ~ Neil Gaiman

We are the hero of our own story. ~ Mary McCarthy

Life is chaotic and meaningless, and you have to find your meaning. You must find the answer, you can't just live. That's the point of story: helping you find your meaning in life. ~ Robert McKee

I feel very privileged that I get to spend my life telling stories that mean something to people. ~ Mary Stuart Masterson

We write to share the deepest heart-talk of our souls. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I have been writing my whole life: stories and plays and sketches and scripts and poems and jokes. Most feel alive. And fluid. Breathing organisms made better by the people who come into contact with them. But this book has nearly killed me. Because, you see, a book? A book has a cover. They call it a jacket and that jacket keeps the inside warm so that the words stay permanent and everyone can read your genius thoughts over and over again for years to come. Once a book is published it can't be changed, which is a stressful proposition for this improviser who relies on her charm. I've been told that I am "better in the room" and "prettier in person." Both these things are not helpful when writing a book. I am looking forward to a lively book-on-tape session with the hope that Kathleen Turner agrees to play me when I talk about some of my darker periods. One can dream. ~ Amy Poehler

Stories are how we think. They are how we make meaning of life. Call them schemas, scripts, mental maps, ideas, metaphors, or narratives. Stories are how we inspire and motivate human beings. Great stories help us to understand our place in the world, create our identity, discover our purpose, form our character and define and teach human values. ~ Jeroninio Almeida

You remindme of myself from several yearsago," she says. "I always offered help - but I refused to accept any. My mother scolded me about that. Do you know what she told me? When you refuse to ask for help, it tells others that they also shouldn't ask for help from you. That you look down on them for needing your help. That you like feeling superior to them. It's an insult, Emi, to your friends and peers. So don't be like that. Let us in. ~ Marie Lu

Our life stories are at one and the same time reality, fallacy and fantasy ... ~ Rasheed Ogunlaru

If our story isn't serving us, negatively impacts our families, our communities, or our organizations, we might just have to find a way to "StoryJack" the story, transforming it, and creating a new story that we resonate with so that we can "Jack Into" a better version or experience the story – and our life - in a new way. ~ Lyssa DeHart

Life is a story. You and I are telling stories; they may suck, but we are telling stories. And we tell stories about the things that we want. So you go through your bank account, and those are things you have told stories about. ~ Donald Miller

To have the beautiful relationship you want, you and your partner must share your life stories with each other, holding nothing back. That sharing includes any past experiences of brutality, traumas, rape, incest, and emotional or mental torture of any kind that either of you has experienced as well as the wonderful memories you each cherish. ~ Chris Prentiss

Until you begin to write, then you will see the beauty of writing. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I don't believe in fairies floating around, and I don't believe in telepathy, but there are things I want to say that just simple real-life stories don't let me say. ~ Isobelle Carmody

There will surely always be people with straight hair and blue eyes, as there have been for all history. But some of these straight-haired people with blue eyes have been "black," and this points to the great difference between their world and ours. We did not choose our fences. They were imposed on us by Virginia planters obsessed with enslaving as many Americans as possible. They are the ones who came up with a one-drop rule that separated the "white" from the "black," even if it meant that their own blue-eyed sons would live under the lash. The result is a people, black people, who embody all physical varieties and whose life stories mirror this physical range. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

It's time to begin righting the story of your life. ~ David Jeremiah

I don't write stories, I write characters. ~ Bhavya Kaushik

Live as if they're going to tell stories about you. ~ Shari Arnold

I started wondering about life stories, how each one of us has one that isn't apparent at first glance, what we tell the world about ourselves and what we deliberately tuck away and never reveal. ~ Laura Wiess

Everything encourages you not to tell stories of gay lives. There is no economy yet for that kind of cinema. ~ Ira Sachs

In dreams and stories we rearrange our lives. ~ Marty Rubin

Keep your private life private. Be open to suggestions from different people. And just be nice. I have heard stories about people who are just plain rude to the press or fans. ~ Michelle Trachtenberg

He who reads a story only once is condemned to read the same story his whole life. ~ Roland Barthes

Sometimes we tell our stories and sometimes our stories tell us. ~ Patti Callahan Henry

As an activist, you do find yourself directed more toward public action. But I've always tried to use stories from my own life in my writing for instance. It has always been clear to me that the stories of each other's lives are our best textbooks. Every social justice movement that I know of has come out of people sitting in small groups, telling their life stories, and discovering that other people have shared similar experiences. So, if we've shared many experiences, then it probably has something to do with power or politics, and if we unify and act together, then we can make a change. ~ Gloria Steinem

Stories are epically important to how we view and interact in the world around us. We define ourselves, our abilities and even our goals by the stories we believe and share. These stories become part of our personal view of our world. ~ Lyssa Danehy DeHart

Always let life be wild. Forever have life be interesting. ~ A.D. Posey

After many years of knowing her, she died. Instead of leaving me with a heartbreak, she left behind wonderful memories. Memories of teasing me and pretending to fall asleep when I walk into her room. There are no tears to be shed. Instead, I celebrated our friendship. Twenty-two years of smiles and laughter. Unhurried narration of her life stories and hugs. Rewarding me with birthday cards and Christmas greetings. Scolding me with a smile before each departure, and winks by the door before she left my office. Each time, I stood and watched her struggle to get into her car. Even with all her physical struggles, she never missed the chance to visit me every three months until she was taken away from me permanently. Her death. Her departure from earth. As much as I struggle with the event, I would not call it untimely. I said my farewell, but I still cherish what we had. A sempiternal friendship ~ Fidelis O. Mkparu

My cousin Helen, who is in her 90s now, was in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II. She and a bunch of the girls in the ghetto had to do sewing each day. And if you were found with a book, it was an automatic death penalty. She had gotten hold of a copy of 'Gone With the Wind', and she would take three or four hours out of her sleeping time each night to read. And then, during the hour or so when they were sewing the next day, she would tell them all the story. These girls were risking certain death for a story. And when she told me that story herself, it actually made what I do feel more important. Because giving people stories is not a luxury. It's actually one of the things that you live and die for. ~ Neil Gaiman

In the era of big brains, life stories could end up any which way. Look at mine. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

If we are sharing challenges and concerns, laughter and life stories, dreams and dramas with someone other than our mate, we are making precious, intimate connections with someone other than our mate. We need to keep not only physical, but emotional and intellectual connections strong and active with our beloved. ~ Cathy Burnham Martin

Mr. Geronimo's life up to this point had been a journey of a type that was no longer uncommon in our ancestors' peripatetic world, in which people easily became detached from places, beliefs, communities, countries, languages, and from even more important things, such as honor, morality, good judgment, and truth; in which, we may say, they splintered away from the authentic narratives of their life stories and spent the rest of their days trying to discover, or forge, new, synthetic narratives of their own. ~ Salman Rushdie

I draw inspiration from anything and everybody and that's what country music is to me ... real life stories and real life emotions. ~ Dustin Lynch

We must keep in mind that only a part of memory can be translated into the language-based packets of information people use to tell their life stories to others. Learning to be open to many layers of communication is a fundamental part of getting to know another person's life. ~ Daniel J. Siegel

To be ourselves we must have ourselves – possess, if need be re-possess, our life-stories. We must "recollect" ourselves, recollect the inner drama, the narrative, of ourselves. A man needs such a narrative, a continuous inner narrative, to maintain his identity, his self. ~ Oliver Sacks

Life Stories: Why hunger for these? One, it fits a hunger. Maybe it is more like bossiness. Maybe we just want to be in charge of the life, no matter who lived it ... ~ Margaret Atwood

I can't imagine a life without a story. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

People need stories, child. They bring us hope, and that hope is real. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Children, only animals live entirely in the Here and Now. Only nature knows neither memory nor history. But man - let me offer you a definition - is the storytelling animal. Wherever he goes he wants to leave behind not a chaotic wake, not an empty space, but the comforting marker-buoys and trail-signs of stories. He has to go on telling stories. He has to keep on making them up. As long as there's a story, it's all right. Even in his last moments, it's said, in the split second of a fatal fall - or when he's about to drown - he sees, passing rapidly before him, the story of his whole life. ~ Graham Swift

Our life stories are largely constructed and without mindfulness can prove destructive. ~ Rasheed Ogunlaru

Life stories with themes of ruin can trap us. Life stories that are triumphant can transform us. ~ Meg Jay

I got out of school in 2000, and I always wanted to be on 'This American Life,' since I first started telling stories. And that, I mean, that show is a little bit of a fortress. It's really hard to get stuff on that show. ~ Mike Birbiglia

Stories have endings; that's why we tell them, for reassurance that there is meaning in our lives. But like a diagnosis, a story can become a prison, a straight road mapped out by the people who went before. Stories are not the truth. ~ Sarah Moss

An autobiography is the story of how a man thinks he lived. ~ Herbert Samuel