News Stories Quotes

The Huffington Post Investigative Fund's goal is to produce a broad range of investigative journalism created by both staff reporters and freelance writers, with a focus on working with the many experienced reporters and writers impacted by the economic contraction. The pieces will range from long-form investigations to short breaking news stories and will be presented in a variety of media - including text, audio, and video. ~ Arianna Huffington

Matt had his back to the house and his hands braced against a black Lexus. Holy fuck. This was textbook sketchy. Black car, strange man, middle of the night. Maybe I was about to be abducted. Maybe I was about to become one of those news stories that makes people say, I feel bad for the girl, but she was asking for trouble. ~ M. Pierce

...as long as we have the choice to read what we want, I suspect Twain and Homer and the rest will always be with us. The stoutest old writers ebb and flow in popularity; tastes and political correctness and educational trends also ebb and flow, and we have a tendency to embrace the short view because it makes better news stories. So the joy of literature may not be at a high water mark right now, and yet you can walk into the Target store of your choice and pick up Catcher in the Rye. Beauty floats, I guess, along with sorrow and hope. (http://www.wab.org/events/allofroches...) ~ Leif Enger

Poetry, the most intimate form of expression, gives us a deeper sense of reality than headlines and news stories ever could. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Many of us want things to change in our lives. Yet, we spend so much time worrying about circumstances well beyond our control or incessantly thinking about events that have happened well in our past. One very popular activity these days is watching the news, 24/7, almost as entertainment. The reality is though, that most news stories we hear, we have little if any control over. I suggest redirecting out focus. Because, as I see it, the first step to change is spending time on those things you can actually change. ~ Charles F. Glassman

I have been brought up open-minded. If I didn't know any people from other countries, I'd think everyone was evil based on news stories. But I know a lot of people, and know that there is no such thing as stark good and evil. Isn't it possible there is the same amount of evil everywhere? ~ Marjane Satrapi

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

I don't have to listen to the Gospel on Sunday to know the stories of the New Testament. They inform so much of what I write that they're practically like a news scrim that goes through my brain 24/7. ~ Anna Quindlen

Personally, I don't even read bummer news stories about the environment because it makes me feel helpless to fix anything and reminds me that the general population doesn't treat these issues as an important part of our political life. ~ Rachel Dratch

Today's biggest headlines are stories about people who thought they were doing something that was secret: Jesse Jackson's secret girlfriend and child, Monica Lewinski's private meetings with the president and confidential girl talk with Linda Tripp. Just think of the news stories we've watched on television ... ~ Ted Haggard

I don't look for good-news stories or bad-news stories. ~ Richard Engel

Advertisers don't want to put their ads next to the investigative story; it's extremely difficult to do that. And very few people today actually read those serious news stories on the Web now. ~ Pierre Omidyar

Whether as victim, demon, or hero, the industrial worker of the past century filled the public imagination in books, movies, news stories, and even popular songs, putting a grimy human face on capitalism while dramatizing the social changes and conflicts it brought. ~ George Packer

People write fiction in their minds all the time - every time we read a 'human interest' news story, or a true crime tale, we find ourselves fascinated because we're trying to understand why people behave the way they do, why they make the choices they do, how we become who we become. ~ Dan Chaon

Meanwhile, blacks observed how German prisoners housed at Camp Gordon were getting paid to work the grounds of the Augusta National Golf Club, and to pick peanuts, corn, and potatoes across the Savannah River. "They sing and whistle, seem to enjoy work," enthused the Augusta Chronicle. "Farmers are delighted." Such news stories left a bitter taste in the mouths of black Augustans, who felt the government was doing more for the enemy than it was willing to do for them. ~ RJ Smith

As an American, I sit at home, watch the news, and make a series of assumptions about other countries. But news stories don't form the picture. They only give us license to feel some kind of political and economic superiority. And I did. On this trip, at this most joyous of weddings, I found that it's a dangerous superiority that swallows the three-dimensionality of their lives. That my guilt is useless and belittling. That the Americanness of my opinions mattered not more, but just as much as anyone else's. The outlines of a responsibility began to take hold: I have to talk about them like they're people, not news stories. ~ Negin Farsad

I like the multiplicity of books, because each book is different in the mind of each reader. It's the same with this film - if 300 people are in a cinema watching it, they will all see a different film, so in a way there are thousands of different versions of "Caché (Hidden)". The point being that, despite what TV shows us, and what the news stories tell us, there is never just one truth, there is only personal truth. ~ Michael Haneke

Because the media always serve up heroes and villians, there had to be the terrible mothers, the anti-Madonnas, the hideous counterexamples good mothers were meant to revile. We regret to report that nearly all of these women were African American and were disproportionately featured as failed mothers in news stories about "crack babies," single, teen mothers, and welfare mothers. ~ Susan J. Douglas

Literature might be called the art of story, and story might in turn be called a universal language, for every culture we know of has a tradition of storytelling. No doubt stories have touched your life, too, from bedtime stories you may have heard as a child to news stories you see on TV or read in a newspaper. We might even say that a major goal of living is to created the story of our own lives, a story we hope to take pleasure and pride in telling. ~ Andrea A. Lunsford

I had two primary cancers, which was pretty unusual. And when I got the second one, people told me such terrible bad-news stories, they instigated fears that weren't there in the first place. I do remember with such gratitude one doctor saying to me, 'Two primaries? That's nothing. I've seen a patient with six.' ~ Sam Taylor-Wood

The pain was quite extraordinary. And yet also weirdly welcome and restorative, bringing him news of his aliveness and his caughtness in a story larger than himself. ~ Jonathan Franzen

Our go-to source is no longer dictated by a small group of cable news outlets. We have to expand our view. Sometimes, a story is made and breaks on Twitter. We have to find a way to react to that, to consume and also disseminate the information from Twitter, which is not an easy thing to do. ~ Trevor Noah

Real life has no understanding of proper structure," the boy said, "which is why news stories are always made of little lies. ~ Nick Harkaway

Everything is happening faster on the Internet, so advertisers have to be able to respond quickly. If there is a pop-culture topic, a celebrity, event, some amazing viral video, a news story - how do advertisers get close to that so they can take advantage of traffic jumps? ~ Jason Hirschhorn

Strong people don't need strong leaders. ~ Ella Baker

Writing's much more romantic when its pen and ink and paper. It's... More timeless. and worthwhile. Think about it. There are so many words gushing out into the universe these days. All digitally. All in Comic Sans or Times New Roman. Silly Websites. Stupid news stories digitally uploaded to a 24-hour channel. Where's all this writing going? Who's keeping a note of it all? Who's in charge of deciding what's worthwhile and what isn't? But back then... Back then, if someone wanted to write something they had to buy paper. Buy it! And ink. And a pen. And they couldn't waste too many sheets cos it was expensive. So when people wrote, they wrote because it was worthwhile... not just because they had some half-baked idea and they wanted to pointlessly prove their existence by sharing it on some bloody social networking site. ~ Holly Bourne

While technology efficiently delivers news stories to our desktops, laptops and mobile devices, magazines are all about context - how ideas and images are presented in relation to one another and within a larger point of view. ~ Stefano Tonchi

I spent my time drinking and staring at a television in the airport bar. More death and destruction. Crime. Pollution. All the news stories were telling me to be frightened. All the commercials were telling me to buy things I didn´t need. The message was that people could only be passive victims or consumers. ~ John Twelve Hawks

I take in a lot of stuff from real life, movies, television, news and it all gets mixed in my head and somehow turns into a story idea. ~ Janet Evanovich

If I programmed my own TV network, it would air good news! Just positive stories. Heroic stories. Cute puppy dogs doin' stuff. ~ Jennifer Aniston

Writers choose to drink because of their inability to cope with the daily hassles of being part of a society. Why shouldn't they? Every day an intelligent human being is plagued with bills, horrifying news stories and general idiocy that slowly grinds away at their psyche, breaking off pieces of it that may never fit again. ~ Thor Benson

You have to be a really talented writer if you're trying to encapsulate a news story with a song and have it live after the event. I don't have the focus to do that, really. ~ Babatunde Adebimpe

Sometimes, I'll read a news story and there will be one line about something else, and I'll find it interesting and look into it. That can often turn into an entire story on its own. ~ Joshuah Bearman

At the very same time that we witnessed the explosion of white celebrity moms, and the outpouring of advice to a surveillance of middle-class mothers, the welfare mother, trapped in a "cycle of dependency," became ubiquitous in our media landscape, and she came to represent everything wrong with America. She appeared not in the glossy pages of the women's magazines but rather as the subject of news stories about the "crisis" in the American family and the newly declared "war" on welfare mothers. Whatever ailed America--drugs, crime, loss of productivity--was supposedly her fault. She was portrayed as thumbing her nose at intensive mothering. Even worse, she was depicted as bringing her kids into the realm of market values, as putting a price on their heads, by allegedly calculating how much each additional child was worth and then getting pregnant to cash in on them. For middle-class white women in the media, by contrast, their kids were priceless, these media depictions reinforced the divisions between "us" (minivan moms) and "them" (welfare mothers, working-class mothers, teenage mothers), and did so especially along the lines of race. For example, one of the most common sentences used to characterize the welfare mother was, "Tanya, who has_____ children by ______ different men" (you fill in the blanks). Like zoo animals, their lives were reduced to the numbers of successful impregnations by multiple partners. So it's interesting to note that someone like Christie Brinkley, ~ Susan J. Douglas

I always try to describe the situation just as it is. I try to find sentences that I believe tell the story best. Even my articles are more literary than ordinary news stories. ~ Asne Seierstad

Some of those stories in local newspapers are just as dull and boring as the stories that I get from on-line services, which are basically sort of straight news. ~ Tabitha Soren

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

If the breaking news event has something to do with young people, specifically with MTV's audience, there was a higher chance that I would actually go cover it with a television camera instead of just write the story myself and read it on the air. ~ Tabitha Soren

It is very difficult to be under the microscope every moment of every day. Everything that leaves your mouth becomes this sensationalized news story, no matter what your intentions were when you first said it, so it becomes overwhelming. ~ Megan Fox

Rumors and reports of man's relation with animals are the world's oldest news stories, headlined in the stars of the zodiac, posted on the walls of prehistoric caves, inscribed in the languages of Egyptian myth, Greek philosophy, Hindu religion, Christian art, our own DNA. Belonging within the circle of mankind's intimate acquaintance ... constant albeit speechless companions, they supplied energies fit to be harnessed or roasted. ~ Lewis H. Lapham

I'm of the opinion that the real is imagined and the imagined is quite real. The real is imagined, in the sense that we shape our stories, so anything that even happens on the news gets shaped in a certain way and gets a texture, and that the imagined can be real. ~ Colum McCann

Language can still be an adventure if we remember that words can make a kind of melody. In novels, news stories, memoirs and even to-the-point memos, music is as important as meaning. In fact, music can drive home the meaning of words. ~ Constance Hale

We all read news stories about the difficulties and tensions that the United States has with our allies and even with coalition partners in Iraq, but we rarely read about the good news. ~ Michael K. Simpson

When "news stories" are broken, do we not expect a certain amount of fact-checking or source-checking? One has to ask if this falls under the guise of sloppy reporting or deception as a source of spin. We seem to accept a certain amount of deception and we seem to be helpless to doing anything about it, as illustrated so clearly by where we are right now in this moment in our history. ~ Sheryl Crow

I wrote my first real murder story as a journalist for the Daytona Beach News Journal in 1980. It was about a body found in the woods. Later, the murder was linked to a serial killer who was later caught and executed for his crimes. ~ Michael Connelly

At MTV, it's very nice sometimes to be able to be very specific. Specificity really makes a news story interesting because you can color it in that personality. ~ Tabitha Soren

When I see a news story on a site, about a movie that I'm interested in, it's like the mouse going for the pleasure button and I click it. But then, when I see the movie, it's like, "Oh, I would have enjoyed the movie that much more, if I hadn't known that." ~ Rian Johnson

A handful of us determine what will be on the evening news broadcasts, or, for that matter, in the New York Times or Washington Post or Wall Street Journal. Indeed it is a handful of us with this awesome power.And those [news stories] available to us already have been culled and re-culled by persons far outside our control. ~ Walter Cronkite

It is possible - given absolute control over the media and the police - to rewrite the memories of hundreds of millions of people, if you have a generation to accomplish it in. Almost always, this is done to improve the hold that the powerful have on power, or to serve the narcissism or megalomania or paranoia of national leaders. It throws a monkey wrench into the error-correcting machinery. It works to erase public memory of profound political mistakes, and thus to guarantee their eventual repetition.

In our time, with total fabrication of realistic stills, motion pictures, and videotapes technologically within reach, with television in every home, and with critical thinking in decline, restructuring societal memories even without much attention from the secret police seems possible. What I'm imagining here is not that each of us has a budget of memories implanted in special therapeutic sessions by state-appointed psychiatrists, but rather that small numbers of people will have so much control over news stories, history books, and deeply affecting images as to work major changes in collective attitudes. ~ Carl Sagan

There was all this enthusiasm about amateurism and the idea that people could now just make videos in their bedroom, or blog news stories and share it online, and isn't this great? Now we can do it just for the love of it and not try to be professionals, corrupted by careerism. ~ Astra Taylor

I've written thousands of stories, started hundreds of news cycles. ~ Matt Drudge

Right now, I've got the weight of several worlds on my shoulders. My best friend is living in a cancer ward, and there's nothing I can do for him. The Serpents have hired the Jester to spark race riots with faked news stories, and I don't know how to smoke him out. My enemies are hiding all around, watching everything I do, and I can't find them. For the first time in months I find myself in the familiar, paralyzing grip of overwhelming depression. ~ Mark Waid

At MTV, although the audience is smaller, I found it more interesting to deliver news to a specific group of people, because my story then did not have to try to be all things to all people. ~ Tabitha Soren

The fact is that gossip, rumors, mythmaking, and news stories are not appropriate vehicles for the communication of nuances of truth, those subtle tonalities that are often the truly crucial elements in a causal chain. ~ Chaim Potok

They'd arranged to meet with an Omegan mole who worked in the Clinton administration. He was helping them with a new Omega Agency operation involving the Kosovo War, which had just broken out in Europe. Naylor and his cronies were seeking to use Kosovo as a transit route for Afghan heroin bound for EU countries. Despite the official news stories being circulated by mainstream media, Omega knew the extremely lucrative heroin trade was behind the war. ~ James Morcan

Now scarcely a week goes by without a news story about the cops swooping down on some adolescent prowler who is as skilled at breaking into computer systems as defense contractors are at breaking into the Federal budget. ~ Russell Baker

An apparently good way to get more information about religious group would be through the media. In actual fact, it's probably the worst. Why? Because what makes hot news stories are things like controversy, opposing views, harm, blood, sex, big names, big money, scandal, ect. ~ Stan Koehler

He was intrigued by the power of words, not the literary words that filled the books in the library but the sharp, staccato words that went into the writing of news stories. Words that went for the jugular. Active verbs that danced and raced on the page. ~ Robert Cormier

After all, the media have been and are the major dispenser of the ideals and norms surrounding motherhood: Millions of us have gone to the media for nuts-and-bolts child-rearing advice. Many of us, in fact, preferred media advice to the advice our mothers gave us. We didn't want to be like our mothers and many of us didn't want to raise our kids the way they raised us (although it turns out they did a pretty good job in the end). Thus beginning in the mid-1970s, working mothers became the most important thing you can become in the United States: a market. And they became a market just as niche marketing was exploding--the rise of cable channels, magazines like Working Mother, Family Life, Child, and Twins, all supported by advertisements geared specifically to the new, modern mother. Increased emphasis on child safety, from car seats to bicycle helmets, increased concerns about Johnny not being able to read, the recognition that mothers bought cars, watched the news, and maybe didn't want to tune into one TV show after the next about male detectives with a cockatoo or some other dumbass mascot saving hapless women--all contributed to new shows, ad campaigns, magazines, and TV news stories geared to mothers, especially affluent, upscale ones. Because of this sheer increase in output and target marketing, mothers were bombarded as never before by media constructions of the good mother. The good mother bought all this stuff to stimulate, protect, educate, and indulge her kids. S ~ Susan J. Douglas

Whenever I see news stories about children who were killed by their parents, I think: But how could it be? They cared enough to give this kid a name, they had a moment - at least one moment - when they sifted through all the possibilities and picked one specific name for their child, decided what they would call their baby. How could you kill something you cared enough to name? ~ Gillian Flynn

Religion - the wishful thinking of an ape that talks! You know what I think?" he asked rhetorically, trying to distract himself from yet another death. "Random shit happens, and we turn it into stories and call it sacred scripture - ~ Mary Doria Russell

What a fine thing capital punishment is! Dead men never repent; dead men never bring awkward stories to light. The prospect of the gallows, too, makes them hardy and bold. Ah, it's a fine thing for the trade! Five of them strung up in a row, and none left to play booty or turn white-livered! ~ Charles Dickens

Short story characters, mine anyway, are usually driven by impulse, not so much by their histories and the choices that they have to make. ~ Charles Baxter

Browsing the first editions at my local independent bookstore, I came across 'Pastoralia,' a collection of stories by George Saunders. I'd read one of the stories in it already, and several other Saunders stories in magazines and anthologies, and liked them all. ~ Trenton Lee Stewart

Once I was chased by the king of all scorpions. I have the most notorious animal stories. ~ Rachel Hunter

I just make what I like - warm and human stories, ones about historic characters and events, and about animals. If there is a secret, I guess it's that I never make the pictures too childish, but always try to get in a little satire of adult foibles. ~ Walt Disney

As we get older it is our short term memory that fades rather than our long term memory. Perhaps we have evolved like this so that we are able to tell the younger generation about the stories and experiences that have formed us which may be important to subsequent generations if they are to thrive.
I worry though, about what might happen to our minds if most of the stories we hear are about greed, war, and atrocity ~ Philippa Perry

Being under the microscope meant I was never given any slack. I still managed to screw up plenty in life, mind you, but in the things I really cared about - the legal work, or the stories I was telling as a writer, or the office I built in government - I wasn't left a lot of margin for error. It's kept me driven. ~ Ronan Farrow

I must have been 3 years old or less, and I remember paging through these comics, trying to figure out the stories. I couldn't read the words, so I made up my own stories. ~ Daniel Clowes

Whereas story is processed in the mind in a straightforward manner, poetry bypasses rational thought and goes straight to the limbic system and lights it up like a brushfire. It's the crack cocaine of the literary world. ~ Jasper Fforde

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

What is a novel? I say: an invented story. At the same time a story which, though invented has the power to ring true. True to what? True to life as the reader knows life to be or, it may be, feels life to be. And I mean the adult, the grown-up reader. Such a reader has outgrown fairy tales, and we do not want the fantastic and the impossible. So I say to you that a novel must stand up to the adult tests of reality. ~ Elizabeth Bowen

If you want to be a director, work with writers and find different ways of telling stories with film, then do a course. This way you can consolidate what you've learnt and use the course to go further. ~ Gurinder Chadha

Thorne would come for her. He was a hero. She was a damsel. That's how the stories went - that's how they always went. ~ Marissa Meyer

It's hard to believe that in the greatest democracy in the world, we need legislation to prevent the government from writing and paying for the news. ~ John F. Kerry

Even films without music are inspiring, as I think a good story is full of changes, different paces, and ideas. ~ Volker Bertelmann

I still think that of all the people doing top fiction today, John D. MacDonald is the best.He was my model as a kid. If there are people out there that want to write, all you need to do is read 20 of his stories to get an idea what it takes to make a story kick over. ~ Stephen King

Real change comes from finding and embracing and connecting and amplifying those that are inclined to like you and believe in you. Ideas spread from person to person, not so much from you to them. So find your biggest fans and give them a story to tell. ~ Seth Godin

They settled out of court. In related news, two fish fought over an aquarium, rather than in the aquarium. ~ Jarod Kintz

I believe that dance was the first art. A philosopher has said that dance and architecture were the first arts. I believe that dance was first because it's gesture, it's communication. That doesn't mean it's telling a story, but it means it's communicating a feeling, a sensation to people. ~ Martha Graham

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

How to Survive Racism in an Organization that Claims to be Antiracist:

10. Ask why they want you. Get as much clarity as possible on what the organization has read about you, what they understand about you, what they assume are your gifts and strengths. What does the organization hope you will bring to the table? Do those answers align with your reasons for wanting to be at the table?

9. Define your terms. You and the organization may have different definitions of words like "justice", "diveristy", or "antiracism". Ask for definitions, examples, or success stories to give you a better idea of how the organization understands and embodies these words. Also ask about who is in charge and who is held accountable for these efforts. Then ask yourself if you can work within the structure.

8. Hold the organization to the highest vision they committed to for as long as you can. Be ready to move if the leaders aren't prepared to pursue their own stated vision.

7. Find your people. If you are going to push back against the system or push leadership forward, it's wise not to do so alone. Build or join an antiracist cohort within the organization.

6. Have mentors and counselors on standby. Don't just choose a really good friend or a parent when seeking advice. It's important to have on or two mentors who can give advice based on their personal knowledge of the organization and its leaders. You want someone who can help you navigate t ~ Austin Channing Brown

As though she had entered a fable, as though she were no more than words crawling along a dry page, or as though she were becoming that page itself, that surface on which her story would be written and across which there blew a hot and merciless wind, turning her body to papyrus, her skin to parchment, her soul to paper. ~ Salman Rushdie

Today's news, which may be yesterday's anyway, will be eclipsed tomorrow. ~ Graham Swift

People who are diagnosed as having "generalized anxiety disorder" are afflicted by three major problems that many of us experience to a lesser extent from time to time. First and foremost, says Rapgay, the natural human inclination to focus on threats and bad news is strongly amplified in them, so that even significant positive events get suppressed. An inflexible mentality and tendency toward excessive verbalizing make therapeutic intervention a further challenge. ~ Winifred Gallagher

But this raises the question of what happens when the mosaic of faith shatters into a thousand, a million jagged pieces. When the quest for common good devolves into bespoke kindness designed to advance a particular cause for a particular person. Or when citizens forsake all the news that's fit to print for only the news they want to hear. All of these amount to a challenge to efforts at collective action. And from climate change to rising inequality, the enormous challenges that we face demand collective action and a new shared way of thinking about the accretion and use of power. ~ Moises Naim

All heroes' news, like something from the songs, but there's nothing like others' successes to make your own failures sting the worse. ~ Joe Abercrombie

News organisations that have been around a while have a lot of traditions and ways of doing things that may have served them for many years but perhaps make them less flexible in the digital era. As an entrepreneur, it just makes more sense to start something new. ~ Pierre Omidyar

On hearing the news [of being awarded a Nobel Prize], a friend who knows me only too well, sent me this laconic message: 'Blood, toil, sweat and tears always were a good mixture'. ~ Max Perutz

According to the New Testament, the 'good news' is that a unique God-man has come to earth, revealed himself to the world, and offered to save all those who dedicate their lives to him. This only counts as good news, however, if you also believe in some very bad news: that human beings need to be saved from something, and are incapable of saving themselves. The more you emphasize the unique and indispensable role of the God-man, the church that bears his name, and those who speak on his behalf, the more you need there to be a problem so serious that only they can put it right. ~ Linda Woodhead

My family were great story-tellers. My mum was one of 12 and they were all fighting to tell stories. You have to tell a good tale or no one is going to listen. You have to make it entertaining and interesting. That's how I learned to tell stories. ~ Denise Mina

I adore the way fan fiction writers engage with and critique source texts, by manipulating them and breaking their rules. Some of it is straight-up homage, but a lot of [fan fiction] is really aggressive towards the source text. One tends to think of it as written by total fanboys and fangirls as a kind of worshipful act, but a lot of times you'll read these stories and it'll be like 'What if Star Trek had an openly gay character on the bridge?' And of course the point is that they don't, and they wouldn't, because they don't have the balls, or they are beholden to their advertisers, or whatever. There's a powerful critique, almost punk-like anger, being expressed there - which I find fascinating and interesting and cool. ~ Lev Grossman

So you don't fancy meeting up again?' Max persisted, though Neve didn't know why, because she thought she'd made her position perfectly clear. 'Swap war stories?'
'I don't have any war stories,' Neve said, and in that moment she felt that she never would. That every night would be spent creeping round her flat in her socks with the telly turned down so low that she could barely hear it, so in the end she'd have no other option but to escape into the pages of books where there were other girls falling in and out of love but not her. Never her. She stared down at the scuffed toes of her faux Ugg boots in sudden and tired defeat.
'If you don't have any war stories, then at least you don't have any war wounds,' Max said, so quietly that Neve had to strain her ears to catch his words. 'Take my number. ~ Sarra Manning

Stories find their way in each of us. ~ Sarah Buhl

The store of fairy tales, that blue chamber where stories lie waiting to be rediscovered, holds out the promise of just those creative enchantments, not only for its own characters caught in its own plotlines; it offers magical metamorphoses to the one who opens the door, who passes on what was found there, and to those who hear what the storyteller brings. The faculty of wonder, like curiosity can make things happen; it is time for wishful thinking to have its due. ~ Marina Warner

Dear PrettyKitty29,

Hi, my name is Liam Brody. From the looks of your charming website, you've heard of me.

Believe it or not, I've heard of you too. I was recently tipped off about your little gossip community. I probably shouldn't call it little. You are one of the busiest gossip communities on the Internet.

Congratulations. I'm always impressed with people who manage to stay indoors so much. You must have a sufficient amount of Vitamin D.

I noticed that you seem to have an odd and probably unwarranted agenda against me. Almost every bitter post about me is put up by lovely you. I also noticed that your hatred has spread successfully among your users.

Wow. What an influence you have on gossip hungry teens and housewives. Again, congratulations.

I apologize for dating models, PrettyKitty29. I just think they're more attractive than other people. Some people steal, some people do drugs, some people sell them. I date models. It could probably be worse. I could be someone who makes bribes.

Speaking of those, I was emailing you to let you know that despite the sarcasm throughout this email, I find your strangely influential website interesting and am willing to make a substantial payment to you if you stop posting negative stories and put a few nice ones instead.

I don't know what a gossip community moderator gets paid, but I'm sure that regardless, you could use a few extra bucks. It would ~ India Lee