Original Story Quotes

As Frances Marion rose to accept the Academy Award for Screenwriting for her original story The Big House, she became the first woman writer to win an Oscar. Since 1917, she had been the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood - male or female - and was hailed as "the all-time best script and story writer the motion picture world has ever produced." Just forty and "as beautiful as the stars she wrote for," Frances was already credited with writing over one hundred produced films. ~ Cari Beauchamp

I will never repeat something verbatim on the air unless I know it's accurate. And when you go to the source, sometimes there's a better story beyond the original story. That happens all the time. ~ Al Michaels

Push the future forwards. Dare original. ~ Veronica Purcell

This book is an enhanced reprint. the original story was written in 1990. I wanted to bring it up to speed in technology and in the way men and women relate to each other in the 21st century. The book is almost 6000 words longer and the characters are much more creatures of this time now. I think the book has an edge that was not present in the orginal book, Silent Enchantment. As far as I know, treating a reprint in this way is new. That is why the book is clearly marked as an enhanced reprint and there is a letter in the front of the text to explain what was done and why. ~ Lacey Dancer

I do not know if Alice in Wonderland was an original story-I was, at least, no conscious imitator in writing it-but I do know that, since it came out, something like a dozen story-books have appeared, on identically the same pattern. The path I timidly explored believing myself to be 'the first that ever burst into that silent sea'-is now a beaten high-road: all the way-side flowers have long ago been trampled into the dust: and it would be courting disaster for me to attempt that style again. ~ Lewis Carroll

Pearl introduces an original story, in a form which was to become one of the most frequent in mediaeval literature, the dream-vision. Authors like Chaucer and Langland use this form, in which the narrator describes another world - usually a heavenly paradise - which is compared with the earthly human world. In Pearl, the narrator sees his daughter who died in infancy, 'the ground of all my bliss'. She now has a kind of perfect knowledge, which her father can never comprehend. The whole poem underlines the divide between human comprehension and perfection; these lines show the gap between possible perfection and fallen humanity which, thematically, anticipate many literary examinations of man's fall, the most well known being Milton's late Renaissance epic, Paradise Lost. ~ Ronald Carter

Studios, to cut through the clutter, want recognisable titles. But that does not excuse you, as a writer, from having an original story. ~ Roberto Orci

In this he was like most Midwesterners. Directions are very important to them. They have an innate need to be oriented, even in their anecdotes. Any story related by a Midwesterner will wander off at some point into a thicket of interior monologue along the lines of "We were staying at a hotel that was eight blocks northeast of the state capital building. Come to think of it, it was northwest. And I think it was probably more like nine blocks. And this woman without any clothes on, naked as the day she was born except for a coonskin cap, came running at us from the southwest... or was it the southeast?" If there are two Midwesterns present and they both witnessed the incident, you can just about write off the anecdote because they will spend the rest of the afternoon arguing points of the compass and will never get back to the original story. You can always tell a Midwestern couple in Europe because they will be standing on a traffic island in the middle of a busy intersection looking at a windblown map and arguing over which way is west. European cities, with their wandering streets and undisciplined alleys, drive Midwesterners practically insane. ~ Bill Bryson

People will turn their noses up at a sequel or that type of thing, but Pixar really works hard - if they're making a sequel - to make a sequel an original movie, to make it an original story. ~ Dan Scanlon

In any culture, if information is to maximise in a contextual space, and new meanings be born, the original story has to have substance - there's gotta be gold in them thar hills. ~ Giles Foden

And there was Adela Rogers St. Johns, her friend since their girlhood in San Francisco. Adela would also be nominated for Best Original Story in 1932, but lose to Frances when she won her second Oscar for The Champ. Yet Adela harbored no jealousy of the woman she claimed was "touched with genius. As a writer, she is the unquestioned head of her profession. . . . As a woman, she is a philanthropist, a patroness of young artists, and herself the most brilliant, versatile and accomplished person in Hollywood. ~ Cari Beauchamp

Men are shameless in selling their story. Women are often reserved. So we do need to encourage women to know their story and then tell it strategically as to how they can add value. ~ Jenny Shipley

It is clear that when you write a story that takes place in the past, you try to show what really happened in those times. But you are always moved by the suspicion that you are also showing something about our contemporary world. ~ Umberto Eco

Still, Connell went home that night and read over some notes he had been making for a new story, and he felt the old beat of pleasure in his body, like watching a perfect goal, like the rustling movement of light through leaves, a phrase of music from the window of a passing car. Life offers up these moments of joy despite everything. ~ Sally Rooney

ONE OF THE GREATEST EXPERIENCES IN LIFE IS ACHIEVING PERSONAL GOALS THAT OTHERS SAID WOULD BE, 'IMPOSSIBLE TO ATTAIN.' BE PROUD OF YOUR SUCCESS AND SHARE YOUR STORY WITH OTHERS. ~ Robert Cheeke

Does it matter? In memory, in story, in the end, we can remake our lives any way we need. To be surprised, truly and utterly surprised by what came into your life - this, Winkler was learning, was the true gift. ~ Anthony Doerr

One thing I learned early on in the news business is that a good story requires a reporter and photographer working together. Teamwork. ~ Jim Heath

Come, Philander, let us be a marching, Every one his true love a searching,
Would be the most appropriate motto for this chapter, because, intimidated by the threats, denunciations, and complaints showered upon me in consequence of taking the liberty to end a certain story as I liked, I now yield to the amiable desire of giving satisfaction, and, at the risk of outraging all the unities, intend to pair off everybody I can lay my hands on. ~ Louisa May Alcott

It would be a very long time before we saw any of our original pursuers again. At least, it seemed kinda long. But nothing warps time quite like childhood. I remember visits to faraway worlds that lasted only a few days but felt like entire lifetimes. And then there were the endless journeys between destinations that somehow went by in the blink of an eye. You know how it goes. ~ Brian K. Vaughan

In this way they went on, and on, and on-in the language of the story-books-until at last the village lights appeared before them, and the church spire cast a long reflection on the graveyard grass; as if it were a dial (alas, the truest in the world!) marking, whatever light shone out of Heaven, the flight of days and weeks and years, by some new shadow on that solemn ground. ~ Charles Dickens

I love movies. And I dig a great love story: the kind that wrecks me, then builds me back up and leaves me inspired. I write what I want to see. ~ Gina Prince-Bythewood

I'd say my writing voice is original, and I don't think you'll find another quite like it. This makes me sad, because when all my clones arrive sometime in the future, their only hope is to try to copy me. ~ Jarod Kintz

A short story is a different thing altogether – a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger. ~ Stephen King

I was a news reporter for 16 years, seven of them a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. Perhaps the most useful equipment I acquired in that time is a lack of preciousness about the act of writing. A reporter must write. There must be a story. The mot juste unarriving? Tell that to your desk. ~ Geraldine Brooks

Unless you're a doubter and a worrier, a nail-biter, an apologizer, a rethinker, then memoir may not be your playpen. That's the quality I've found most consistently in those life-story writers I've met. ~ Mary Karr

Curiously enough, I was one of the first to have some say in Hollywood. By sheer accident, I had four successes in a row in the early 30's and, although I was still in my 20's, I demanded and received approval of cast, story and director. I don't know how I got away with it, but I did! ~ Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.

Every love story is a potential grief story. ~ Julian Barnes

She wishes that it were true, all of it. That it were more than just a story. That is was their story. ~ Jennifer E. Smith

Bartimaeus: "A small piece of advice," I said "it isn't wise to be rude to someone bigger than you, especially when they've just trapped you under a boulder."
Imp: "You can stick your advice up ... "
"This brief pause replaces a short, censored episode, characterized by bad language and some sadly necessary violence. When we pick up the story again, everything is as before, except that I am perspiring slightly and the contrite imp is the model of cooperation."
Bartimaeus: "I'll ask again: who is Rupert Deveraeux?"
Imp: "He's the British Prime Minister, oh Most Bounteous and Merciful one. ~ Jonathan Stroud

The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull. With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. ~ L. Frank Baum

I just love the idea that people disappear into the story for a while. You grab a book, and you want to get back to it, and your life becomes a bit of an interruption. I would love readers to feel like that. ~ Bernard Beckett

Yes?' he asked, looking at me over the sheet.
'I'm a writer temporarily down on my inspirations.'
'Oh, a writer, eh?'
'Yes.'
'Are you sure?'
'No, I'm not.'
'What do you write?'
'Short stories mostly. And I'm halfway through a novel.'
'A novel, eh?'
'Yes.'
'What's the name of it?'
'"The Leaky Faucet of My Doom."'
'Oh, I like that. What's it about?'
'Everything.'
'Everything? You mean, for instance, it's about cancer?'
'Yes.'
'How about my wife?'
'She's in there too. ~ Charles Bukowski

First, it is largely unknown just how the Holy Spirit interacted with the author of an original Biblical manuscript- 'passive' vs. 'active' (I contend that it was both/and). Secondly, it is also widely unknown just what the 'process' involved in 'canonization' was. Additionally, I see little evidence of the injection of personal bias if any by the Biblical authors. ~ R. Alan Woods

You want to hear an agent scream, say, 'I'm thinking about doing a collection of short stories set in the Ozarks.' ~ Daniel Woodrell

I was lucky enough to build on the work of a number of people who had already run laps around this theory-building track. The original classification scheme, years ago, distinguished radical from incremental change. The theory said that established firms managed incremental change well, but would be expected to founder when their industry encountered a radical change. ~ Clayton Christensen

I gave a talk on the Brontë girls once when it was my turn to speak. I'm sorry I can't send you my notes on Charlotte and Emily -- I used them to kindle a fire in my stove-- there being no other paper in the house. I'd already burnt up my tide tables, the Book of Revelation and the story about Job. (From Isola Pribby to Juliet) ~ Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows

The story of my life can be told in silver: in chocolate mills, serving spoons, and services for twelve. The story of my life has nothing to do with me. The story of my life is things. Things that aren't mine, that won't ever be mine. It's all I've ever known.
I wish it wasn't. ~ Elizabeth Scott

Wouldn't it be kinder to say that a lie is a short work of fiction? 'A story' as my daughter says? ~ Helen McCloy

Book-buyers aren't attracted, by and large, by the literary merits of a novel; book-buyers want a good story to take with them on the airplane, something that will first fascinate them, then pull them in and keep them turning the pages. This happens, I think, when readers recognize the people in a book, their behaviors, their surroundings, and their talk. When the reader hears strong echoes of his or her own life and beliefs, he or she is apt to become more invested in the story. I'd argue that it's impossible to make this sort of connection in a premeditated way, gauging the market like a racetrack tout with a hot tip. ~ Stephen King

Alone is how our story starts. But then I came along and changed all that. ~ Erica Lorraine Scheidt

We are duplicitous, we're blind- and it is hard to live, trusting only in life: earthly life is a murky translation from the divine original; the general thought is clear but the primordial music is missing in its words ... What are passions? Mistakes in the translation. What is love? A rhyme lost in transmission to our discordant language ... It's time for me to take up the original! ~ Vladimir Nabokov

That's why I'm compelled to tell this story - don't we all have one secret that has shaped us we are burning to reveal? - to convince myself that I'm entitled to my own life. (pg 4) ~ Jill Bialosky

The heart of Dragon's Lair has always been its compelling story. With Dragon's Lair 3D, we think the team has really created an interactive animated movie. ~ Don Bluth

It's a complete lie, why do people buy these papers? It's not the truth I'm here to say. You know, don't judge a person, do not pass judgement, unless you have talked to them one on one. I don't care what the story is, do not judge them because it is a lie. ~ Michael Jackson

She wanted to make sure she studied all the manuals thoroughly, but she had to admit that part of her hesitation was the unsettling length of the list of things that could go wrong if she mishandled the pressure. ~ Jaleigh Johnson