Stories Life Quotes

I often learn more about myself from listening to the life story of a friend than I do reflecting on my own story. ~ Donald Miller

Style is like voice, it grows organically from the truth of one's own life experience. Not in terms of chapters, per se, but in terms of stories. It is the story itself that creates an inherent structure. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

The only way for us to help ourselves is to help others and to listen to each other's stories. ~ Elie Wiesel

I was struck by the image of Daddy still dressed in that same plaid shirt and undershirt with the bloodstains below the neck, the one I had first seen him wearing in the jail the previous day. ~ Earl B. Russell

Before I tell you my story," Jasper said. "you must understand that there are places in our world, Bella, where the life span of the never-aging is measured in weeks, and not centuries. ~ Stephenie Meyer

I have wandered many roads that I have never traveled; touched many things that my eyes have never seen. It is through stories that life is made, and through stories that life is saved. ~ James Avery

To grow up steeped in these tellings was to learn two unforgettable lessons: first, that stories were not true (there were no "real" genies in bottles or flying carpets or wonderful lamps), but by being untrue they could make him feel and know truths that the truth could not tell him, and second, that they all belonged to him, just as they belonged to his father, Anis, and to everyone else, they were all his, as they were hsi father's, bright stories and dark stories, sacred stories and profane, his to alter and renew and discard and pick up again as and when he pleased, his to laugh at and rejoice in and live in and with and by, to give the stories life by loving them and to be given life in return. Man was the storytelling animal, the only creature on earth that told itself stories to understand what kind of creature it was. The story was his birthright, and nobody could take it away. ~ Salman Rushdie

The stories and pictures I make for the lives of the people closest to me are the forms of my empathy. ~ Siri Hustvedt

Story is the mechanism by which we live, express, understand, and evolve. Story is more than just equipment for living - it's life itself. When a culture's stories are honest, authentic, and connected to the truth, the culture is strong, productive, and progressive. When a culture's stories stagnate and become derivative, deceptive, shallow, and unconnected to the energy of life, the culture erodes, degrades, and eventually perishes (although the people may not realize they're dead!). Stories are the manner by which we extract meaning out of the fibrous pulp of our everyday lives. And meaning is the spiritual oxygen that allows our soul to breathe. Without stories, life has no meaning. Without meaning, we cannot live. ~ Derek Rydall

In my fairly disorganized life, yellow stickies are too easily lost, and as for software, I try to avoid using my computer as much more than a typewriter and a post office. I rely on my lifelong habit of daydreaming to spin my stories. ~ Julia Glass

Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told. ~ Colum McCann

Of course, all writers draw upon their personal experiences in describing day-to-day life and human relationships, but I tend to keep my own experiences largely separate from my stories. ~ Jeffery Deaver

we order our lives with barely held stories ~ Michael Ondaatje

My life is making movies. I like storytelling, and I've got a lot of stories that are stored up in my head that I hope to get out before my time is up. ~ George Lucas

Why do bad things happen to good people?'
'Because it makes a good story. ~ Andrew Kaufman

Somehow
I always expect that one day
The doors will speak out to me
And share their past
Life as it was centuries ago
Perhaps they have and
I did not listen ~ Maria Lehtman

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

The stories we pretend do not exist, are the stories that will haunt us till the end. ~ Srividya Srinivasan

'The Moon Rabbit' is laying against the bunker, dreaming and thinking about life and dreaming the impossible possible and creating its own true stories. ~ Florentijn Hofman

Such is the privilege of survival: to be allowed to fashion the means that fit our ends, to cobble together a narrative that reveals (as by the divine light of illumination) the predestined arc of our days. This is no small gift. With it we can neutralize all but the greatest losses, reduce even the greatest bastards to nothing more than bit actors in the drama of our lives, put on this earth for the sole purpose of forwarding our cause. Blessed are those who can believe their own stories. ~ Mark Slouka

We seek to understand ourselves by telling how we go about securing inner peace, acceptance, and satisfaction intermeshed with layers of pure happiness. Stories allow us to explore the mystery of the universe, share unique experiences, and express personal comprehension. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

My book 'Trust Your Heart', which is the story of my life, will be followed by 'Singing Lessons', a memoir of love, loss, hope, and healing, which talks about the death of my son and the hope that has been the aftermath of the healing from that tragedy. ~ Judy Collins

Like Rodgers and Hammerstein, I'm not afraid to deal with themes about the ups and downs of life, yet which are still entertaining, and you still feel these stories. ~ Harvey Weinstein

When you are gestating, you feel full of life, you feel full of joy, you feel full of fantasy, of stories. ~ Thalia

Thousands of individuals unknowingly contribute to the creation of our lives. Over the years, these serendipitous exchanges made imprints on my mind and heart and served as catalysts for my ongoing growth and development. ~ Kristin S. Kaufman

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

And then it dawned on me that the greatest love stories in the world never have happy endings. ~ Avijeet Das

I'm interested in human behavior, and what happened in my family life is definitely not a unique story. There are aspects of that I'm sure you can see through the work. But I'm just looking for something that touches me. ~ Charlize Theron

The goal of a life is not to provide material for good stories. ~ Tim Kreider

Don't sit, stand up! Do something; you can do wrong, but no problem, do it! At least you will have a story to tell others! If you don't do something, you will be storyless! And what is life? Life is nothing but a book of stories we write! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Our world is moving so fast and we are apt to miss so much of what is happening "right now." If we can put down our smart phones for one moment and be present to what is around us, I believe these incidental meetings and strangers who come into our lives can give us unexpected fortitude, perspective and even wisdom just when we need them the most - if we are just awake, aware and open to these new insights. ~ Kristin S. Kaufman

The recounting of a life is a cheat ... even our own stories are obscenely distorted ... ~ Carol Shields

All stories are love stories. ~ Robert McLiam Wilson

Be the hero of your own life story. ~ Gerard Butler

I don't feel that I wanted to spend my whole writing life - which is my life - writing detective stories. ~ Ruth Rendell

I'm inspired by almost everything I come across in life, and one way or another they find themselves sneaking into my stories. ~ James Dashner

For several years before I began 'The Folded World,' I worked at an urban college campus and had a job in a tutoring center, and people would come into the tutoring center, and for some reason, they just kept telling me their life stories. ~ Amity Gaige

You have to understand, my dears, that the shortest distance between truth and a human being is a story. ~ Anthony De Mello

Violence is a part of the world and life, and you shouldn't have to take it out of stories. ~ Jane Levy

I wanna live- that's all ~ Tovin

I noticed how the band members watched her and how she made them smile and I realized that she was the kind of person who changed the feeling in a room, so that others suddenly feel that they are in the right place. Is that the secret of life, to surround yourself with people who are so full of passion, people who know sadness but not bitterness? I looked into her face, which was alive with excitement, and then into her eyes, which were full of all the things you can only say with your eyes. ~ Jonathan Hull

The call is to leave a certain social situation, move into your own loneliness and find the jewel, the center that's impossible to find when you're socially engaged. You are thrown off-center, and when you feel off-center, it's time to go. This is the departure when the hero feels something has been lost and goes to find it. You are to cross the threshold into new life. It's a dangerous adventure, because you are moving out of the sphere of the knowledge of you and your community. ~ Joseph Campbell

In theory, I never loved you. I loved us. That's what everyone forgets. ~ Dominic Riccitello

There is one thing sure about life: Life will push us hardly many times! When you are pushed, don't be surprised; stay firm like a plane tree or be elastic like a bamboo! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

You are an unusual, brilliant child who has not seen enough of life to grasp the full measure of human stupidity. ~ Ayn Rand

Do you think I'd leave you alone when you're twisted up like this? I tell you I love you, and it feels like I broke your heart."
"No one has ever said that to me. In my life, no one's ever said those words to me."
"I'm making you a promise right here that you'll hear them from me every day. ~ Nora Roberts

Was I insane? Maybe. But then, there are many different kinds of insanity. Aunt Rose had always taken for granted that the whole world was in a state of constantly fluctuating madness, and that a neurosis was not an illness, but a fact of life, like pimples. Some have more, some have less, but only truly abnormal people have none at all. ~ Anne Fortier

With a metal heart
I came to this life,
My head was a crucible, full of elixir.
Pearl by pearl
My heart was poured,
Drop by drop
My head was splashed.
The world was entirely a magnet. ~ Hersh Saeed

A powerful exercise for building your appreciation muscle is to take 7 minutes every morning to write down all the things you appreciate in your life. I recommend this as a daily ritual for the rest of your life; however, if you think that is excessive, at least do it for 30 to 40 days. It will create a huge change in how you see the world. ~ Jack Canfield

in the most decent sometimes sun
there is the softsmoke feeling from urns
and the canned sound of old battleplanes
and if you go inside and run your finger
along the window ledge you'll find
dirt, maybe even earth.
and if you look out the window
there will be the day, and as you
get older you'll keep looking
keep looking
sucking your tongue in a little
ah ah no no maybe

some do it naturally
some obscenely
everywhere. ~ Charles Bukowski

At Christmas, 'It's a Wonderful Life' makes me cry in exactly the same places every time, even though I know it's coming. ~ Nicholas Lea

Music is 99% of my life. But I know I need a break. Besides, if you give people too much, they start to not want it. We need to restrain ourselves. ~ Billy Corgan

The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation. ~ Corrie Ten Boom

Life is writing. The sole purpose of mankind is to engrave the thoughts of divinity onto the tablets of nature. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

I looked about me. Luminous points glowed in the darkness. Cigarettes punctuated the humble meditations of worn old clerks. I heard them talking to one another in murmurs and whispers. They talked about illness, money, shabby domestic cares. And suddenly I had a vision of the face of destiny. Old bureaucrat, my comrade, it is not you who are to blame. No one ever helped you to escape. You, like a termite, built your peace by blocking up with cement every chink and cranny through which the light might pierce. You rolled yourself up into a ball in your genteel security, in routine, in the stifling conventions of provincial life, raising a modest rampart against the winds and the tides and the stars. You have chosen not to be perturbed by great problems, having trouble enough to forget your own fate as a man. You are not the dweller upon an errant planet and do not ask yourself questions to which there are no answers. Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

He thought of how convincingly he could describe this scene to friends and make them envy the fullness of his contentment. Why couldn't he convince himself? He had everything he'd ever wanted. He had wanted superiority
and for the last year he had been the undisputed leader of his profession. He had wanted fame
and he had five thick albums of clippings. He had wanted wealth
and he had enough to insure luxury for the rest of his life. He had everything anyone ever wanted. How many people struggled and suffered to achieve what he had achieved? How many dreamed and bled and died for this, without reaching it? ~ Ayn Rand

How can I find a way to overcome this?' is a much better question than 'Why is my life so bad?'

It's the questions we ask ourselves that will determine how we live our life. ~ Steven Aitchison

The book 'A Reliable Wife' is a slice of American history. It takes a part of American history and tells a story about the purchase of a wife by a Wisconsin businessman. The research of that would have been really interesting. ~ Patti LuPone

Vain the ambition of kings Who seek by trophies and dead things To leave a living name behind, And weave but nets to catch the wind. ~ John Webster

I'm awful glad I'm not a bug
to go through life without a hug. ~ Kat McMann

We never know our good or bad as we loose our judgement living with them.worst part is we don't accept who we are & hence remain confused for the rest of our life. ~ Gopichand Lagadapati

Before I die, I want to fight for life. ~ Paulo Coelho

I have so many things that I want to do, and I don't have enough time in my life to do them all. The problem with acting business is that it's so expensive and you've got to get so many people to say yes. ~ Frank Spotnitz

Venice, it's temples and palaces did seem like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

My dear fellow," said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, "life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. ~ Anonymous

I've never liked urban myths. I've never liked pretending to believe in them; never understood why everyone else doesn't see straight through them. Why is it they've always happened to a friend of a friend - someone you've never met? Why does everyone smile and nod and pull the right faces, when they must know they're not true? Pointless. A waste of breath.
So I sneered at the myths about Scaderstone Pit. It was just an old quarry – nothing more. I never believed in the rumours of discarded dynamite. It had decayed, they said. It exploded at the slightest touch, had even blown someone's hand off. I shrugged off the talk of the toxic waste. It was dumped in the dead of night, they said. The canisters rusting away, leaking deadly poisons that could blind you, burn your lungs. I laughed at the ghost stories. You could hear the moans, they said, of quarrymen buried alive and never found. You could see their nightwalking souls, searching for their poor crushed bodies.
I didn't believe any of it – not one word. Now, after everything that's happened, I wonder whether I should've listened to those stories. Maybe then, these things would've happened to someone else, and I could've smiled and said they were impossible.
But this is not an urban myth. And it did not happen to someone else, but to me. I've set it down as best I can remember. Whether you believe it or not, is up to you. ~ Mikey Campling

Lo! now the direful monster, whose skin clings
To his strong bones, strides o'er the groaning rocks:
He withers all in silence, and his hand
Unclothes the earth, and freezes up frail life. ~ William Blake

When we seek from Zen (or from any spiritual path) the fulfillment of our fantasies, we separate from the earth and sky, from our loved ones, from our aching backs and hearts, from the very soles of our feet. Such fantasies insulate us for a time; yet in ten thousand ways reality intrudes, and our lives become anxious scurrying, quiet desperation, confusing melodrama. ~ Charlotte Joko Beck

I remember nothing of this, no ambulance rides, nothing. Nothing between switching out the bedside lamp and the sudden indignity of rebirth: the slaps, the brightness, the tubing, the speed, the urgent insistence that I be choked back into breathing life. I have felt so sorry for babies ever since. ~ Stephen Fry

The only mistake in life is the lesson not learned. ~ Albert Einstein

A joyful life is an individual creation that cannot be copied from a recipe. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

In parting, I would remind you that Life is a checkerboard, and the player opposite you is time. If you hesitate before moving, or neglect to move promptly, your men will be wiped off the board by time. You are playing against a partner who will not tolerate decisions! ~ Napoleon Hill

Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Life is not all black or white, there are shades of grey as well. It is this grey shade which provides maximum opportunities and multiple interpretations. ~ Mayank S. Sengar

I'm not bipolar, I've just had a bipolar life foisted upon me. ~ Daniel O'Malley

Your life is over when you stop living it. If you can truly retire you had a job but not an occupation. ~ Roger Ebert

Everyone is achieving at 100% of their potential, limited by beliefs and mindset constraints. ~ Tony Dovale

We're not talking about your life. We're talking about your writing. Your imagination. Your creativity. And it's time you learned there's a big difference between your writing and your life. To do it right, your writing takes an incredible amount of work. Your life takes more. ~ Jennifer Echols

Why did I accept death? But I will ask,
what use was life to me after that revolver had been raised against me by the being I adored? ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Few things are more important than learning how to learn. ~ Richie Norton