Stories Writing Quotes

The vast majority of you are going to close this tab without, even for a single moment, entertaining the thought of writing something.

Step outside your comfort zone and try something new. Learning the fine rationalist art of CoZE (comfort zone expansion) is a really important life skill, and putting your writing online is a low-risk way to do that. Don't try to cop out with "I don't have any stories." Baloney. Everyone has stories; write up a memory that's important to you. And don't even try to tell me, "Oh, but I don't know how to write!" Neither did I when I started; I learned by doing. So please, set the excuses aside, put something up on the web, and share it with the rest of us. When you do, drop me a PM; I'll leave you your first review, but you have to publish something first.

Well? What are you waiting for? Seriously. Go write one sentence of a new story, write now. ~ David K. Storrs

Words are very powerful. They live on forever and they can be shared again and again. Each one of us may find something different within them, but they have the power to truly guide us and impact us in our lives. ~ Amy Koto

We do not select the stories we write, we do not pick the voices. They take us by surprise and we surrender to them. They write us, they write in us, all over us, through us. They occupy us. We are, in a sense, puppets--to language, with language. ~ Lynne Tillman

Your life story would not make a good book. Don't even try. ~ Fran Lebowitz

And those women were sneaky. They understood that including fantastical elements in their tales- golden eggs, signing harps, talking frogs- worked to mask a deeper purpose....it made the stories look on the surface like 'a mere bubble of nonsense' within which it was possible to 'utter harsh truths, to say what you dare' about the state of women's lives. Because they were just stories, right? Harmless little fantasies? ~ Christine Heppermann

I made commercials for corporations like Volkswagen and Coca-Cola, but I was always the one to write them, too, which was a very good exercise, because I learned to tell little stories. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth. ~ Diane Setterfield

[W]e wouldn't want to read a book about a perfect character who never struggles with character flaws, a difficult past, or interpersonal conflict. Writers can powerfully connect with readers when they venture to these thin places of pain and brokenness because readers can see themselves in the pain and want to journey from pain and struggle toward redemption or some kind of resolution. ~ Ed Cyzewski

Everyone has a story inside them. Some are bedtimes stories, some thrill and others scare and horrify their readers. Find out what your story is and share it with the world. ~ C.K. Webb

The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it's about and why you're doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising ... and it's magic and wonderful and strange. ~ Neil Gaiman

I'm one of those writers who started off writing novels and came to writing short stories later, partly because I didn't have the right ideas, partly because I think that short stories are more difficult. I think learning to write short stories also made me attracted toward a paring down of the novel form. ~ Julian Barnes

You know what pulp is, Mr. Tallis? It's the flesh of a luscious fruit, mashed down into an incredible, half liquid richness. so saturated with flavor that it fills your whole body, not just your mouth. ~ Mike Carey

I have a reputation for doing superheroes, but I like all kinds of writing. In fact, hardly anybody knows this, but I've probably written as many humor stories as superhero stories. ~ Stan Lee

A shrink and a patient switching places. Who is REALLY the boss? ~ Mary Papas

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

From an author's point of view, the most painful and dangerous weapon ain't no gun or blade, but a piece of paper with the word rejected on it. ~ Anonymous

Fiction and non-fiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons I do not fully understand, fiction dances out of me. Non-fiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning. ~ Arundhati Roy

Stop trying to write sentences and start trying to write stories. ~ James Patterson

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. ~ Maya Angelou

It's impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because of what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many gestures, which could mean this or that, too many shapes which can never be fully described, too many flavors, in the air or on the tongue, half-colors, too many. ~ Margaret Atwood

I will quote one sentence from this text, namely, the one with which it ended. It was also the sentence which finally dissolved the writer's block that had inhibited the author from starting work. I have since used it whenever I myself have been gripped by fear of the blank sheet in front of me. It is infallible, and its effect is always the same: the knot unravels and a stream of words gushes out on to the virgin paper. It acts like a magic spell and I sometimes fancy it really is one. But, even if it isn't the work of a sorcerer, it is certainly the most brilliant sentence any writer has ever devised. It runs: 'This is where my story begins.' ~ Walter Moers

To survive, you must tell stories. ~ Umberto Eco

I read your diary. I KNOW. ~ Mary Papas

David had left her,taking his insane jealousy with him. ~ Mary Papas

That woman must have been a husky in a previous life. ~ Mary Papas

No one can call themselves a writer until he or she has written at least fifty stories. ~ David Foster Wallace

You are in love with my husband. You need some acting lessons to learn to hide it better. ~ Mary Papas

Stories want to be told. Stories have a power of their own ... you can't write a story until you've felt it. Breathed it in. Walked with your characters. Talked with them. ~ Angelica Banks

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

Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences. ~ Anne McCaffrey

I see story ideas. All the time. They're everywhere. Just walking around like normal ideas. They don't know they're stories. ~ Jennifer Brozek

Throughout our lives, after all, we look for a story of our origins, to tell us why we were born and why we have lived. ~ Umberto Eco

All stories I write are compulsive. Anything I've ever written was because I don't have a choice. I write stories because I can't wait to tell it, I can't wait to see how it ends. ~ Khaled Hosseini

A writer concocts a different story for every reader. ~ Mike Bryan

A short story I have written long ago would barge into my house in the middle of the night, shake me awake and shout, 'Hey,this is no time for sleeping! You can't forget me, there's still more to write!' Impelled by that voice, I would find myself writing a novel. In this sense, too, my short stories and novels connect inside me in a very natural, organic way. ~ Haruki Murakami

She never claimed to be a writer, she simply described herself as a typist of stories waiting to come alive. ~ Margareth Stewart

If you don't know where to start, remember that every single thing that happened to you is yours and you get to tell it. ~ Anne Lamott

I never want to forget that if Lewis Carroll had asked me whether or not he should bother writing about a little girl named Alice who fell asleep and dreamed that she had a lot of adventures down a rabbit hole, it would not have sounded awfully tempting to any editor. ~ Ursula Nordstrom

And I used to write novels and little stories and compositions and I - but I put them away because I started acting when I was 17. So there wasn't much time. ~ Joan Collins

Desire never stops. Equilibrium is temporary. The self-revelation is never simple, and it cannot guarantee the hero a satisfying life from that day forward. since a great story is always a living thing, its ending is no more final and certain than any other part of the story. ~ John Truby

A short story is a sprint, a novel is a marathon. Sprinters have seconds to get from here to there and then they are finished. Marathoners have to carefully pace themselves so that they don't run out of energy (or in the case of the novelist
ideas) because they have so far to run. To mix the metaphor, writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage. ~ Jonathan Carroll

I make no distinction between writing and storytelling; I've always wanted to tell stories. ~ Damon Lindelof

Some of the best stories start out with a person who absolutely does not want anything to do with an adventure. ~ Josh Rose

Finally I do like best of all stories whose necessity is in the implied recognition that someplace out there there exists an urgency - a chaos - , an insanity, a misrule of some dire sort which can end life as we know it but for the fact that this very story is written, this order found, this style determined, the worst averted, and we are beneficiaries of that order by being readers. ~ Richard Ford

The only man she ever loved. And hated. ~ Mary Papas

All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.
All of them?
Sure, he says. Think about it. There's escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist. ~ Margaret Atwood

But if you really love to write and you really love to tell stories and you really love to draw, you just have to keep doing it no matter what anybody says. ~ William Joyce

There's a chasm between writing about yourself and writing about your personal life. A lot of young writers want to turn their lives into stories, into films, books, because they feel their lives are somehow significant. But really, it's not their personal lives that matter, but their own, hard-fought-for ideas. Not just anybody's ideas, but the ideas that they have paid for with their suffering and their sacrifices and their love of their fellow humans. ~ Billy Marshall Stoneking

I'm 67 and have been reading books since I was 5, I have almost lost track of all the fabulous books I have read by so many authors. It would take me forever to list and name them all, suffice to say I have enjoyed every moment that I have been immersed in so many worlds, so many stories, writing one was inevitable, I enjoyed that too, writing is no different to reading it is still a wonderous surprise as each word is processed. ~ Barry C. Cunningham

I've been in a long and happy relationship for 22 years and it's never inspired me to write anything. It's too good - nothing to say. Problems, conflict, that's what makes for good stories. ~ Emma Donoghue

We have, each of us, a story that is uniquely ours, a narrative arc that we can walk with purpose once we figure out what it is. It's the opposite to living our lives episodically, where each day is only tangentially connected to the next, where we are ourselves the only constants linking yesterday to tomorrow. There is nothing wrong with that, and I don't want to imply that there is by saying how much this shocked me
just that it felt so suddenly, painfully right to think that I have tapped into my Long Tale, that I have set my feet on the path I want to walk the rest of my life, and that it is a path of stories and writing and that no matter how many oceans I cross or how transient I feel in any given place, I am still on my Tale's Road, because having tapped it, having found it, the following is inevitable ... ~ Amal El-Mohtar

The family historian must master the art of storytelling. What, after all, is truth without anecdote, history without events, explanation without narration--or yet life itself without a story? Stories are not just the wells from which we drink most deeply but at the same time the golden threads that hold and bind--Ariadne's precious string that leads us through the labyrinth that connects living present and the living past. ~ Joseph A. Amato

Hers were gloriously improbable tales, stuffed with happy coincidences, eternal devotion, and the unwavering recognition of inner beauty. ~ Helen Oyeyemi

Alice Munro is a particular kind of short story writer in that she writes long, character-driven short stories. ~ Nell Freudenberger

Every one has a story someone in the world needs to hear. ~ Tami Belt

But when you write something down, you have to think it all the way through. Sometimes, I'm not even sure how I feel about something until I write a story about it. I figure it out while I'm writing the story. ~ Pat Murphy

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

When I discovered that I could write music, it felt like the most natural way for me to connect with people and tell my stories. I've always thought of that as what I do: I tell stories. ~ Madonna Ciccone

Character development is vital when writing a strong story. Weak characters make for weak stories. ~ Beem Weeks

People ask me all the time, "Where do your ideas come from?" So, to clear up this question ... I keep my ideas inside the mind of a tiny man who is tied up in my closet! ~ C.K. Webb

Writing stories was always a bit like falling in love with a stranger and running off to Marrakech for a long weekend. It didn't have to be successful to be thrilling. ~ Ann Patchett

But what all these responses have in common is that they point to the decisive power of information and stories [ ... ] ~ Wes Moore

I kept writing short stories and sending out my manuscript, and it kept coming back like a bad penny. It was rejected all over town, quite often in very complimentary terms, but rejected nonetheless. Agents would return it saying that they loved it but didn't think they could sell it, or they would ask if I could change the collection into linked stories. ~ Debra Dean

I started working for the 'NY Observer' when I was 33. After I had been writing for them for about a year and a half the editor said, 'Your stories are the most talked about stories in the 'Observer'; you should have your own column.' ~ Candace Bushnell

Since I was a girl I always felt as if I would like to write stories. I never had that ambition or shine to make a name; first place because I knew what time and labor it meant to acquire a literary style. Second place, because whenever I wanted to write a story I never could think of a plot. ~ Kate Chopin

Storytelling began as a way for humans to relay information, from where to find food sources to the benefits of familial bonding, because fictional stories were the easiest way to memorize and communicate a complete set of information. We remember information best when it is delivered in the form of a plot, which is called 'semantic memory.' Stories still serve a definitive purpose and the stronger the purpose, the clearer the story.

Fire Up Your Writing Brain ~ Susan Reynolds

On the Writing Process:
When in doubt, take it out., ~ Barbara DaCosta

My novels are in the literature section as opposed to the romance section of bookstores because they're not romance novels. If I tried to have them published as romances, they'd be rejected. I write dramatic fiction; a further sub-genre would classify them as love stories. ~ Nicholas Sparks

When I am writing political op-eds, I do think carefully about the impact of my words. When I am writing fiction, it's a different story. In my fiction I am more reckless. I don't care about the real world until I am done with the book. ~ Elif Safak

Listen. You will still only love me. And I will only love you. It's only that we'll have different names. Sometimes I'll be Augusta, queen of Gondal, and you'll be a dangerous highwayman. Sometimes we'll be Alexander and Zenobia, the young lovers. Sometimes… sometimes we will just be two lonely children roaming the moors together. But the 'he' of the story will always be you, and the 'she' of the story will always be me. Forever. ~ Lena Coakley

This earth that we live on is full of stories in the same way that, for a fish, the ocean is full of ocean. Some people say when we are born we're born into stories. I say we're also born from stories. ~ Ben Okri

So here is why I write what I do: We all have futures. We all have pasts. We all have stories. And we all, every single one of us, no matter who we are and no matter what's been taken from us or what poison we've internalized or how hard we've had to work to expel it –

– we all get to dream. ~ N.K. Jemisin

The writing process is not just putting down one page after another-it's a lot of writing and then rewriting, restructuring the story, changing the way things come together. ~ Rebecca Stead

Edit your manuscript until your fingers bleed and you have memorized every last word. Then, when you are certain you are on the verge of insanity ... edit one more time! ~ C.K. Webb

Reading your work out loud to yourself it's good. It helps even more if you read to people. If they start yawning that is a bad sign. Unless you are writing for children. Then your story is not bad, if you just wrote a bedtime story! ~ Ana Claudia Antunes

I didn't make any money from my writing until much later. I published about 80 stories for nothing. I spent on literature. ~ Naguib Mahfouz

I'll never live to write all the stories I have in my head. ~ Walter Dean Myers

A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit. ~ David Sedaris

For the source of the short story is usually lyrical. And all writers speak from, and speak to, emotions eternally the same in all of us: love, pity, terror do not show favorites or leave any of us out. ~ Eudora Welty

A story is not like a road to follow ... it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you. ~ Alice Munro

I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell. ~ Octavia E. Butler

They both had the same calm and dreamy little cast of mind. They delighted in stories, in old Breton legends, and their favorite sport was to go and ask for them at the cottage-doors, like beggars:
"Ma'am ... " or, "Kind gentleman ... have you a little story to tell us, please?"
And it seldom happened that they did not have one "given" them; for nearly every old Breton grandame has, at least once in her life, seen the "korrigans" dance by moonlight on the heather. ~ Gaston Leroux

Come with me to the mountains. Every stone there tells a story. ~ Avijeet Das

We can help the next generation, with the stories we write today. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I love writing family stories. ~ Larry Wilmore

The one who pulls the puppet strings knows fairytales can heal. ~ Sally Odgers

I write all the time. I do artwork that's part of a diary, and I write short stories to go with them pretty much every day. ~ Mark Mothersbaugh

Each book starts from ashes really. I don't feel that I have this to say or that to say or this story to tell or that story to tell, but I want to be occupied with the writing process while I'm living. ~ Philip Roth

I just come up with the stories and write them as well as I can. There's not really a great deal of strokey-beard thinking going on. ~ Iain Banks

Books measure time in both moments and years.
We all grow old but the stories never will. ~ R.M. Engelhardt

The story of your life, described, will not describe how you came to think about your life or yourself, nor describe any of what you learned. This is what fiction can do - I think it is even what fiction is for. ~ Alexander Chee

I contend that good children's stories are always about the Getting of Wisdom. That's another way of saying, "Let your characters grow. Up." And good stories for adults are about the Holding of Wisdom. Another way of saying, "Recognize you are grown up. ~ Jane Yolen

A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

When I started writing my stories, I thought that not only nobody outside my language, but nobody outside my neighbourhood would get them. ~ Etgar Keret

There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book. In adult literary fiction, stories are there on sufferance. Other things are felt to be more important: technique, style, literary knowingness ... The present-day would-be George Eliots take up their stories as if with a pair of tongs. They're embarrassed by them. If they could write novels without stories in them, they would. Sometimes they do. We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won't supply them. We all need stories, but children are more frank about it. ~ Philip Pullman

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

A shrink and a patient in a love-hate relationship. Who is REALLY the boss? ~ Mary Papas

I'm a professional. So before I published any novels, I'd always been writing stories. ~ Jess Walter

A good story is [a] kind of irritant. You read it, then you cannot stop thinking about it. Eventually, your mind and heart encyst about it, and what occurs is a pearl of the soul. ~ Jane Yolen

When well told, a story captured the subtle movement of change. If a novel was a map of a country, a story was the bright silver pin that marked the crossroads. ~ Ann Patchett