Story Goes Quotes

Children listen to superstitious tales, the story goes, that that spot, in the heart of the "Big Cane," is a haunted place. For more than a quarter of a century, human voices had rarely, if ever, disturbed the silence of the clearing. Rank and noxious weeds had overspread the once cultivated field - serpents sunned themselves on the doorway of the crumbling cabin. It was indeed a dreary picture ~ Solomon Northup

When the temple finally equals its counterpart in the Pure Land, so the story goes, that day humanity shall have fulfilled its purpose, and Time itself shall come to an end. ~ David Mitchell

To me, having the courage to tell your own story goes hand in hand with having the curiosity and humility to listen to others' stories. ~ Sarah Kay

Somehow the church has forgotten what it knew for so long: story goes beyond simply illustrating some spiritual point or other; it gives form to content; it incarnates meaning. ~ Sarah Arthur

Plotting is like sex. Plotting is about desire and satisfaction, anticipation and release. You have to arouse your reader's desire to know what happens, to unravel the mystery, to see good triumph. You have to sustain it, keep it warm, feed it, just a little bit, not too much at a time, as your story goes on. That's called suspense. It can bring desire to a frenzy, in which case you are in a good position to bring off a wonderful climax. ~ Colin Greenland

In the book of Alma is a story that has fascinated e since I first read it. it is about a very colorful character named Moroni--not to be confused with the last survivor of the Nephites, who was also named Moroni. This man was a brilliant military commander, and he rose to be supreme commander of all the Nephite forces at the age of twenty-five. For the next fourteen years he was off to the wars continuously except for two very short periods of peace during which he worked feverishly at reinforcing the Nephite defenses. When peace finally came, he was thirty-nine years old, and the story goes that at the age of forty-three he died. Sometime before this he had given the chief command of the armies of the Nephites to his son Moronihah. Now, if he had a son, he had a wife. I've often wondered where she was and how she fared during those fourteen years of almost continuous warfare, and how she felt to have him die so soon after coming home. I am sure there are many, many stories of patience and sacrifice that have never been told. We each do our part, and we each have our story. ~ Marjorie Pay Hinckley

The story goes like this," he said. "We were having dinner together, you and I. As we do from time to time. It was grimgrouse. Over-spiced. You killed the cook for that. Temper." He added, as an instructive side, "You know, in a story, it's the details like that that make it seem real. Anyway, you for a bone stuck in your mustache. Did I mention you has a mustache? ~ Laini Taylor

Has anyone here ever heard of the Harrowing?" Dale asked, breaking the silence. No one replied. "It was in the time between Christ's crucifixion and his Resurrection," he went on. "The story goes, Christ went down into Hell, walked among the damned, and set many of them free. Then he returned to Earth and broke the bondage of death. It's supposedly the first and only amnesty Hell has ever known. ~ Clive Barker

Between the Great Depression and the 1970s, private business was viewed with suspicion even in most capitalist economies.
Businesses were, so the story goes, seen as anti-social agents whose profit-seeking needed to be restrained for other, supposedly loftier, goals, such as justice, social harmony, protection of the weak and even national glory. ~ Ha-Joon Chang

Well, it's like this. Deep in your consciousness there's this core that is imperceptible to yourself. In my case, the core is a town. A town with a river flowing through it and a high brick wall surrounding it. None of the people in the town can leave. Only unicorns can go in and out. The unicorns absorb the egos of the town people like blotter paper and carry them outside the wall. So the people in the town have no ego, no self. I live in the town-or so the story goes. I don't know any more than that, since I haven't actually seen any of this with my own eyes. ~ Haruki Murakami

So the story goes, so I'm told
The people he knew were
Less than golden hearted
Gamblers and robbers
Drinkers and jokers, all soul searchers
Like you and me ~ Dave Matthews

You are the author of your life. So please don't let anyone including yourself make you think otherwise. If you feel like you don't like how your story goes, just write it differently. You have the tools, the courage, the power…you have it all! ~ Iva Kenaz

There are not many of us African American Sister Presidents, and those of us who are in this field do not have an easy time of it. Why the story goes that one Black woman college president died and went to hell, and it was two weeks before she realized that she wasn't still on the job. ~ Johnnetta B. Cole

There is a story that Simonides was dining at the house of a wealthy nobleman named Scopas at Crannon in Thessaly, and chanted a lyric poem which he had composed in honor of his host, in which he followed the custom of the poets by including for decorative purposes a long passage referring to Castor and Pollux; whereupon Scopas with excessive meanness told him he would pay him half the fee agreed on for the poem, and if he liked he might apply for the balance to his sons of Tyndaraus, as they had gone halves in the panegyric.

The story runs that a little later a message was brought to Simonides to go outside, as two young men were standing at the door who earnestly requested him to come out; so he rose from his seat and went out, and could not see anybody; but in the interval of his absence the roof of the hall where Scopas was giving the banquet fell in, crushing Scopas himself and his relations underneath the ruins and killing them; and when their friends wanted to bury them but were altogether unable to know them apart as they had been completely crushed, the story goes that Simonides was enabled by his recollection of the place in which each of them had been reclining at table to identify them for separate interment; and that this circumstance suggested to him the discovery of the truth that the best aid to clearness of memory consists in orderly arrangement.

He inferred that persons desiring to train this faculty must select localities and form ment ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

I don't study films particularly. I plan to direct, but I'm not watching film - I watch the entire film to see how the story goes, but I don't say, 'Oh, so he does a slow pan here, or he pulls here, watch the crane shot, or look at the composition,' because it's got to be my eye. ~ James Cromwell

So the story goes but theres something
you should know
before i walk away and i blow the ending
i never want to be without you oh no here i go now you know what i feel about you
theres no running
must have been wrong to doubt you
oh there i go no control and i'm fallen so now you know ~ Hilary Duff

A semicolon is where a writer can choose to end the sentence," she said, tucking a lock of brown hair behind her ear. "But they don't. The story goes on. It's a symbol of hope. To keep going." She smiled tremulously. "Sometimes I need that reminder. ~ Emma Scott

For the lady's husband to become actively jealous was considered both doltish and dishonorable, a breach of the spirit of courtesy. Yet the record suggests that this was a fairly common occurrence and one of the occupational hazards of being a troubadour. The most famous crime passionnel of the epoch was the murder of Guilhem de Cabestanh, a troubadour knight whose love for the Lady Seremonda aroused the jealousy of her husband, Raimon de Castel-Roussillon. The story goes that Raimon killed Guilhem while he was out hunting, removed the heart from the body, and had it served to his wife for dinner, cooked and seasoned with pepper. Then comes the great confrontation:
"And when the lady had eaten of it, RAimon de Castel-Roussillon said unto her: "Know you of what you have eaten?' And she said, 'I know not, save that the taste thereof is good and savoury.' Then he said to her that that she had eaten of was in very truth the head of SIr Guilhem of Cabestanh, and caused the head to be brought before her, that she might the more readily believe it. And when the lady had seen and heard this, she straightway fell into a swoon, and when she was recovered of it, she spake and said: "Of a truth, my Lord, such good meat have you given me that never more will I eat of other."
THen he, hearing this, ran upon her with his sword and would have struck at her head, but the lady ran to a balcony, and cast herself down, and so died."
...the story is probably apocryphal… grisly deta ~ Horizon Magazine, Summer 1970

Women (...) have been encouraged since they were children to be dependent to an unhealthy degree. Any woman who looks within knows that she was never trained to be comfortable with the idea of taking care of herself, standing up for herself, asserting herself. At best she may have played the game of independence, inwardly envying the boys (and later the men) because they seemed so naturally self-sufficient.

It is not nature that bestows this self-sufficiency on men; it's training. Males are educated for independence from the day they are born. Just as systematically, women are taught that they have an out - that someday, in some way, they are going to be saved. That is the fairy tale, the life-message (...) We may venture out on our own for a while. We may go away to school, work, travel; we may even make good money, but underneath it all there is a finite quality to our feelings about independence. Only hang on long enough, the childhood story goes, and someday someone will come along to rescue you from the anxiety of authentic living. (The only savior the boy learns about is himself.) ~ Colette Dowling

Henry Ward Beecher, so the story goes, was once asked by a young preacher how he could keep his congregation wide awake and attentive during his sermons. Beecher replied that he always had a man watch for sleepers, with instructions, as soon as he saw anyone start nodding or dozing, to hasten to the pulpit and wake up the preacher. Aren't you and I usually less sensible? Would we not be inclined to have the watcher wake up not ourselves but the fellows caught sleeping? In other words, aren't we disposed always to blame others? ~ B.C. Forbes

Oh, how our good knight reveled in this speech, and more than ever when he came to think of the name that he should give his lady! As the story goes, there was a very good=looking farm girl who lived near by, with whom he had once been smitten, although it is generally believed that she never knew or suspected it. Her name was Aldonza Lorenzo, and it seemed to him that she was the one upon whom he should bestow the title of mistress of his thoughts. For her he wished a name that should not be incongruous with his own and that would convey the suggestion of a princess or a great lady; and, accordingly, he resolved to call her "Dulcinea del Toboso," she being a native of that place. A musical name to his ears, out of the ordinary and significant, like the others he had chosen for himself and his appurtenances. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

The story goes that a public sinner was excommunicated and forbidden entry to the church. He took his woes to God. 'They won't let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner.'
'What are you complaining about?' said God. 'They won't let Me in either. ~ Brennan Manning

The story goes that I first had the idea for The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy while lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck. ~ Douglas Adams

Story goes that he wanted many things from one women, and she wanted one thing from many men. ~ Efrat Cybulkiewicz

A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling, or teaching, or ordering. Rather, he seeks to establish a relationship with meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all our live trying to be less lonesome. And one of our ancient methods is to tell a story, begging the listener to say, and to feel, "Yes, that's the way it is, or at least that's the way I feel it. You're not as alone as you thought." To finish is sadness to a writer, a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isn't really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done. ~ John Steinbeck

When a person is lucky enough to live inside a story, to live inside an imaginary world, the pains of this world disappear. For as long as the story goes on, reality no longer exists. ~ Paul Auster

A circular plot structure, often seen in adventure novels and quest fantasies, is a narrative devise involving setting, character, and theme. Typically a protagonist ventures from home (or the starting place of the story), goes on a journey, often a dangerous one in which many challenges are overcome, and then returns home a changed person. The plot is usually chronological, with the events occurring in a setting that becomes a circle. By returning the character to the place where he started, the author can emphasize the character's growth or change while also highlighting the theme of the story. ~ Carl M. Tomlinson

Among the people, it was believed, as late as the present century, that spirits were imprisoned in statues. The statue of Neptune by Ammanati in the fountain of the Piazza della Signoria is called 'Il Biancone' or 'The Great White Man' by the poor people, who used to say that he was the mighty river god of the Arno tuned into statue because, like Michelangelo, he spurned the love of women. When the full moon shines on him, so the story goes, he comes to life and walks about the Piazza conversing with the other statues. Michelangelo's 'David', before it became a statue, used to be known as 'The Giant'. It was a great block of marble eighteen feet high that had been spoiled by Agostino di Duccio; personified by popular fancy, it lay for forty years in the workshops of the Cathedral, until Michelangelo made the Giant-Killer, that is, into a patriotic image of a small country defeating its larger foes. Giants, it was related, had built the great Etruscan stone wall of Fiesole, and many stories were told in Florence of beautiful maidens being turned into pure white marble statues. ~ Mary MacCarthy

My mother would watch him and sigh. He's a young soul, she would say, with a tender heart. She worried for him. But never for me. I was the happy one. At least, that's how the story goes. ~ Lisa Gardner

There is a natural progression to 'Lost,' and as the story goes forward, it's going to change. It's not a static story. The franchise of 'Lost' is not characters sitting on a beach. ~ Carlton Cuse

I follow where the story goes. Always. Every time. Sometimes it goes places where I'm not comfortable ... it's at those times that I just listen to my characters, hold on with both hands, and trust that my readers won't lynch me later. ~ Dennis Sharpe

Caregivers, like all of us, inevitably reflect their culture's attitude toward children and life. The story goes that when Pearl Buck was a child in China, someone asked how she compared her mother to her Chinese amah. Buck replied, "If I want to have a story read, I go to my mother. But if I fall down and need to be comforted, I go to my amah." Her mother's culture valued teaching and learning, while her amah's placed a greater value on nurture. Even as a child, Buck instinctively knew the difference. ~ David C. Pollock

Don't you dare feel bad for me. I'm not writing this for you to shed tears. My story goes a whole lot deeper than this, and I definitely don't want your pity. I adapted. I embraced whatever the fuck came or would come. That's what I do. ~ M. Robinson

Though we might have precious little
It's still precious

I like that song about this wonderful world
It's got a sunny point of view
And sometimes I feel it's true
At least for a few of us
I like that world, it makes a wonderful song
But there's a darker point of view
But sadly just as true
For so many among us

Though we might have precious little
It's still precious

In the sweetest child there's a vicious streak
In the strongest man there's a child so weak
In the whole wide world there's no magic place
So you might as well rise put on your bravest face

I like that show where they solve all the murders
An heroic point of view
It's got justice and vengeance too
At least so the story goes
I like that story, makes a satisfying case
But there's a messy point of view
That's sadly just as true
For so many among us

In softest voice there's an acid tongue
In the oldest eyes there's a soul so young
In the shakiest will there's a core of steel
On the smoothest ride there's a squeaky wheel

Though we might have precious little
It's still precious ~ Rush

But everything changes when you tell about life; it's a change no one notices: the proof is that people talk about true stories. As if there could possibly be true stories; things happen one way and we tell about them in the opposite sense. You seem to start at the beginning: "It was a fine autumn evening in 1922. I was a notary's clerk in Marommes." And in reality you have started at the end. It was there, invisible and present, it is the one which gives to words the pomp and value of a beginning. "I was out walking, I had left the town without realizing it, I was thinking about my money troubles." This sentence, taken simply for what it is, means that the man was absorbed, morose, a hundred leagues from an adventure, exactly in the mood to let things happen without noticing them. But the end is there, transforming everything. For us, the man is already the hero of the story. His moroseness, his money troubles are much more precious than ours, they are all gilded by the light of future passions. And the story goes on in the reverse: instants have stopped piling themselves in lighthearted way one on top of the other, they are snapped up by the end of the story which draws them and each of them in turn, draws out the preceding instant. "it was night, the street was deserted." The phrase is cast out negligently, it seems superfluous; but we do not let ourselves be caught and we put it aside: this a piece of information whose value we shall subsequently appreciate. And we feel t ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

They say that in India there is a particularly clever way of catching monkeys. As the story goes, hunters will cut a hole in a coconut that is just big enough for a monkey to put its hand through. Then they will drill two smaller holes in the other end, pass a wire through, and secure the coconut to the base of a tree. Then they slip a banana inside the coconut through the hole and hide. The monkey comes down, puts his hand in, and takes hold of the banana. The hole is cleverly crafted so that the open hand can go in but the fist cannot get out. All the monkey has to do to be free is to let go of the banana. But it seems most monkeys don't let go. ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

The story goes as the line follow... alone... loony....
...

That's what's happening... now you are in a place where you can find nobody. ~ Deyth Banger

In Mozambique, the story goes, monkeys do not talk, because they know if they utter even a single word some man will come and put them to work. ~ Carl Sagan

As the story goes, Albert Einstein's wife Elsa remarked, upon hearing that a telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory was needed to determine the shape of space-time: Oh, my husband does this on the back of an old envelope. ~ Edward Frenkel

Life is like a DVR recording. The story goes on, but you cannot see it until you fast forward through the commercials ~ Christopher Earle

I have no story. My story goes from day to day. ~ Robert Plant

KA: What is your basic process working with a writer?

LB: I read a manuscript very quickly first, then I sit down the second time and start reading very carefully and do the detail work, the minute hammering on every page. At this point, I know where the story goes so I'm looking for holes. I'm looking for anything that doesn't add up. The best way to edit is to live entirely in the world as much as you can. Before I had a child I would edit ten hours on Friday ten hours on Saturday and ten hours on Sunday (obviously I had no hobbies or any nee to go outdoors). You knew everything about the book. You were in tune with every character. You have the voice in your head. Then the author gets a hugely marked up manuscript with all these little scribbles. I'm asking them every question that occurs to me. I give them as much time as they want to sit and digest it. Again, this is one of the reasons I like working far in advance. I have time with the manuscript and they have time with the manuscript. I'm happy to let them work in peace and quiet.

Then we go back and forth as long as is helpful to them. They do the revision and it lands on my desk again. I read it again beginning to end. I assume it doesn't need a line edit at that point, although I tend to read with a pencil in my hand. There could be one big thing still sticking in your craw that didn't get fixed, so you just roll up your sleeves… ~ Lee Boudreaux

A good story is alive, ever changing and growing as it meets each listener or reader in a spirited and unique encounter, while the moralistic tale is not only dead on arrival, it's already been embalmed. It's safer that way. When a lively story goes dancing out to meet the imagination of a child, the teller loses control over meaning. The child gets to decide what the story means. ~ Katherine Paterson

You'd been in Sunday school long enough to know how the story goes: the voice of God comes down from the sky and asks you to go where you don't want to go, to do what you don't want to do. And you have to do it anyway. ~ Addie Zierman

Okay, on my first night, he tried to chat me up. You know how the story goes. 'You have the most beautiful eyes, I'm very rich, want to see my bedroom?' Blah, blah, blah."
"And because you turned him down, he's more determined than ever," Will guessed, with amazing accuracy. "You did turn him down, right?"
"Of course," I told him, insulted by the insinuation I would drop my knickers for a glass of wine. "Do you think I'd risk my job for a quick tumble in the sheets with him? ~ Kyra Lennon

The story goes that one day Socrates stood gazing at a stall that sold all
kinds of wares. Finally he said, What a lot of things I don't need! ~ Jostein Gaarder

I feel real ownership in this show. I feel very invested in it. I care very much about it. I don't feel any more like a hired hand, you know? It's a strange feeling - I feel personally responsible for how the story goes. What happens. What the weaknesses are. And so in a way, some of the changes gave me an opportunity to have a voice in a different way. ~ Lauren Graham

Fundamentally, Eva is just my life copied out onto film. I'm [still] alive, so the story hasn't finished. ~ Hideaki Anno

The White House admitted that Vice President Biden's endorsement of gay marriage forced him to come out in favor of it. So in a related story millions of Americans are trying to get Biden hooked on pot. ~ Conan O'Brien

Your statement ... tells a very fine story; but pray, was not your stock a little heavy a while ago? downward tendency? Sort of low spirits among holders on the subject of that stock?"
"Yes, there was a depression. But how came it? who devised it? The 'bears,' sir. The depression of our stock was solely owing to the growling, the hypocritical growling, of the bears."
"How hypocritical?"
""Why, the most montrous of all hypocrites are these bears: hypocrites by inversion; hypocrites in the simulation of things dark instead of bright; souls that thrive, less upon depression, than the fiction of depression; professors of the wicked art of manufacturing depressions; spurious Jeremiahs; sham Heraclituses, who, the lugubrious day done, return, like sham Lazaruses among the beggars, to make merry over the gains got by their pretended sore heads--scoundrelly bears!"
"You are warm against these bears?"
"If I am, it is less from the remembrance of their stratagems as to our stock, than from the persuasion that these same destroyers of confidence, and gloomy philosophers of the stock-market, though false in themselves, are yet true types of most destroyer of confidence and gloomy philosophers, the world over. Fellows who, whether in stocks, politics, bread-stuffs, morals, metaphysics, religion--be it what it may--trump up their black panics in the naturally-quiet brightness, solely with a view to some sort of covert advantage. That corpse of calamity which t ~ Herman Melville

Point of view is not something I consciously decide. Almost always, when I come up with a plot I find that the point of view has automatically arrived with it, part and parcel of the story. ~ Anne Tyler

You may have heard the old story, usually attributed to a Native American elder, meant to illuminate the power of attention. A grandfather (occasionally it's a grandmother) imparting a life lesson to his grandson tells him, "I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is vengeful, fearful, envious, resentful, deceitful. The other wolf is loving, compassionate, generous, truthful, and serene." The grandson asks which wolf will win the fight. The grandfather answers, "The one I feed. ~ Sharon Salzberg

When you share your story with someone, it becomes a part of their story, too. ~ Marty Rubin

You don't wait for love to happen to you. You go out there and feel the breeze and sniff the air! The fragrance of love will come wafting towards you in no time! ~ Avijeet Das

It's always about the human condition. Go back to that and you'll find your story. ~ Michael Piller

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 did not want to write a story about the invasion of Earth, so I had to create a race capable of living nearby, which meant to either on the Moon, on Mars, or on Venus. I picked Venus. ~ Sarah Zettel

Violence has been a part of storytelling forever and there's obviously a reason for it. Fairy tales are really violent, the original ones. I think there's something cathartic about having kids live through their fears through a book or any kind of story. ~ Jane Levy

What I got out of that story was something still very new to me: I understood at last what art is really for, at least in certain respects. It gives somebody, individually, pleasure. You can make something that somebody likes so much that they're depressed, or they're happy, on account of that damn thing you made! In science, it's sort of general and large: You don't know the individuals who have appreciated it directly. I understood that to sell a drawing is not to make money, but to be sure that it's in the home of someone who really wants it; someone who would feel bad if they didn't have it. This was interesting. ~ Richard Feynman

Ever'body got story. Ever'body got a reason for what they do. You eat off somebody else's plate, drink a their cup, could be, you'd be the same way. ~ Lisa Wingate

The biggest problem in the fictional treatment of sex is that it's not treated as part of the story but as a pause from the story. The best sex scenes in fiction are the ones that advance the story. ~ K.M. Soehnlein

It is when darkness prevails that I sit by the window to look past all those electricity-free houses, smell the sweet scent of a calm Gazan night, feel the fresh air going straight to my heart, and think of you, of me, of Palestine, of the crack, of the blank wall, of you, of Mama, of you, of my history class, of you, of God, of Palestine - of our incomplete story. ~ Refaat Alareer

My people do, I do not. Gods are a myth, a comforting story for children." "Such ~ Anthony Ryan

My dad doesn't have an iota of the depressive in him. He just depresses other people. Nothing brings him down. But this can't be true. I think it just comes out when absolutely no one else is around. It always seemed that while I knew he loved us a lot, my father actually needed nothing to be happy except books. There was enough in literature to challenge, entertain, amuse and inspire a man for a lifetime. Books and music were simply enough to sustain anyone was what he radiated. Humor, love, tragedy, it was all contained therein. And if all he needed was books, then he probably wouldn't mind if he lost the house and the wife and the whole life. Because the story was more important than the family. The story being that he was going to write the Great American Novel and finally be important, and in being important, he would be loved. Willing to lose his family to be loved by his family. Oh, the tragic blunder of this. It could almost drive someone mad. Wait, it did drive someone mad. ~ Jeanne Darst

If I'm successful in fooling a wire service, I don't really have to do anything else to promote the story. ~ Joey Skaggs

How do we change the world? Change the story. ~ Charles Eisenstein

Gerry breathed loudly and slowly. "Dylan," he said accusingly, "that was a sad story."
"Not it's not. It's a happy story. It's about a mom who loved her baby very much."
"But she's gone," Gerry said in a very little voice.
"That doesn't mean she loves you any less," Dylan said. ~ M.H. Herlong

If somebody tells you an obviously untrue story, on the Continent you would remark, "You are a liar, Sir, and a rather dirty one at that." In England you just say "Oh, is that so?" Or "That's rather an unusual story, isn't it? ~ George Mikes

I love wearing things that come with a story. ~ Nikki Reed

Women ought to be religious; faith was the natural fragrance of their minds. The more incredible the things they believed, the more lovely was the act of belief. To him the story of "Paradise Lost" was as mythical as the "Odyssey"; yet when his mother read it aloud to him, it was not only beautiful but true. A woman who didn't have holy thoughts about mysterious things far away would be prosaic and commonplace, like a man. ~ Willa Cather

Hitchcock's debut novel introduces 14-year-old Jessie Pearl, who endures more than her fair share of hardships, beginning with the death of her mother. Opening in 1922, the story follows the daily activities on the family's North Carolina tobacco farm. ...Hitchcock's story is gently and lovingly written, with elements drawn from her own family history. Its detailed honesty about the particular struggles of the period, especially for strong women (Maude, a no-nonsense midwife, is particularly memorable), is significant.
- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ~ Publishers Weekly

What's the truth in the story about vampires not being allowed inside without an invitation?" Having pressed him on his diet, I focused on the entrance protocols.
"Humans are with us all the time. They just refuse to acknowledge our existence because we don't make sense in their limited world. Once they allow us in - see us for who we really are - then we're in to stay, just as someone you've invited into your home can be hard to get rid of. They can't ignore us anymore."
"So it's like the stories of sunlight," I said slowly. "It's not that you can't be in sunlight, but when you are, it's harder for humans to ignore you. Rather than admit that you're walking among them, humans tell themselves you can't survive the light. ~ Deborah Harkness

Don't just read, insert yourself into the story and experience the journey as if you were written into it! – Lynn Veevers ~ Lynn Veevers

You lie awake at 3 in the morning thinking of story ideas. You're online at 8 a.m. on a Sunday or midnight on a Wednesday. It's a job that you never push aside. ~ James Daly

It was during this period of work that Varda began to conceive a more theoretical approach to her art. She says, "[My work] deals with this question, 'What is cinema?' through how I found specific cinematic ways of telling what I was telling. I could have told you the same things that are in the film by just talking to you for six hours. But instead I found shapes" (Warwick). To give a name to her very particular and personal search for a cinematic language, Varda coined the term cinécriture. As she explains to Jean Decock: "When you write a musical score, someone else can play it, it's a sign. When an architect draws up a detailed floor plan, anyone can build his house. But for me, there's no way I could write a scenario that someone else could shoot, since the scenario doesn't represent the writing of the film." Later she would clarify, "The cutting, the movement, the points-of-view, the rhythm of filming and editing have been felt and considered in the way a writer chooses the depth of meaning of sentences, the type of words, number of adverbs, paragraphs, asides, chapters which advance the story or break its flow, etc. In writing its called style. In the cinema, style is cinécriture." (Varda par Agnès [1994], 14). ~ T. Jefferson Kline

Never look for the story in the 'lede.' Reporters are required to put what's happened up top, but the practiced pundit places a nugget of news, even a startling insight, halfway down the column, directed at the politiscenti. When pressed for time, the savvy reader starts there. ~ William Safire

I'm proud to be on the CBC and to see the management here represents both sides of every story. This is what's unique about the new CBC: you get a Kevin O'Leary on it when five years ago you wouldn't. ~ Kevin O'Leary

The thing I'm writing now, I have various characters, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, this couple dies. And they have a daughter ... I thought, 'OK, we have to do something with the daughter' ... then I realized she's not really their daughter. She has her own story. And she's become the most interesting character. She was this throwaway character that I didn't even conceive of before I started writing her into it, and now she's become very important in this book. ~ Sandra Dallas

Good twists are enormously hard to come by, and I think the best ones are earned ones. The idea that a story can take a left turn on you, it's easy to do, but it has to be done very, very carefully, or else you risk losing the audience's trust. ~ Damon Lindelof

You can tell your story any way you damn well please ~ Jandy Nelson

Everything was a story. And Simon was the hero. He saved the day. That's when stories end - with everyone looking ahead to "happily ever after. ~ Rainbow Rowell

Every scar told a story, but it was the ones we didn't want others to see that told a truth. ~ Keri Lake

We always fall in love with a story, not a name or a body but what is inscribed in the man. ~ Susana Fortes

Humanity's story must be one of constant change because that is one way to transmute hope. ~ Annalee Newitz

People who were more concerned with themselves and looking good to their readers then they were with the characters sacrificed a series for the sake of a story. ~ Len Wein

The setting sun burned the sky pink and orange in the same bright hues as surfers' bathing suits. It was beautiful deception, Bosch thought, as he drove north on the Hollywood Freeway to home. Sunsets did that here. Made you forget it was the smog that made their colors so brilliant, that behind every pretty picture there could be an ugly story. ~ Michael Connelly

Good, evil, these are human concepts, ways people have for understanding what it means to be alive," Nick said. "Before people came along, this planet was teeming with life, fighting to survive, to live long enough to reproduce, completing the circle of life."

"I'm with you so far," Elphaba said. "The circle of life is an essential Wiccan principle, in spite of The Lion King."

Nick ignored Elphaba's bit of humor as his mood became more serious. "Precisely so. And in this circle of life, you have predators and prey. The predators must kill to eat. If they don't, they starve. Are the predators evil?"

"No, of course not. They're simply acting on their nature."

"What is human nature, then? Are we a species that builds societies of trust and cooperation, or are we a species that seeks power over our fellow man, even if that means fighting wars or otherwise killing him?"

Elphaba frowned, carefully considering her answer. "I'd like to think we are a species of trust and cooperation."

"Our entire history is a story of war, of murder and mayhem, of blood running in the streets," Nick said quietly.

"Yes, yes it is." Elphaba leaned back, grimacing.

"We are both," Nick said. "A species of cooperation, and a species of strife. We fight wars, and we also establish the rule of law to mete out justice to the criminals in our midst. Humans are both good and evil. ~ Abramelin Keldor

The first thing we notice about our story is that we can't really see the solid outlines of it
it seems bathed in something of its own. It is wrapped in an atmosphere. This is what makes it shine, perhaps, as well as what initially obscures its plain, real shape. ~ Eudora Welty

I don't really know the story of the Pied Piper. I don't read stories, first of all. I just remember either a rabbit or a rat leading people out of the village with a flute. That's all I can tell you. ~ R. Kelly