Story Level Quotes

There is so much information in one Hebrew word that translators are hard pressed to decide how much information should be cut. Since the first official translation (the Septuagint), Jewish translators advocated translating Hebrew (for outsiders) at the 'story' level.
pg viii ~ Michael Ben Zehabe

The annoying this was that their authority loomed larger by the hour. One is not aware of it, but these men are kings. Throwing open my rooms, they would say, "Everything here belongs to us." They would fall upon my scraps of thought: "This is ours." They would challenge my story, "Talk," and my story would put itself at their service. In haste, I would rid myself of myself. I distributed my blood, my innermost being among them, lent them the universe, gave them the day. Right before their eyes, though they were not at all startles, I became a drop of water, a spot of ink. I reduced myself to them. The whole presence of me passed in full view before them, and when at last nothing was present but my perfect nothingness and there was nothing more to see, they ceased to see me too. Very irritated, they stood up and cried out, "All right, where are you? Where are you hiding? Hiding is forbidden, it is an offense," etc. ~ Maurice Blanchot

If on a winter's night a traveler, outside the town of Malbork, leaning from the steep slope without fear of wind or vertigo, looks down in the gathering shadow in a network of lines that enlace, in a network of lines that intersect, on the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon around an empty grave-What story down there awaits its end?-he asks, anxious to hear the story. ~ Italo Calvino

Life is a story. Make yours the best seller. ~ Unknown

Weiss' account of the leading role in this campaign to limit Americans' free speech rights played by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the U.S. Department of State is particularly troubling. We learn that Mrs. Clinton collaborated closely with the man who was at the time the Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, through a series of high-level meetings that came to be known as "The Istanbul Process." Its explicit purpose was to find ways to accommodate the OIC's demands for the official stifling of any critical examination of Islam. ~ Deborah Weiss

If one loves stories, then one would naturally love the story of the story. Or the story behind the story, pick your preposition. It does seem to me to be a kind of animal impulse almost, a mammalian curiosity. For a reader to wonder about the autobiography in a fiction may be completely unavoidable and in fact may speak to the success of a particular narrative, though it may also speak to its failure. ~ Lorrie Moore

Also, getting the chance to play a supporting part meant that I didn't have to do as much as the protagonist, such as running around telling the story. [As the protagonist] you push the story whereas, paradoxically, as a character part, you have a chance to explore some of the nuance and some of the more complicated aspects of a character. ~ Ben Affleck

I say that glorious prose is a fine and laudable thing, but without an enthralling story, it's just so much verbal tapioca. Simply put, the best books have both, and the best writers disparage neither. ~ Jean Hanff Korelitz

As he carefully made his way back to the stairs and awkwardly turned off the light, he did not notice that the dark shadow he had assumed was his reflection remained in the mirror. He didn't see the hands press against the surface and make large, liquid-like bulges beneath the glass. Nor did he hear the whispers that so suddenly and violently filled the dark, cluttered space as he had closed and locked the heavy attic door. ~ "The Mirror ~ Cassie McCown

I've never listened to an audiobook before, and I have to say it's a totally different experience. When you read a book, the story definitely takes place in your head. When you listen, it seems to happen in a little cloud all around it, like a fuzzy knit cap pulled down over your eyes ~ Robin Sloan

Like everything else in my past he was part of the story that had led us to each other; it's a way of being in love, I think, to see the past like that. ~ Garth Greenwell

I think it's wonderful when a love story begins with a great deal of romance and affection, passion and excitement, that's how it should be. But I don't necessarily know that it's the wisest thing in the world to expect that it ends there, or that it should, 30 years down the road, still look as it did on the night of your first kiss. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

After I left school, where I studied art, photography and textiles at A-level, I started doing an apprenticeship in interior design, but I wasn't really enjoying it very much, so I decided to do something creative, and in 2009, I began blogging. ~ Zoe Sugg

The deadlines are much, much longer with books. When I was a reporter, a lot of times I'd come in at 8:30 a.m., get an assignment right away, interview somebody, turn the story in by 9:30, and have the finished story in the paper that landed on my desk by noon. ~ Margaret Haddix

Only when you truly understand what it takes to love can you appreciate the love story of others. ~ Nakia R. Laushaul

To know we are being spied on by our own government, and to have someone else's government collaborating on that, to know that data storage is so cheap your information can be kept for years and used to create any kind of story, to me that's a grave attack on human rights. ~ Sara Harrison

And he would never have instructed her to tell his past self such a story and expected himself to believe it. ~ Karen Marie Moning

The tension between autonomy and expertise had been, at a basic level, fundamental to the Protestant experience itself from the Reformation forward, as the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, increasing literacy, and vernacular translations of the Bible undermined the clerical caste's monopoly on spiritual authority. In the twentieth-century United States, professional specialization, the Progressive emphasis on technical expertise, and simply the ever more complex nature of modern urban life pulled readers toward greater reliance on literary guidance, while the logic of consumerism, rooted in the all-powerful choice to buy or not to buy, further reinforced the notion of reader autonomy. ~ Matthew Hedstrom

To entrust to an editor a story over which you have labored and to which your name and reputation are attached can be like sending your daughter off for an evening with Ted Bundy. ~ Edna Buchanan

What if that One thing you're afraid of is the One thing you need, to get Your Big Breakthrough and Go to The Next Level? ~ Jeanette Coron

My initial thoughts about what a title can do was to set mood and the prime underlying core of the film's story, to express the story in some metaphorical way. I saw the title as a way of conditioning the audience, so that when the film actually began, viewers would already have an emotional resonance with it. ~ Saul Bass

I hate you. You are the reason fungus exists. You are the slime that grows in swamps that even acid can't break down - "
"How long do you plan to keep this up, Rhubarb?"
"Why?"
"Because I was going to hail down a bottle of beer and I figured you might get thirsty having your mouth open so much."
"Make it a white wine and I'll keep it short."
"No, you won't, but it might slow you down. Be right back. ~ Dee Tenorio

One day I'll give birth to a tiny baby girl
and when she's born she'll scream
and I'll tell her to never stop
I will kiss her before I lay her down at night
and will tell her a story so she knows
how it is and how it must be for her to survive
I'll tell her to set things on fire
and keep them burning
I'll teach her that fire will not consume her
that she must use it ~ Nicole Blackman

Without a story there is no meaning.
And the nature of the meaning depends on the nature of the story.
To understand this is to understand the true power of stories.
And so, to control the stories, to be the one doing the telling...
Well now, wouldn't that be quite a thing...? ~ Steven Hall

People hear you on the level you speak to them from. Speak from your heart, and they will hear with theirs. ~ Marianne Williamson

I could never live with this man, she thought. I could never get inside his heart. But I might be able to die with him." - ( From the short story "Landscape in Flatiron") ~ Haruki Murakami

I have not much faith in women in fiction ... Women are so horribly subjective and they have such scorn for the healthy commonplace. When a woman writes a story of adventure, a stout sea tale, a manly battle yarn, anything without wine, women, and love, then I will begin to hope for something great from them, not before. ~ Willa Cather

I can't control life for my grandchildren, so how could I control a story? Sometimes I try to force something, and after working and working on that chapter, I realise that I am swimming against the current. I will never get there. So I have to let go of whatever previous idea I had about it and let the characters decide. ~ Isabel Allende

True story," Horse chimed in. "Fuck with us, we'll fuck you back. Harder. Always. ~ Joanna Wylde

But basically, I'm trying to write a fun story. ~ Rob Walton

Go for it. It will make a great story. ~ Gina Greenlee

TAKE A SUBJECT, a situation, a story that is hard for you to talk about, and write about it. Write slowly, evenly, in a measured way. Don't skip over any part of it. Stay in there. It might take you several days, a week, a month to write out the whole thing. Continue to work on it every day until it is finished. ~ Natalie Goldberg

Did you finish yours, Kota?"
"Working on it now, Actually."
"How's it going?"
He sat up, turning in his chair and holding up his notebook. "I don't know. What rhymes with formaldehyde?"
My eyes widened. Gabriel laughed, rubbing his fingers against his forehead. "Dude, what kind of poem are you writing?"
Kota blinked at us. "It's about a doctor."
"Does the doctor fall in love?" Gabriel asked.
"No."
"Does someone die?"
"Not in the story, technically."
"What does he do?"
"He performs an autopsy. ~ C.L.Stone

Everything changed in Bosnia, when General Wesley Clark proved that you could fight a war with high- level precision air strikes and a bare minimum of ground action. ~ Joe Bob Briggs

In early 1993, a hostile observer might have had grounds for thinking that the Unix story was almost played out, and with it the fortunes of the hacker tribe. ~ Eric S. Raymond

There was no one for you to impress and no one for you to offend. You were right there and I was afraid of how real you were, which made me question my own level of authenticity. I'd take off my clothes on the beach or spill my guts to a girl I'd never met on the bus, thinking I was uncensored and open, but I wasn't always real if I wanted someone to like me. I gravitated to those who withheld or told me who they thought I was. ~ Mary-Louise Parker

I always believed 'The Fly' to be a classic opera story. It's a tale of love and death, true love surviving in the face of physical decay and ultimate sacrifice. ~ Howard Shore

Life in God should be a daring adventure of love - a continuous journey of putting aside our securities to enter more profoundly into the uncharted depths of God. Too often, however, we settle for mediocrity. We follow the rules and practices of prayer but we are unwilling or, for various reasons, unable to give ourselves totally to God. To settle on the plain of mediocrity is really to settle for something less than God that leaves the heart restless and unfulfilled. A story from the desert fathers reminds us that giving oneself wholly to God can make a difference: Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, "Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?" Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, "If you will, you can become all flame."15 ~ Ilia Delio

The short story, its course plotted and its form proscribed, has become too efficient ... but efficiency is not the most, it is perhaps the least, important among the undoubted elements of good literature ~ Henry Seidel Canby

History is conjecture raised to the level of an art. ~ Marty Rubin

Love must face reality, if it is to survive
Jumping in the Puddles of Life ~ Loretta Livingstone

Sometimes, when you are reading a book you are enjoying very much, you begin thinking so hard about the characters and the story that you might forget all about the author, even if he is in grave danger and would very much appreciate your help. The same thing can happen if you are looking at a photograph. You might think so hard about whatever is in the photograph that you forget all about the person behind the camera. ~ Lemony Snicket