Story Makers Quotes

Bookshops are
time machines
spaceships
story-makers
secret-keepers
dragon-tamers
dream-catchers
fact-finders
& safe places.
(this book is for those who know this to be true) ~ Jen Campbell

We've always used stories as a way to pass on our history, as a way to explain things in life that we don't understand. We use them to make us feel connected to everything around us, and to help us escape to another time or place.
Bookshops across the world are full of these stories.
From travelling booksellers and undercover bookshops, to pop-up stalls and community hubs, walking into a good bookshop is like walking into another zone.These places are time machines, spaceships, story-makers, secret-keepers. They are dragon-tamers, dream-catchers, fact-finders and safe places. They are full of infinite possibilities, and tales worth taking home.
Because whether we're in the middle of the desert or in the heart of a city, on the top of a mountain or on an underground train: having good stories to keep us company can mean the whole world. ~ Jen Campbell

We have story-makers and we have writers apparently most of the today's writing falls into the first category. ~ Pushpa Rana

The Polar Express was the easiest of my picture book manuscripts to write ... Once I realized the train was going to the North Pole, finding the story seemed less like a creative effort than an act of recollection. I felt, like the storys narrator, that I was remembering something, not making it up. ~ Chris Van Allsburg

If you end your story, it's a static work of art, a finite circle. But if you don't, it belongs to anyone's imagination. It stays alive forever. ~ Jodi Picoult

Every day, my mom and I would watch a different Judy Garland VHS. I love how she tells a story when she sings. It was just about her voice and the words she was singing - no strings attached or silly hair or costumes, just a woman singing her heart out. I feel like that doesn't happen that much anymore. ~ Ariana Grande

A scene," Mary told us, "is a moment when there is some form of tension. A scene leads to the next scene. And a causal connection between scenes is what leads you to the story. A scene should be very clearly developed, and when the action is finished, the scene is over. An anecdote is, 'Oh, I missed the train. You'll never believe what happened ... ' An anecdote leads to nothing. ~ Alice Steinbach

And don't give me the same old story:
"We're in Mexico. Pray."
You'd be better off taking a snake rattle. ~ Carlos Fuentes

I have written about 240 books and some short stories, too. It's taken me many years. ~ Eve Bunting

Bah! you wish to hear a man tell of his worst actions, and you expect the story to come out goody-goody! One's worst actions always are mean. We ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I know where I'm supposed to be at the time of the snap. Now, where the play dictates I'm going to go is a different story. ~ Troy Polamalu

I've always felt you unearth story, like you're on an archeological dig. ~ Andrew Stanton

A good story often increases the salability of an item without increasing its actual value. ~ Roy H. Williams

The story in that particular spot was an ancient history story, and we wanted to give it a historical feeling, which was why we used a historical calligraphy scroll come to life. ~ Jennifer Yuh Nelson

I believe that a person's thoughts often manifest into actual events - that we think things into existence. Right? Well, think about this: one of the illnesses that has become an epidemic in the Western world is an addiction to news. Newspapers, Internet news, 24-hour news channels. And what is news? News is history in the making. So the addiction to news is the addiction to the outcome of history. Are you with me so far?'
'I get it. Go on.'
'In the past couple of decades, news has been produced as entertainment. So people's addiction to news is the addiction to its function as entertainment. If you combine the power of thought with this addiction to entertaining news, then the part of the hundreds of millions of people, the viewing public, that wishes peace on earth is overshadowed by the part of them that wants the next chapter in the story. Every person who turns on the news and finds there's no developments is disappointed. They're checking the news two or three times a day - they want drama, and drama means not only death but death by the thousands, so in the secrets parts of themselves, every news-addicted person is hoping for greater calamity, more bodies, more spectacular wars, more hideous enemy attacks, and these wishes are going out every day into the world. Don't you see? Right now, more than at any other time in history, the universal wish is a black one. ~ Steve Toltz

Rabbinic literature, though it includes plenty of material from before AD 135, tends to see everything in the light, not of a continuing story about God and Israel within the ongoing flow of world history, but of the much thinner, often dehistoricized world of Torah-piety. ~ N. T. Wright

'First Light' is nonfiction, a true story about astronomers who are looking for light coming from the edge of the universe. It tells how science is really done - and science is a lot weirder and more human than most people realize. ~ Richard Preston

When we sing praises to our Lord, we join in the chorus that creation has been singing from the beginning of time. And it is the same anthem that we as believers will be singing for all eternity. ~ Laura Story

Belle blinked at the vision before her and inhaled sharply. Books! Books everywhere. The enormous room was two stories tall, with a spiraling stairway on each side leading up to the upper level. Leather-bound volumes filled the shelves from floor to ceiling on both floors, and the upper level looked down upon them with an open loft area surrounded by an ornate wrought-iron railing. Several rolling ladders were in front of the bookcases to allow easy access to even the highest-placed books. And best of all were the chairs and couches around the floor, and the pillows piled high by the windows, perfect for getting comfortable with a story. The library was filled with sunlight during the day, as well as having numerous lamps available for cozy nighttime reading. ~ Shoshanna Evers

Any story told in this machine age must be a story of fragments, for fragments are all the world has left: interrupted threads of talk at crowded cocktail parties; snatches of poems heard as a radio dial spins through its arc; incomplete commandments reclaimed from shattered stones. ~ Dexter Palmer

The art teacher's scarlet book was called Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille. 'As the title suggests,' Mr Dunwoody saw the book'd caught my attention, 'it's about the history of opticians. What are you about? ~ David Mitchell

As a twenty-one-year-old college student, Daisy Richmond's answer to the question "If you knew you were going to die in one month, what would you do?" was full of adventure and travel to exotic lands. As a twenty-seven-year-old woman who is faced with a recurrence of breast cancer, her answer is very different. Before I Go is the poignant story of Daisy's journey to navigate the unexpected twists and turns of life, and the painful process of letting go of everything but love. ~ Colleen Oakley

What we did ten years ago with the Playstation was a phenomenal success story for the company. That product had a ten year life cycle, which has never been done in this industry. ~ Ian Jackson

Shades of Grey. I haven't read it yet, but what you have to read carefully, is "Story of O" by the French writer Dominique Aury. This is actually the forerunner of all the whole SM novels and it's really good. You have to read it. ~ Theo Hutchcraft

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

I emphasize to C.E.O.s, you have to have a story in the minds of the employees. It's hard to memorize objectives, but it's easy to remember a story. ~ Ben Horowitz

It's the classic story form. All staying equal, or proving equal, or being equal, this will all continue, and the next time around, we'll move on to see what happened to Harry after he dove in the river, or who his friend John really was, and so on. ~ Robert Creeley

People tell stories and it's up to those who listen whether to believe or not."
"Shouldn't the storyteller believe it."
"The storyteller should tell it. ~ Cecelia Ahern

But this, too, you could say, is part of the American story, as we have always been people who move on, leaving behind wreckage and fragments in our wake. ~ Colin Dickey

For Christians to influence the world with the truth of God's Word requires the recovery of the great Reformation doctrine of vocation. Christians are called to God's service not only in church professions but also in every secular calling. The task of restoring truth to the culture depends largely on our laypeople.

To bring back truth, on a practical level, the church must encourage Christians to be not merely consumers of culture but makers of culture. The church needs to cultivate Christian artists, musicians, novelists, filmmakers, journalists, attorneys, teachers, scientists, business executives, and the like, teaching its laypeople the sense in which every secular vocation-including, above all, the callings of husband, wife, and parent--is a sphere of Christian ministry, a way of serving God and neighbor that is grounded in God's truth. Christian laypeople must be encouraged to be leaders in their fields, rather than eager-to-please followers, working from the assumptions of their biblical worldview, not the vapid clichés of pop culture. ~ J. Gresham Machen

So the story of man runs in a dreary circle, because he is not yet master of the earth that holds him. ~ Will Durant

I have absolutely no interest in playing the young male lead around which a story happens. ~ Taron Egerton

I still like the relationship part of any story. You don't want your character to figure everything out and then at the end of the day, go home and eat soup from a can by herself. ~ Lisa Gardner

It didn't and doesn't turn out well. There is no happy ending to the story of sorrow if you are born with a predilection for despair. The world is, after all, a coarse and brutal and cruel place. It's only a matter of how long you can live with it. ~ Elizabeth Wurtzel

If you wish to avoid an unpleasant story you had best put this book down ~ Lemony Snicket

Induratize Heart beats too...Before, unlocking a heart, someone has to mend a key with one's own hands.A key by bending each notch by fidgeting each nerve of a cold heart with innocence and purity of love and care.No doubt,hands will receive the equl amount of pain, wounds with dripping blood.That will create a mutual sensation with a soothing touch of a smile to build a bridge of trust.An eternal trust that could tingle the pain with tears.The flowing tears that bring out an eternal tenderness ripping out the soul of an induratized heart.Washing away those anguish filled moments drop by drop till the heart could feel an eternal love.A love running into the veins of a soul even death couldn't apart.Induratize is the story of two painful hearts who found peace within each other... ~ MysticalFaiqa

[T]he young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands. ~ William Faulkner

I have written a few children's books. The first book that I wrote was for children. It was called 'The Package', and it was a mystery story in pictures. It had no words. ~ Laurie Anderson

This is the story of a boy who used to be a wolf, and a girl who became one ~ Maggie Stiefvater

From the opening sentence, it is clear that we are in the presence of a writer with a distinctive voice and uncanny ability to capture the bewilderment and burgeoning anger of a boy struggling to remain true to himself while navigating the hypocritical system he finds himself trapped in … what makes Boy on a Wire much more than a bleak coming-of-age story is Doust's sharp wit. "Justice not only prevails at Grammar School, it is rampant." If you know an angry teenager, give this to him.' - The Age ~ Jon Doust

Just like a butterfly, I had sprung from my cocoon for the first time. For my risk, I was rewarded with Jacob Bennett." - Laylla Jonson (Beneath the Blossom Tree) ~ L.B. Malpass

If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One ... I am become Death, the Shatterer of Worlds. ~ The Bhagavad Gita

I can't remember who said it - I think it was Allan Gurganus when he was visiting the Michener Center - but he told us to "spend [our] gold," meaning, put everything you have into a story. Other "gold" will be waiting for you for your next project. ~ Mary J. Miller

It's Life. It's the bumps and the bruises, the pain and the fear; it's messy and it's real and it's not some perfect little story that can be tied up in a bow. ~ Tara Sivec

The truth is, in order to heal we need to tell our stories and have them witnessed ... The story itself becomes a vessel that holds us up, that sustains, that allows us to order our jumbled experiences into meaning.
As I told my stories of fear, awakening, struggle, and transformation and had them received, heard, and validated by other women, I found healing.
I also needed to hear other women's stories in order to see and embrace my own. Sometimes another woman's story becomes a mirror that shows me a self I haven't seen before. When I listen to her tell it, her experience quickens and clarifies my own. Her questions rouse mine. Her conflicts illumine my conflicts. Her resolutions call forth my hope. Her strengths summon my strengths. All of this can happen even when our stories and our lives are very different. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

Piper went a little crazy. She cried out with relief and dove straight into the water.
What was she thinking? She didn't take a rope or a life vest or anything. But at the moment, she was just so happy that she paddled over to Leo and kissed him on the cheek, which kind of surprised him.
"Miss me?" Leo laughed.
Piper was suddenly furious. "Where were you? How are you guys alive?"
"Long story," he said. A picnic basket bobbed to the surface next to him. "Want a brownie? ~ Rick Riordan

Sophisticated readers understand that writers work out their anger, their conflicts, their endless grief and rolling list of loss, through their stories. That however mean-spirited or diabolical, it's only a story. That the darkness in the soul is shaped into type and lies there, brooding and inert, black on the page, and active, dangerous, only in the reader's mind. Actually, harmless. I am not harmless. ~ Amy Bloom

The fact that the scientist has succeeded where the magician failed has put such a wide contrast between them in popular thought that the real story of the birth of Science is misunderstood. You will even find people who write about the sixteenth century as if Magic were a medieval survival and Science the new thing that came in to sweep it away. Those who have studied the period know better. There was very little magic in the Middle Ages: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the high noon of magic. The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse. I allow that some (certainly not all) of the early scientists were actuated by a pure love of knowledge. But if we consider the temper of that age as a whole we can discern the impulse of which I speak. There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the 'wisdom' of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious - such as digging up and mutilating the dead. ~ C.S. Lewis

I wished this was a better story to tell,
a better ending with no crying spells ~ Sakshi Narula