Story Teller Quotes

Human stories are practically always about one thing, really, aren't they? Death. The inevitability of death ...
... (quoting an obituary) 'There is no such thing as a natural death. Nothing that ever happens to man is natural, since his presence calls the whole world into question. All men must die, but for every man his death is an accident, and even if he knows it he would sense to it an unjustifiable violation.' Well, you may agree with the words or not, but those are the key spring of The Lord Of The Rings ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

I think the genre of comics sometimes overtakes the medium, and people assume that they are kind of frivolous. If you have a good, strong story teller, they can be as affecting as any character in literature. Period. ~ Chip Kidd

THE MIGRANT PEOPLE , scuttling for work, scrabbling to live, looked always for pleasure, dug for pleasure, manufactured pleasure, and they were hungry for amusement. Sometimes amusement lay in speech, and they climbed up their lives with jokes. And it came about in the camps along the roads, on the ditch banks beside the streams, under the sycamores, that the story teller grew into being, so that the people gathered in the low firelight to hear the gifted ones. And they listened while the tales were told, and their participation made the stories great. ~ John Steinbeck

Every good story-teller nowadays starts with the end, and
then goes on to the beginning, and concludes with the
middle ... ~ Oscar Wilde

Every photo tells a story but remember this, there was a story teller behind the lens. ~ Belinda Taylor

By the very nature of his art, which depends on invention and innovation, a story teller must depart from the beaten track and, having done so, occasionally startle and disagree with some of his associates. Healthy disagreement we must have. ~ Preston Sturges

Each story provides a beginning, a middle and an end, the trick is, never seperate them through the chapters or you'll miss the meaning of the entire book. ~ Nikki Rowe

I think you must remember that a writer is a simple-minded person to begin with and go on that basis. He's not a great mind, he's not a great thinker, he's not a great philosopher, he's a story-teller. ~ Erskine Caldwell

The Holy Scriptures are story-shaped. Reality is story-shaped. The world is story-shaped. Our lives are story-shaped. 'I had always,' wrote G.K. Chesterton in accounting for his Christian belief, 'felt life first as a story, and if there is a story, there is a story-teller.' We enter this story, following the story-making, storytelling Jesus, and spend the rest of our lives exploring the amazing and exquisite details, the words and sentences that go into the making of the story of our creation, salvation, and life of blessing. It is a story chock full of invisibles and intricate with connections. Imagination is required. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

I am a face in a trance, evoking duende. My face imbues breath and stuns you with star-spirit. I am grove-face, story-teller face, and dawn-bringer face. A face as common as carrots and celery, called upon as a father to be cook, waiter, servant, and maid. ~ Jimmy Santiago Baca

You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift. ~ Erin Morgenstern

Storytelling connects us with all of humanity. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The poet or the story-teller who cannot give the reader a little ghostly pleasure at times never can be either a really great writer or a great thinker. ~ Lafcadio Hearn

Art is a captured emotion. When I say this I mean all artists, whether you are a photographer, a writer, or sculptor, you are trying to capture the way someone or something made you feel. As a story teller I am trying to captivate the audience and allow them to feel just a small portion of the emotion I am desperately trying to preserve. ~ Tommy Tran

The most powerful person in the world is the story teller.
The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda
of an entire generation that is to come. ~ Steve Jobs

With short stories, the story-teller must have a story to tell, not merely some sweet prose to take out for a walk ~ Herbert Gold

I am the story teller, charged with the secrets of this world and beyond. I am the calm in the storm, the quiet in the quake and the stillness in the dark. I am the old lady with the pot of water when you are dying of thirst. I am the sapling after the forest fire and the child who survives after pestilence. For those who will listen, hear you the first secret. Love is the sea in which all of nature exists and the greatest love of all is that which is spilled for another. ~ Kaizen Kobe

As the chapters took shape, a change came over her. It was the double-sided recognition that this book, the last that she would write, might achieve esteem and success equal to her great novel, but that its emotional heart would lie in her own unhappiness for having failed to find the one thing she wanted. For the first time she was a character in her own writing, and her frailties and mistakes were trapped on the page by the beauty and unsparing focus of her prose. Towards the end it was a battle to finish a page. The story was the story she had told herself for decades, deep within her own mind, and now as it grew, line by line, on the paper before her, she wrestled with each turn in the path all over again, as if it were still possible to change its course with the power of her words. ~ Frederick Weisel

Quinn Cummings is a master story-teller and her book is nothing short of delightful. Her insights into topics like celebrity, parenting, and cats with a taste for homicide are pithy and uproarious and not to be missed. Notes from the Underwire is charming, hilarious, and just snarky enough to be ultimately satisfying. ~ Jen Lancaster

Be the story teller in your life ... never let anyone dictate what you're about. ~ Robbie Thomas

The worst of such stories is that the triumphant romancers can always be put to confusion and crushed by the very details in which real life is so rich and which these unhappy and involuntary story-tellers neglect as insignificant trifles. Oh, they have no thought to spare for such details, their minds are concentrated on their grand invention as a whole, and fancy any one daring to pull them up for a trifle! But that's how they are caught. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Michael Koryta is that rare author who is at once a compelling story teller and a fantastic writer. From the first sentence of THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD, you'll be under his spell. His characters are living, breathing people you'll care about; his setting is a place you'll visit and stay-long after you've decided to leave because you're scared. You can't leave; you're trapped. There are too many nerve-jangling, beautifully written, razor sharp moments and you won't want to miss a single one. This is an absolute sizzler. ~ Lisa Unger

The best stories (whether book or movie) involve redemption. If you are someone who believes you have made too many mistakes or your life has been too "bad" for God to want you, think of it this way: God, the greatest story teller, has not yet finished your story, and He can make it a really great story by including a really great redemption. All of us, in truth, need a really great redemption, which means, through Jesus, all of us have a really great story. ~ Donna E. Lane

He [Mark Webb] is very savvy, technically, he's shot so many videos, he knows how to get what he wants. The surprise, of course, is that he's also an extremely humanistic story-teller. He's obsessed with story and character, and not just making it look right, which is a double-thred that's rare in directors. ~ Joseph Gordon-Levitt

I'm a story teller. I really know how to tell stories of Africa. ~ Angelique Kidjo

A child is a best story teller if it is encouraged to do so. Parents shouldn't get confused between a lie and an excuse. They should let their children open for excuses and see how many fantasies come into existence. ~ Anurag Bhatt

I consider myself more of a story teller than a writer. My readers constantly say that reading one of my stories is like watching a movie. That response comes from my writing style. I opt not to describe every object in a room or every detail of every character. I purposely leave room for my readers to inject their imagination into the details. The result is that my readers and I are unraveling the story together. It is like "interactive reading".
When we were young we were taught that reading is fundamental. As adults I believe reading should be fun. I hope you enjoy my stories…and thanks for your help along the way! ~ P.A. Morris

I think the actor has a tribal role as the archetypal story teller. I think there was a time when the storyteller, the priest, the healer, were all one person in one body. That person used to weave stories at night around a small fire to keep the tribe from being terrified that sun had gone down. ~ Ben Kingsley

It is a law of the story-teller's art that he does not tell a story. It is the listener who tells it. The story-teller does but provide him with the stimuli. ~ Melville Davisson Post

Anne DeGrace is a gifted story teller and Far From Home contains some of her most intriguing characters. Thoroughly enjoyable. ~ Paulette Jiles

Aren't autobiographies born in a question we ask ourselves: how did I get to this point? Don't we look back over the path and tell ourselves a story? This is how it happened. This is who I am. ~ Frederick Weisel

All people are natural story-tellers. We tell a story every time we tell someone what we did that day or share an opinion of our favorite movie. If you want to be a story-teller, good job, you already are one! ~ Doug TenNapel

When a story teller dies, a library burns. ~ Evan Turk

It is better, however, for his own reputation that the story-teller should risk a few actions for libel on account of these unfortunate coincidences than that he should adopt the melancholy device of using blanks or asterisks. ~ James Payn

But when the wizard is onstage as the main character, you have to adopt what I call the Jack Vance Rule. I call it this because Jack Vance is the first author successfully and adroitly to have applied this rule in his The Dying Earth. The Jack Vance Rule is: (1) The wizard has to be able to do something unusual, or else he is not a wizard, (2) he cannot do everything, or else there is no drama; therefore (3) the story teller has to communicate to the reader whatever the dividing line is that separates what the wizard can do from what he cannot do, so that the reader can have a reasonable expectation of knowing what the wizard can and cannot do. ~ John C. Wright

Hardly had the light been extinguished, when a peculiar trembling began
to affect the netting under which the three children lay.

It consisted of a multitude of dull scratches which produced a metallic
sound, as if claws and teeth were gnawing at the copper wire. This was
accompanied by all sorts of little piercing cries.

The little five-year-old boy, on hearing this hubbub overhead, and
chilled with terror, jogged his brother's elbow; but the elder brother
had already shut his peepers, as Gavroche had ordered. Then the little
one, who could no longer control his terror, questioned Gavroche, but in
a very low tone, and with bated breath:--

"Sir?"

"Hey?" said Gavroche, who had just closed his eyes.

"What is that?"

"It's the rats," replied Gavroche.

And he laid his head down on the mat again.

The rats, in fact, who swarmed by thousands in the carcass of the
elephant, and who were the living black spots which we have already
mentioned, had been held in awe by the flame of the candle, so long as
it had been lighted; but as soon as the cavern, which was the same
as their city, had returned to darkness, scenting what the good
story-teller Perrault calls "fresh meat," they had hurled themselves in
throngs on Gavroche's tent, had climbed to the top of it, and had begun
to bite the meshes as though seeking to pierce this new-fang ~ Victor Hugo

A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind. ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer

Short films really helped me develop as a story teller, animator, and as a director. ~ John Lasseter

Valentine reminds us that to be fully human is to be both a story teller and a story dweller."
--- Christina Meldrum, author of Madapple and Amaryllis in Blueberry ~ Tamara Valentine

I am not a theologian or a philosopher. I am a story teller. ~ William Golding

When I was younger, I loved math. Everything about math. But in school, math now has letters. Like what does x equal? There are also long stories with characters, and although the story is supposed to end with some number, all the words block my path to getting there. ~ Lynda Mullaly Hunt

Being a writer is a good, good thing. ~ Shannon Hale

You can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth; if you don't care for the truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty. ~ Tim O'Brien

Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they add up to the story of life. ~ Rob Sheffield

Yes, there are major gaps in my story. Some parts I just couldn't figure out how to tell. Or couldn't bring myself to say out loud. Events I haven't come to grips with ... that I'll never come to grips with. And if I never have to say them out loud, then I never have to think them all the way trough. ~ Jay Asher

I always try to tell the story the best possible way. I create the mood for each scene in a way that the audience feels that they are right there with me and they feel actually in the mood that was right for the scene. ~ Vilmos Zsigmond

In the early years of the Roaring Twenties, American women not only won the right to vote but they also earned headlines along side their male counterparts during the Golden Age of American sports. Michael Bohn shares an engaging story of how two sports heroines, tennis player Helen Wills and swimmer Gertrude Ederle, helped embolden women to seek self-fulfillment by challenging the status quo. ~ Donna De Varona

I like that 'once upon a time' quality, where the telling of a tale has an elevated sense of story. There's a whimsical quality to it. Sometimes in fairy tales more things seem possible, even though often they're real world based. ~ Erin Morgenstern

Perhaps this is the purpose of detective investigations, real and fictional
to transform sensation, horror and grief into a puzzle, and then to solve the puzzle, to make it go away. 'The detective story,' observed Raymond Chandler in 1949, 'is a tragedy with a happy ending.' A storybook detective starts by confronting us with a murder and ends by absolving us of it. He clears us of guilt. He relieves us of uncertainty. He removes us from the presence of death. ~ Kate Summerscale

Oh, Mama," I said. "What if I don't live that long?" My mother didn't hesitate one second. "By hook or by crook, you will. Having children only increases your grip on the world. It's like reading a thriller. You can't put it down because you have to know how the story turns out. ~ Jo-Ann Mapson

For most of my adult life, I have been an emotional hit-and- run driver
that is, a reporter. I made people like me, trust me, open their hearts and their minds to me, and cry and bleed on to the pages of my neat little notebooks, and then I went back to a safe place and made a story out of it. ~ Anna Quindlen

The short story feels like the most natural length for prose fiction, or certainly for the kind of ideas and situations I like to encounter. ~ Nicholas Royle

One of the best things you can relate to is a detailed story. ~ Lisi Harrison

Our life isn't a story that we read. It's a story that we write as we live it, one page at a time. ~ Martha Bolton

Still, truth is how I remember it now. In a way, I am changing the past from my desk here in the future as I write. It always happens like this. This is how we all tell our story. ~ J.D. Radke

Writing historical novels can be dangerous. We need to be as accurate and as fair about the historical record as we can be, at the same time as creating our fictional characters and, hopefully, telling a good story. The challenge is weaving the fiction into the history. ~ Edward Rutherfurd

Nice things don't happen in storybooks," Taryn says. "Or when they do happen, something bad happens next. Because otherwise the story would be boring, and no one would read it. ~ Holly Black

I'd spent endless nights wishing things had been different - wishing that ours had been a fairy-tale story. But, it wasn't. It couldn't be. ~ Stephanie Connelley Worlton

Every writer has one weird story they need to get out of them, before they can write their better stuff...Guess this one is mine. (The Case Of The Enslaved Souls) ~ James E. Beksha

My story will be over soon. But it's not something to be sad about. Remembering those who went ahead. Remembering those who will follow after. And someday, we will meet all those people again, out beyond the horizon ~ Hiro Arikawa

It is true that the original of this story is put into new words, and the style of the famous lady we here speak of is a little altered; particularly she is made to tell her own tale in modester words that she told it at first, the copy which came first to hand having been written in language more like one still in Newgate than one grown penitent and humble, as she afterwards pretends to be. ~ Daniel Defoe

The best part of a writer's biography is not the record of his adventures but the story of his style. [Vogue, interview, 1969] ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I try to tell my story as simply as possible, with the camera at eye level. ~ Howard Hawks

If you tell a true story, you can't be wrong. ~ Jack Kerouac

We're like the hands of a clock...chasing and escaping each other, losing and finding each other, around and around, again and again, joined way down at the root, no matter how far apart. ~ Ben Dolnick

Whoever survived cruel situations, finds the strength of obedient faith. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Why be a half-finished poem in some forgotten poet's story, when one can be an odyssey in and of herself, part magic, part villain, part Goddess, part lover. ~ Nikita Gill

So my sister dances and the dead house burns, and I scrawl these few last words by the light of its burning. I know I should toss this story, too, on those flames. But I am still too much a storyteller -or at least a storykeeper-still too much my father's daughter to burn these pages. ~ Jean Hegland

Acting is always more fun for me.I love being a part of a story, I love collaborating, I love working with different directors. If I just directed more and more, it would lessen the opportunity to work with all these big directors that I've had the opportunity to work with. ~ John Krasinski

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

And I like being able to go back and forth, and I don't really care if it's a small budget or big budget or studio or independent, as long as it's got a story that's compelling and there's enough money to make the picture. ~ Griffin Dunne

For my present purpose I require a word which shall embrace both the Sub-Creative Art in itself, and a quality of strangeness and wonder in the Expression, derived from the Image: a quality essential to fairy-story. I propose, therefore, to arrogate to myself the powers of Humpty-Dumpty, and to use Fantasy for this purpose: in a sense, that is, which combines with its older and higher use as an equivalent of Imagination the derived notions of 'unreality' (that is, of unlikeness to the Primary World), of freedom from the dominion of 'observed fact,' in short of the fantastic. I am thus not only aware but glad of the etymological and semantic connexions of fantasy with fantastic: with images of things that are not only 'not actually present,' but which are indeed not to be found in our primary world at all, or are generally believed not to be found there. But while admitting that, I do not assent to the depreciative tone. That the images are of things not in the primary world (if that indeed is possible) is, I think, not a lower but a higher form of Art, indeed the most nearly pure form, and so (when achieved) the most Potent.

Fantasy, of course, starts out with an advantage: arresting strangeness. But that advantage has been turned against it, and has contributed to its disrepute. Many people dislike being 'arrested.' They dislike any meddling with the Primary World, or such small glimpses of it as are familiar to them. They, therefore, stupidly and even maliciously ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

There's a saying in the oral tradition of storytelling that when you tell a story, when you give out a story, it is no longer yours; it belongs to everyone who encounters it and everyone who takes it in. ~ Ishmael Beah

I did think reviewers were supposed to be polite about story collections - collections are rather delicate creatures in the literary environment - but not everybody got this memo, I guess. ~ Lorrie Moore

With every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to misunderstand. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

Poetry, I think, intensifies the reader's experience. If it's a humorous facet of the story, poetry makes it more exuberant. If it's a sad facet, poetry can make it more poignant. ~ Vikram Seth

Dad himself used to tell a story about one time when Mother went off to fill a lecture engagement and left him in charge at home. When Mother returned, she asked him if everything had run smoothly.
Didn't have any trouble except with that one over there,' he replied. 'But a spanking brought him into line.'
Mother could handle any crisis without losing her composure.
That's not one of ours, dear,' she said. 'He belongs next door. ~ Frank B. Gilbreth Jr.