Storyteller Quotes

Belief is the enemy of a storyteller ~ Rabih Alameddine

I think of myself in the oral tradition-as a troubadour, a village tale-teller,
the man in the shadows of the campfire. That's the way I'd like to be remembered-
as a storyteller. A good storyteller. ~ Louis L'Amour

What storyteller is adequate to her story? The story carries us along, bottles on the tide, each with our secret mesage and the fervent hope that it does not turn out to be blank. ~ Erica Jong

We give violent movies a pass but come down hard on a rapper like Scarface, who is ultimately a storyteller just like Brian de Palma. And neither of them is responsible for the poverty and violence that really do shape people's lives
not to mention their individual choices. ~ Jay-Z

Humans need each other for equilibrium and support. But writers must pull aside to take a quiet walk alone, not just for the sake of serenity but to hear the Voice inside. That is how the storyteller connects with with others--listen, write, share. ~ Patricia Hickman

Writers like to believe they're in control of their material, but that's just a comforting lie. After more than twenty-five years of making my life as storyteller, it's become extremely -sometimes painfully- clear to me that I'm just a vehicle, a way for the story to get out into the world. But it's the story itself that does the telling. ~ J.M. DeMatteis

The storyteller is deep inside everyone of us. The story-maker is always with us. Let us suppose our world is attacked by war, by the horrors that we all of us easily imagine. Let us suppose floods wash through our cities, the seas rise ... but the storyteller will be there, for it is our imaginations which shape us, keep us, create us - for good and for ill. It is our stories that will recreate us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed. It is the storyteller, the dream-maker, the myth-maker, that is our phoenix, that represents us at our best, and at our most creative. ~ Doris Lessing

Never trust a storyteller," he says. "We're all of us liars. ~ Matthew J. Kirby

The word 'NO' is the best motivation there is for the storyteller in you. ~ A.K. Kuykendall

The best teachers are the best storytellers. ~ Frank Smith

She sang lead, and I belted out the background voice that just repeated, "You're everything everything everything," and I felt like I was. You're both the fire and the water that extinguishes it. You're the narrator, the protagonist, and the sidekick. You're the storyteller and the story told. You are somebody's something, but you are also you. ~ John Green

I'm giving up acting ... I'm 66 and there are a number of celebrations I've got to get down on paper, and acting doesn't allow me to do that. It was a hell of a drug, performance. It's a great thrill, especially for a storyteller. But it can go. Directing can go. Writing can't go. And in terms of what lies ahead, I want to have a burning focus - almost like smoke coming up from the paper as I write. ~ Athol Fugard

The opportunity to be a storyteller is the greatest thing in the world, and I feel so lucky and really love it. ~ T. J. Thyne

Stories rarely begin at the beginning, but every storyteller has to begin somewhere, and Anna chooses to start this story with shame. ~ Steve Luxenberg

A good storyteller never lets the facts get in the way. ~ Dave Allen

At our most primitive we are storytellers and dancers. ~ Anne Lamott

Honestly, the essence of publishing hasn't changed. Since the days of the cave man carving stuff on the cave walls, people have wanted stories, and storytellers have wanted an audience. That is still the case. The changes are really a matter of format. ~ Susan Wiggs

Be sure you don't stop the story while describing. You are a storyteller, not an interior decorator. ~ Sol Stein

George Banks and all he stands for will be saved. Maybe not in life, but in imagination. Because that's what we storytellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instill hope again and again and again. ~ Walt Disney Company

I began telling stories as a volunteer in my daughters' school. But I grew up hearing stories from Cuban and Southern storytellers, and I learned a great deal by just being quiet and listening. ~ Carmen Agra Deedy

I see myself as an explorer more than a storyteller. A great storyteller, in control of her craft, must be the same person when she finishes telling a story as she was at the start. But I want to be transformed by my filmmaking, by the journey I take. ~ Joshua Oppenheimer

Architect of quantum theories, brash young group leader on the atomic bomb project, inventor of the ubiquitous Feynman diagram, ebullient bongo player and storyteller, Richard Phillips Feynman was the most brilliant, iconoclastic, and influential physicist of modern times. ~ James Gleick

Lying in small doses makes a good storyteller great. ~ Bryan Way

Magicians and Mentalist predict the future because they create it. ~ Amit Kalantri

If you don't know what those old occupations were, how they were done, and how they interacted with the passersby, you're not prepared to write a historical novel. A historical figure doesn't pass through a blank countryside. That means you, the novelist, must learn by research what the whole place was like in those times. As much as you can, you must be like someone who has lived there, because you're going to be not just the storyteller but also the tour guide taking your readers through the past. ~ James Alexander Thom

For the storyteller, for the arrowmaker, language does indeed represent the only chance for survival. ~ N. Scott Momaday

I'll tell you a secret.
Old storytellers never die.
They disappear into their own story. ~ Vera Nazarian

Painters were also attorneys, happy storytellers of anecdote, psychologists, botanists, zoologists, archaeologists, engineers, but there were no creative painters. ~ Kazimir Malevich

If the storytellers told it true, all stories would end in death. ~ George Pelecanos

The difference between a story and an essay is that the storyteller just wants to entertain the reader, while the essayist has been to graduate school. ~ Dinty W. Moore

Sir Ken Robinson's 2008 talk on educational reform - entitled "Do Schools Kill Creativity?" - has now been viewed more than 4 million times. In it Robinson cites the fact that children's scores on standard tests of creativity decline as they grow older and advance through the educational system. He concludes that children start out as curious, creative individuals but are made duller by factory-style schools that spend too much time teaching children academic facts and not enough helping them express themselves. Sir Ken clearly cares greatly about the well-being of children, and he is a superb storyteller, but his arguments about creativity, though beguilingly made, are almost entirely baseless. ~ Ian Leslie

I always say that I don't believe I'm a chef. I try to be a storyteller. ~ Jose Andres

The storyteller is one who comes bearing a great and lasting gift. ~ Edward Eggleston

The poet or storyteller who feels that he is competing with a superb double play in the World Series is a lost man. One would not want as a reader a man who did not appreciate the finesse of a double play. ~ John Cheever

Everything I write tends to turn into a superhero team, even if I didn't mean for it to. I always start off wanting to be solitary, because a) it's simpler, and b) that isolation is something that I relate to as a storyteller. And then no matter what, I always end up with a team. ~ Joss Whedon

My mother is the best storyteller. And her mother was too. ~ Marian Keyes

To share our stories is not only a worthwhile endeavor for the storyteller, but for those who hear our stories and feel less alone because of it. ~ Joyce Maynard

Gods? Don't let that impress you. Anyone can be a god if they have enough worshippers. You don't even have to have powers anymore. In my time I've seen theatre gods, gladiator gods, even storyteller gods - you people see gods everywhere. Gives you an excuse for not thinking for yourselves.
God is just a word. Like Fury. like demon, Just words people use for things they don't understand. Reverse it and you get dog. It's just as appropriate. ~ Joanne Harris

Because if we the storytellers don't do this, then the bad people will win. ~ Christiane Amanpour

I don't think that many performers necessarily want to see their audience empowered. I think a lot of performers, no different from priests, need the hierarchy. Modern, celebrity-driven entertainment turns the stage into an altar, and so many celebrities refuse to be removed from those altars once they manage to ascend. They will not be taken down - the Goddess is offended ... As a storyteller in the old tradition, you held an important place at the circle. Your position was fluid, not necessarily permanent, but it demanded that you respected the others witnessing your performance as much as they respected you. All storytellers, all troubadours worth their salt knew their myths. ~ Tori Amos

Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story - a story that is basically without meaning or pattern. ~ Eric Hoffer

Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive. The next thing you know something fine will happen to her, something marvelous, and then she will turn around and smile. ~ Chris Cleave

A road-wise folkie with a bluesy soul reminiscent of early Michelle Shocked, Melissa Crabtree is an original storyteller and performer not to be missed. ~ Catie Curtis

In documentary films, you're a storyteller using found objects. You still have to have a story arc and all the elements that make a good story. It really helped me mature as a storyteller. ~ Garth Stein

I am very fond of Edith Wharton. She's quite high brow but also a great storyteller. My favorite is 'The House of Mirth.' I also like 'The Reef.' ~ Ken Follett

For surely a king is first a man. And so it must follow that a king does as all men do: the best he can. ~ Cameron Dokey

If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood. ~ Peter Handke

I was thinking I had noticed a curious lack of either enthusiasm or bitterness in the account of the world by Theobald's sister. There was in her story the flatness one associates with a storyteller who is accepting of unhappy endings, as if her life and her companions had never been exotic to her - as if they had always been staging a ludicrous and doomed effort at reclassification. ~ John Irving

Abel was brushing the snow off his parka while Micha was dancing around him, still balancing the plate of cookies, singing, 'We're staying, we're staying, we're staying overnight! We're drying! We're drying! We're drying on the line! ~ Antonia Michaelis

I look at the stories that Spike Lee tells ... Great stories. Great director, great storyteller. ~ Tyler Perry

Dad was an amazing storyteller and illustrator, which he did in his spare time - very inspiring and dramatic. ~ Bat For Lashes

My only responsibility as a playwright and a storyteller is to give you the time of your life in the theatre. I just happen to think that with Hamilton's story, sticking close to the facts helps me. All the most interesting things in the show happened. ~ Lin-Manuel Miranda

Each time, storytellers clothed the naked body of the myth in their own traditions, so that listeners could relate more easily to its deeper meaning. ~ Joan D. Vinge

I've always been a writer, I've always been a storyteller, but I never thought about screenwriting. ~ Diablo Cody

I just love working with actors, and I love working with writers, working with designers. I feel that I am just a storyteller, and whether I am wearing the director hat or the playwright hat, it doesn't matter. And the rooms I tend to be in are pretty democratic, and the best idea wins. ~ Adam Rapp

That's what we do, man, we're like storytellers. We tell you stories from the streets. Whether we did it before when we was young or we heard it from one of the homies telling us a tale of what he been through. It's all in having fun and creating a movie like vibe to tell a tale from the streets. ~ Kurupt

Steve Jackson is a born storyteller. He makes you sweat ... and turn the page. ~ Ron Franscell

Night after night, through years of performing and directing, I've stood in awe of the audience, of its capacity for response. As if by magic, masks fall away, faces become vulnerable, receptive. Filmgoers do not defend their emotions, rather they open to the storyteller in ways even their lovers never know, welcoming laughter, tears, terror, rage, compassion, passion, love, hate
the ritual often exhausts them. ~ Robert McKee

Also, in my acting, I feel very much like a storyteller, exploring the flaws of the characters that I interpret. I look for the imperfections, and I love a character that is just so flawed. ~ Danny Huston

A defeated nation is always explaining itself. That's why the best storytellers are always from vanquished nations. ~ Mark Richard

I was recognized as being an artist and a storyteller. If Hulk Hogan was the Elvis of wrestling, I was the Robert De Niro. ~ Bret Hart

What creates success on HSN is great product, a great story and a great storyteller. ~ Mindy Grossman

The son has always felt like he was a footnote in one of the stories the father tells. The father is an amazing storyteller and one of the tales that he tells is how he met his wife. ~ Danny DeVito

My mother was a great storyteller and a great historian in her own way. She only made it to third grade. She came from Mexico City at the tail end of the Mexican Revolution and that kind of turmoil and chaos and frenzy and also excitement. ~ Juan Felipe Herrera

All of my peers died of AIDS, and I have no one to celebrate my past or my journey, or to help me pass down stories to the next generation. We lost an entire generation of storytellers with HIV. ~ David Mixner

Read the folklore masters. Go to galleries. Walk in the woods. That's what you need to be an artist or storyteller. ~ Terri Windling

I think I just have this need to be a storyteller. That's why I wasn't a great dancer - I couldn't articulate a story. I was a better choreographer. I have the need to to just express myself in that way. I can't explain it. ~ Rosie Perez

Brandon Sanderson is the real thing-an exciting storyteller with a unique and powerful vision. ELANTRIS is one of the finest debuts I've seen in years. ~ David Farland

It is an ancient need to be told stories. But the story needs a great storyteller. Thanks for all of it, Jo. ~ Alan Rickman

I've always loved films, and I always felt like a storyteller. I left Norway after high school and moved to Manhattan and went to film school in Manhattan. That's when I really found out that this was my calling and what I wanted to do. ~ Morten Tyldum

My child, you have a flawed grasp of the nature of myth-making. I am a poet and storyteller, a creator of ballads and sagas. Pray do not confuse the exercise of the imagination with mere mendacity. I am a master of the mysteries of words, their meanings and music and mellifluous magic. ~ Frances Hardinge

You know what's really, powerfully sexy? A sense of humor. A taste for adventure. A healthy glow. Hips to grab on to. Openness. Confidence. Humility. Appetite. Intuition. … Smart-ass comebacks. Presence. A quick wit. Dirty jokes told by an innocent-looking lady. … A storyteller. A genius. A doctor. A new mother. A woman who realizes how beautiful she is. ~ Courtney E. Martin

A hakawati is a teller of tales, myths, and fables. A storyteller, and entertainer. A troubadour of sorts, someone who earns his keep by beguiling an audience with yarns. Like the word "hekayah" story, fable, news, hakawati is derived from the Lebanese word "haki", which means talk or conversation. This suggests that in Lebanese the mere act of talking is storytelling. ~ Rabih Alameddine

The moon is the better storyteller for this event. Our ancient craters are smoothed over by erosion and tectonic motion. With no erosion, no wind, and no liquid water on the moon, craters can remain perfectly visible for billions of years, an orbiting catalog of impacts. ~ Craig Childs

No matter how dark things may get in a story, I feel it's the responsibility of the storyteller to leave the audience with at least a shred of hope. ~ Josh Radnor

What a storyteller does is *see* more than most of us. We say he's making up his stories, but he - or better yet, *she* - watches more carefully, and then tells us what we would have seen ourselves if we'd just stopped to look.
-Leah said - to Nadine, although she was looking at Marjorie (pg 138) ~ Dean Hughes

It is a longstanding South-
ern tradition to call someone a "storyteller" as a polite
way of calling him a liar. ~ William R. Cobb

Actors can be many things - vain, venal, self-serving, obnoxious, bullies - but all of the good ones are great storytellers. I wanted to watch what my actors were doing and how they were telling the story. ~ Paul Bettany

If you look at the least effective of the 'Twilight' movies, it was when they brought in an action-movie director instead of a director who was really a good storyteller. And you can tell the difference. ~ Mark Waters

Public libraries are our great teachers and storytellers, and are a vital adjunct to our schools. In this day of standardized and homogenized education, a library offers individual and personalized learning opportunities second to none. ~ Julie Andrews

I'm a storyteller. I love to tell stories about brands. I love to tell stories, period. I like painting pictures through the words, and that's what I do. ~ Gary Vaynerchuk

I'm not a good storyteller - I much prefer to be with people who are chatty, to have the luxury of listening. ~ Conor McPherson

The storyteller's claim, I believe, is that life has meaning - that the things that happen to people happen not just by accident like leaves being blown off a tree by the wind but that there is order and purpose deep down behind them or inside them and that they are leading us not just anywhere but somewhere. The power of stories is that they are telling us that life adds up somehow, that life itself is like a story ... it makes us listen to the storyteller with great intensity because in this way all his stories are about us and because it is always possible that he may give us some clue as to what the meaning of our lives is. ~ Frederick Buechner

A storyteller is basically what actors and writers are. ~ Bruce Boxleitner

This goes out to all the Rag Tags and the negative shits and anyone else who resents people who have the courage to follow their dreams, and not only that but to show their dreams to somebody else.

The planet needs more writers, artists and musicians. More tattooed storytellers.

Why so many people seem to resent the storyteller is beyond me. We're not raging against the machine, but we do want the opportunity to show our art to as many people as possible. What's so wrong with that?

And believe it or not, we won't go away. ~ Karl Wiggins

There are so many versions of every story because every storyteller tells the story differently. ~ Tomm Moore

I belong to an ancient, idle, wild and useless tribe, perhaps I am even one of the last members of it, who for many thousands of years, in all countries and parts of the world, has, now and again, stayed for a time among the hard-working honest people in real life, and sometimes has thus been fortunate enough to create another sort of reality for them, which in some way or another, has satisfied them. I am a storyteller. ~ Isak Dinesen

So, I am a refugee, and I get very lonely. Is it my fault if I do not look like an English girl and I do not talk like a Nigerian? Well who says an English girl must have skin as pale as the clouds that float across her summers? Who says a Nigerian girl must speak in fallen English, as if English had collided with Ibo, high in the upper atmosphere, and rained down into her mouth in a shower that half-drowns her and leaves her choking up sweet tales about the bright African colours and the taste of fried plantain? Not like a storyteller, but like a victim rescued from the flood, coughing up the colonial water from her lungs?

Excuse me for learning your language properly. I am here to tell you a real story. I did not come to talk to you about the bright African colours. I am a born-again citizen of the developing world, and I will prove to you that the colour of my life is grey. ~ Chris Cleave

I grew up in a place where everybody was a storyteller, but nobody wrote. It was that kind of Celtic, storytelling tradition: everybody would have a story at the pub or at parties, even at the clubs and raves. ~ Irvine Welsh

I'm a storyteller who uses all of the beauty and power of cinema to tell tales of human struggles for positive social change. ~ Pamela Yates

James Salter is a consummate storyteller. His manners are precise and elegant; he has a splendid New York accent; he runs his hands through his gray hair and laughs boyishly. ~ Edward Hirsch

I'm a storyteller, I'm not a literary writer, and I don't want to be a literary writer. People say to me, "Oh, when are you going to write something different?" What? I don't want to write anything different. I'm writing relationships between people, all different colors, all different sizes, all different sexual orientations, and that's what I want to do. ~ Jackie Collins

Brands should think of themselves not as storytellers but storybuilders. We plant seeds of content and let our community build on it. ~ Amy Pascal

There is more beauty in truth, even if it is a dreadful beauty. The storytellers at the city gate twist life so that it looks sweet to the lazy and the stupid and the weak, and this only strengthens their infirmities and teaches nothing, cures nothing, nor does it let the heart soar. ~ John Steinbeck

I am a storyteller. The type that went from place to place, gathered people in the square and transported them, inspired them, woke them up, shook their insides around so that they could resettle in a new pattern, a new way of being. It is a tradition that believes that the story speaks to the soul, not the ego ... to the heart, not the head. In todays world , we yearn so to 'understand', to conquer with our mind, but it is not in the mind that a mythic story dwells.
So I do not offer interpretation. What I offer is to tell the story again, and again ... on and on, if need be - until the ego has stepped aside and the soul can hear. I trust that the life of the story continues long after I have gone, if the listener can step aside and be taken up and in, to a world where words speak not to the mind, but to the soul.
I invite you to trust it too. ~ Donna Jacobs Sife

The Hmong have a phrase, hais cuaj txub kaum txub, which means "to speak of all kinds of things." It is often used at the beginning of an oral narrative as a way of reminding the listeners that the world is full of things that may not seem to be connected but actually are; that no event occurs in isolation; that you can miss a lot by sticking to the point; and that the storyteller is likely to be rather long-winded. ~ Anne Fadiman

I love being a storyteller. I love telling stories. ~ Henry Rollins

I'm a filmmaker, I'm a storyteller, an entertainer, if you will, so what can I do to participate? Well, I'm not a scientist; I'm not an expert on environmental law; I'm a guy that can tell stories. So I always look for a way to communicate ideas and help to spread excitement for change. ~ Adrian Grenier

The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of all kinds. ~ Dalai Lama

When we want mood experiences, we go to concerts or museums. When we want meaningful emotional experience, we go to the storyteller. ~ Robert McKee