Storytelling Expedition Quotes

Quite some years ago, I started travelling the planet. I thought this would learn me something about the world we live in. I was wrong ... It learned me something about myself. It changed me. And nothing will ever again be black-and-white again. ~ Maarten Schafer

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

Lead with your heart. The rest will follow. ~ A.D. Posey

Telling our stories is what saves us. The story is enough ... The very act of storytelling, of arranging memory and invention according to the structure of narrative is, by definition, holy. ~ James Carroll

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

When people sat in caves, they told stories. It was for sharing, learning, entertaining. Storytelling is as old as we are. It will never die. ~ Mark Rubinstein

Lies are just another kind of storytelling, but with the very distinct and enlivening motive of desperation. Since writers are by nature desperate creatures, they usually do a pretty good (or pretty awful, but always interesting) job of lying. ~ John Hodgman

Were the stories we told each other true? Who knows? At the best of times, a story is a slippery thing.
Perhaps that was why it changed with each telling. Or is that the nature of all stories, the reason for their power? ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

A story must be judged according to whether it makes sense. And 'making sense' must be here understood in its most direct meaning: to make sense is to enliven the senses. A story that makes sense is one that stirs the senses from their slumber, one that opens the eyes and the ears to their real surroundings, tuning the tongue to the actual tastes in the air and sending chills of recognition along the surface of the skin. To make sense is to release the body from the constraints imposed by outworn ways of speaking, and hence to renew and rejuvenate one's felt awareness of the world. It is to make the senses wake up to where they are. ~ David Abram

A Crime So Monstrous is a remarkably brave and unflinching piece of reportage and storytelling. Ben Skinner bears witness, sharing stories so unsettling, so neglected, so chilling they will leave you shaking with anger. This should be required reading for policy makers around the world - and, for that matter, anyone concerned about the human condition. ~ Alex Kotlowitz

[Y]ou cannot mention everything in its proper place, you must choose, between the things not worth mentioning and those and those even less so. ~ Samuel Beckett

I don't shout the loudest, and I'm quite shy, which was why I was reluctant to throw myself into the public eye. I love beauty, craftsmanship, storytelling and romance, and I probably don't have the armor to survive the relentless competition that exists in this particular world. But I have my own toughness. ~ Sarah Burton

In terms of identity? I'm a commercial fantasy writer, looking to entertain my audience with fantastical tales that mix history with myth and magic. That's something humans have been doing for a very long time, and I like being part of a long tradition of storytelling, whether that's ancient tales shared around a campfire or modern podcasts.
...
I'm currently editing a scene that involves winged lions and smoke-conjured armor, so I'm not certain I'm the best writer to ask about truth. But that being said, words and stories have great power and I think setting a scene that pulls from the real world but is set in a fictional one can cause readers to reassess and question things in a way they might not have otherwise. ~ S.A. Chakraborty

I do believe that some humans have more amazing lives than others–above all, those who don't sit down in a chair like mere spectators letting their lives happen in front of them, but they take risks as heroes do, experiencing, living, becoming the main character - but no matter what, we all have at least one story to tell. ~ Merce Cardus

Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

I think that, at the end of the day, I'm drawn to a certain level of ambiguous storytelling that requires hard thought and work in the same way that the 'New York Times' crossword puzzle does: Sometimes you just want to put it down or throw it out the window, but there's a real rewarding sense if you feel like you've cracked it. ~ Damon Lindelof

My experience of great storytelling, working with classics, is just finding a way to present it simply but let the story do its own work, or be an invite to the audience's imagination. ~ Kenneth Branagh

Americans think cinema is about storytelling; I don't believe that. I think it's a language and everyone has to find their own way of speaking. It's not so much what you say as the way you say it. ~ Marjane Satrapi

Beneath its broad surface, storytelling should always work hard to say more than it seems to. ~ Frank Delaney

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

In many of the films now being made, there is very little cinema: they are mostly what I call 'photographs of people talking.' When we tell a story in cinema we should resort to dialogue only when it's impossible to do otherwise. I always try to tell a story in the cinematic way, through a succession of shots and bits of film in between. ~ Alfred Hitchcock

Fairy-tales are as old as language itself.

Indeed, many linguistic scholars believe that language was invented simply so that humans could tell each other stories. Non-verbal communication is surprisingly effective, as anyone who has observed chimpanzees at the zoo can confirm. However, for humans to express more sophisticated ideas they needed a more subtle and complex form of communication. And so, about sixty thousand years ago, humans began telling each other stories.


The purpose of these stories was manifold. On the one hand, they amused and entertained and brought comfort and consolation. On the other, they warned and enlightened and taught what was needed to be known. ~ Kate Forsyth

There's a classic element that all good Disney movies have. It really comes down to the storytelling, I think. It manages to push all of these buttons inside of us; there's a sentimentality. ~ Mandy Moore

Always thought being a writer would be one of the most useless things you could be in a zombie apocalypse, but it turns out arts and culture and storytelling is what helps us get through. Along with science, doctors, nurses, delivery people, farm workers and supermarket cashiers. ~ Lauren Beukes

I have long admired the visceral storytelling and moral complexity of John Vaillant's brilliant non-fiction about humankind's tragically ambivalent relationship with the natural world. Now he brings his abundant literary gifts to a debut novel set in a very real borderland in which human beings are themselves treated like animals. The Jaguar's Children is a beautifully rendered lament for an imperiled culture and the brave lives that would preserve it. You should read it. ~ John Burnham Schwartz

That's the crux of my prayer for you as you walk through difficult relationship -- that you would begin to see God's storytelling in your life even in the midst of pain and bewilderment. ~ Mary E. DeMuth

In storytelling, the audience actually wants to work for their meal, they just don't want to know that they're doing it. ~ Andrew Stanton

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

I want to put everything I think I've learned about filmmaking and storytelling and put it to the test in other areas. ~ Peter Jackson

402Emotional position is part of it, but as an individual you are not your emotions, neither are you your intellect. These are things that you have . They're not things that you are . Therefore you have to start to become aware of the different requirements that human beings have, the different areas that they like to be satisfied in. Which means becoming aware of yourself. I mean, as a writer you're gonna have to understand pretty much the whole universe. But the best place to start is by understanding the inner universe. The entire universe – for one thing – only exists in your perceptions. That's all you're gonna see of it. To all practical intents and purposes this is purely some kind of lightshow that's being put on in the kind of neurons in our brain. The whole of reality. So. To understand the universe there's worse advice than that which was carved above the shrine of the Delphi oracle. Where it just said: "Know thyself". Understand yourself. Know thyself is a magical goal, but like I say to me there is very little difference between magic and creative art in any sense – the laws of one apply perfectly well to the other. ~ Alan Moore

I've always loved news. I've always loved storytelling and being where the scene is. ~ Abby Huntsman

I'm always interested in trying to stay on the cutting edge of television storytelling. To be slightly in front, pushing for the next new thing. ~ David Nevins

Good content isn't about good storytelling. It's about telling a true story well. ~ Ann Handley MarketingProfs

There is a surprising amount of overlap between the storytelling and burlesque communities, maybe because they both, in a way, involve getting naked. People who choose to be vulnerable are rare. People who manage to do it well are even more so. ~ Mara Wilson

Why go to Antarctica, why do a film like 'Grizzly Man'? It's the sheer joy of storytelling - it's the urge. ~ Werner Herzog

No book can be written till it wants to be written, till it shouts to be written, and raises up a persistent din in the writer's head. And then, if you want peace, you just have to pull it out and freeze it in print. Nothing less would do. ~ Jyoti Arora

Serena has spent her life fighting fiction the way good soldiers fight - intent on detecting its presence, harassing it, suppressing it - but I have to find a way to show her she's mistaken her enemy, to explain to her that whoever suppresses fiction destroys life, and that everything disappears with it, all love, all desire. If the past is an invention, it's not such a big deal. After all, the future's an invention, and no one finds that hard to accept. ~ Enrique De Heriz

The author always knows more than the reader does at the start of a novel, and gradually, they share that knowledge with the reader - that's storytelling. ~ Simon Toyne

I just loved storytelling. That's what I thought I would end up doing. I thought I would probably go to school and end up writing for a magazine or something. ~ Michelle Rodriguez

I think stories do have an ending. I think they need to have an ending eventually because that is a story: a beginning, middle and end. If you draw out the end too long, I think storytelling can get tired. ~ Melissa Rosenberg

Always let life be wild. Forever have life be interesting. ~ A.D. Posey

It takes stamina to get up like an athlete every single night, seven to eight performances a week, 20 weeks in a row. And there are many young performers who only learn their craft in the two minute bits it takes to film a scene. You never learn the arc of storytelling, the arc of a character that way. ~ Kevin Spacey

Stories are like islands, go out exploring and you're bound to get lost fantastically. ~ M. Robert Randolph

The star we're looking for isn't so very friendly," said Moomintroll. "Quite the contrary, in fact."
"What did you say?" said Sniff.
Moomintroll went a bit red. "I mean
stars in general," he said, "big and small, friendly and unfriendly, and so on."
"Can they be unfriendly?" asked Snufkin.
"Yes
ones with tails," answered Moomintroll. "Comets."
At last it dawned on Sniff. "You're hiding something from me!" he said accusingly. "That pattern we saw everywhere, and you said it didn't mean anything!"
"You're too small to be told everything," answered Moomintroll.
"Too small!" screamed Sniff. "I must say it's a fine thing to take me on an expedition of discovery and not tell me what I'm supposed to be discovering! ~ Tove Jansson

The most amazing thing for me is that every single person who sees a movie, not necessarily one of my movies, brings a whole set of unique experiences. Now, through careful manipulation and good storytelling, you can get everybody to clap at the same time, to hopefully laugh at the same time, and to be afraid at the same time. ~ Steven Spielberg

I was starting to believe I was a character in a greater story, which is why the elements of story made sense in the first place. ~ Donald Miller