Telling Your Story Quotes

Like JJ Abrams, creators just want to tell a story and entertain people. So why only focus in one way of telling it?Give readers another way to connect with your story. Entertainment does not need to be contained in one medium. Think about telling your story in many mediums. ~ Anne-Rae Vasquez

There are definitely some stories worth telling and I think there's something to be said for telling your story. ~ Susanna Hoffs

True success - financial, personal, and professional - lies above all in loving your family, working hard, and living your passion. In telling your story. In authenticity, hustle, and patience. In caring fiercely about the big and the small stuff. In valuing legacy over currency. ~ Gary Vaynerchuk

Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger. ~ Ben Okri

It's about players making choices as they play, and then dealing with the consequences of those choices. It's about you telling your story, not me telling mine. It's about you. ~ Warren Spector

Your body is free but your heart is in prison. To release your heart, you simply reverse the process which locked it up. First you begin to listen for messages from your heart-messages you may have been ignoring since childhood. Next you must take the daring, risky step of expressing your heart in the outside world ... As you learn to live by heart, every choice you make will become another way of telling your story ... It is the way you were meant to exist. If you stop to listen, you'll realize that your heart has been telling you so all along. ~ Martha Beck

The British fans are liable to suddenly be talking to you about something that you don't know how you got into the conversation. I think it's something to do with the fact that they've been watching you for so many years sort of you telling your story. ~ John Cleese

Whether you're an entrepreneur, a small business, or a Fortune 500 company, great marketing is all about telling your story in such a way that it compels people to buy what you are selling. That's a constant. What's always in flux, especially in this noisy, mobile world, is how, when, and where the story gets told, and even who gets to tell all of it. ~ Gary Vaynerchuk

Great marketing is all about telling your story in such a way that it compels people to buy what you are selling. ~ Gary Vaynerchuk

Honesty matters. Vulnerability matters. Being open about who you were at a moment in time when you were in a difficult or an impossible place matters more than anything. Having a place the story starts and a place it's going, that's important. Telling your story as honestly as you can and leaving out the things you don't need, that's vital. ~ Neil Gaiman

Telling your story out loud is the way human beings communicate. We don't normally think up words, translate how to spell them and then move our fingers up and down over this randomly arranged set of keys to make the same letters appear on a screen. ~ Kevin J. Anderson

But first, I want the pleasure of telling you that you are fired. I fire you. I fire you and all your relatives. I fire your ancestors and your descendants. I fire the very air you breathe and the ground you walk upon. ~ Z.A. Maxfield

The depth of your challenges will determine the heights of your success in life ~ Bernard Kelvin Clive

Do not dump your woes upon people - keep the sad story of your life to yourself. Troubles grow by recounting them. ~ Elbert Hubbard

A mother is always proud of her children. Sometimes she doesn't understand what the hell it is they're doing, but that's also part of motherhood. If you always understand your kids, they're probably not telling you everything. ~ Seanan McGuire

...even if all they did was look at each other, it rattled her entire being because there was no thought or person or barrier between them. Not a single one. They were both thoroughly absorbed in every moment they spent together. It was terrifying. Like being swept away by a powerful wind, where your body rendered all its control to another force that could ignite as well as destroy you. ~ Anam Iqbal

Harry, I've left a letter telling your aunt and uncle not to worry
"
"They won't," said Harry.
"That you're safe
"
"That'll just depress them."
"
and you'll see them next summer."
"Do I have to? ~ J.K. Rowling

We write for actors and even down to the smallest character in the film, they all have their moment. You take that and you put it in a story that's in your face and there's tons of hardcore R action, nudity and you name it, but at the same time there really is a story there. It's got heart and at the end of the movie people will feel it. So I hope they'll their friends and want to see more. ~ Todd Farmer

The clouds won't shatter my dreams, but this is a story about how I lost myself to the storm."
"And something's got me tethered to you ... "
"Always to you ... "
"They think I'm crazy ... I love him. I swear, I do."
"Then why are you here, T?"
"Esto es complicado, Eli. It's all the lies I made up to get away from you, the distance I drove to free myself, that's brought me here. It's that moment before your kiss and the sound of my name on your lips. It's you that's taken me the five miles I needed to be where you are. I won't run again."
"What are we doing?"
"We're LIVING. ~ Nadege Richards

Worse than telling a lie is spending the rest of your life staying true to a lie. ~ Robert Breault

Most people who watch a fight think it's all about the muscle: hitting harder, moving faster. And, yeah, sometimes it looked that way. But telling somebody that you won a fight by hitting the other person harder and more often was like telling somebody that the way you kept from drowning was by moving your arms and legs. ~ Kameron Hurley

Live your life in such a way that it is going to be the favorite story of your generation and generations to come. ~ Amit Kalantri

I am already living, but something is telling me with unchallengeable authority: you are not living properly. The numinous authority of form enjoys the prerogative of being able to tell me 'You must'.
It is the authority of a different life in this life. This authority touches on a subtle insufficiency within me that is older and freer than sin; it is my innermost not-yet. In my most conscious moment, I am affected by the absolute objection to my status quo: my change is the one thing that is necessary. If you do indeed subsequently change your life, what you are doing is no different from what you desire with your whole will as soon as you feel how a vertical tension that is valid for you unhinges your life. ~ Peter Sloterdijk

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met. It's gonna take awhile. It's normal to take awhile. You've just gotta fight your way through. ~ Ira Glass

You spoke of a wolf god,' Skintick said. 'You began to tell us a story.'
'So I did. But you must be made to understand. It is a question of essences. To see a wolf and know it as pure, one must possess an image in oneself of a pure wolf, a perfect wolf.'
'Ridiculous,' Kallor grunted. 'See a strange beast and someone tells you it is a wolf - and from this one memory, and perhaps a few more to follow, you have fashioned your image of a wolf. In my empires, philosophers spewed such rubbish for centuries, until, of course, I grew tired of them and had them tortured and executed. ~ Steven Erikson

Women are good listeners, but it's a waste of time telling your troubles to a man unless there's something specific you want him to do. ~ Mignon McLaughlin

Now I know you should listen to what your body is telling you. ~ Delta Goodrem

Are you telling me, or are you asking me?" Kathel said sarcastically.
"Depends on your answer," Wharick
replied.
"Yes, Gwardian. It would be my honor to be your second."
"Then I was telling you," Wharick told him. ~ Madison Thorne Grey

Under Polly's eyes, her gaunt cheeks, and her shaking hands as she poured the tea. * * * Cat watches as her cab winds its way through the streets of Soho, thinking she would never stoop to that. It's the lowest of the low. We're supposed to be features writers, not news hacks. But behind her mutterings, behind her disdain, as unwilling as she is to admit it, lies a ribbon of insecurity. The Daily Gazette is the best paper she could ever imagine working for, but Cat, just past her mid-twenties, has yet to prove herself with a big story. She's proving adept at the smaller fluff pieces - How to wear a scarf in thirty different ways! How to put the romance back into your marriage! (As if she would know anything about that.) How to revamp your wardrobe in five easy steps! But the big interviews, the ones that Poppy ~ Jane Green

Storytellers tell stories, of course, but they aren't alone in doing so. The dawn tells a story; so does the sun as it arcs across the sky; so does the sunset. The seasons tell a complex story. The fall of an acorn and the growth of an oak tree tell a story. A farmer's plow and the furrows in a field tell a story as well. Even the waves crashing on a beach tell a story. How easy to see, then, that an ax tells a story, too, at least while it hangs for a moment in the air just before descending onto your neck. That story is: Now you die. ~ Edward Myers

If you start thinking about being likable you are not going to tell your story honestly. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I haven't said anything about your novel yet,' he said, taking a seat on the other side of the table. 'But it made an indelible impression on me. I was deeply shaken after reading it.'
'Why's that?' I asked.
'Because you went so far. You went so unbelievably far. I was glad you did, I was sitting here, smiling, because you had brought it off. When we met you wanted to be a writer. No one else had had the idea. Only you. And then you achieved it. But that wasn't why I was shaken. It was because you went so far. Do you really have to go that far, I thought at the time. And it was frightening. Speaking for myself, I can't go that far.'
'What do you mean? How do you mean I went so far? It's just a standard novel.'
'You say things about yourself it's unheard of to say. Not least the story of the thirteen-year-old. I'd never have thought you would dare. ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

Hi." I barley get the sound out before he's kissing me, lips hungry and searching, sucking at my bottom lip, my jaw, my neck.
"Tell me you really, really want to meet my friends, or else I'm taking you back there to undress and fu** until you're hoarse."
"I want to meet your friends. You can undress me later."
"Then tell me a story about Madame Allard, because that's the only way I'm going to quickly lose this erection. ~ Christina Lauren

It is the fate of great achievements, born from a way of life that sets truth before security, to be gobbled up by you and excreted in the form of shit. For centuries great, brave, lonely men have been telling you what to do. Time and again you have corrupted, diminished and demolished their teachings; time and again you have been captivated by their weakest points, taken not the great truth, but some trifling error as your guiding principal. This, little man, is what you have done with Christianity, with the doctrine of sovereign people, with socialism, with everything you touch. Why, you ask, do you do this? I don't believe you really want an answer. When you hear the truth you'll cry bloody murder, or commit it. … You had your choice between soaring to superhuman heights with Nietzsche and sinking into subhuman depths with Hitler. You shouted Heil! Heil! and chose the subhuman. You had the choice between Lenin's truly democratic constitution and Stalin's dictatorship. You chose Stalin's dictatorship. You had your choice between Freud's elucidation of the sexual core of your psychic disorders and his theory of cultural adaptation. You dropped the theory of sexuality and chose his theory of cultural adaptation, which left you hanging in mid-air. You had your choice between Jesus and his majestic simplicity and Paul with his celibacy for priests and life-long compulsory marriage for yourself. You chose the celibacy and compulsory marriage and forgot the simplicity of Jesus' m ~ Wilhelm Reich

Unless you're a doubter and a worrier, a nail-biter, an apologizer, a rethinker, then memoir may not be your playpen. That's the quality I've found most consistently in those life-story writers I've met. ~ Mary Karr

Show more interest in their story than your own. ~ Johnny Hunt

In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way. The angles of vision are skewed. When a booby trap explodes, you close your eyes and duck and float outside yourself.. The pictures get jumbled, you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed. ~ Tim O'Brien

The ending of your story all depends on the beginning of ours. ~ Piper Payne

Adolescence is best enjoyed without self-consciousness, but self-consciousness, unfortunately, is its leading symptom. Even when something important happens to you, even when your heart's getting crushed or exalted, even when you're absorbed in building the foundations of a personality, there comes these moments when you're aware that what's happening is not the real story. Unless you actually die, the real story is still ahead of you. This alone, this cruel mixture of consciousness and irrelevance, this built-in hollowness, is enough to account for how pissed off you are. You're miserable and ashamed if you don't believe your adolescent troubles matter, but you're stupid if you do. ~ Jonathan Franzen

Once a person has been poisoned by self-deception, he can't make decisions about himself as neatly as all that," Himiko said, elaborating her friend's terrific prophecy; " You won't get a divorce Bird. You'll justify yourself like crazy, and try to salvage your married life by confusing the real issues. A decision like divorce is beyond you now, Bird, the poison has gone to work. And you know how the story ends ? Not even your own wife will trust you absolutely, and one day you'll discover for yourself that your entire private life is in the shadow of deception and in the end you'll destroy yourself. Bird, the first signs of self-destruction have appeared already!"
" But that's a blind alley! Leave it to you to paint the most hopeless future you can think of. " Bird lunged at jocularity ... ~ Kenzaburo Oe

In this world, you are very much like a water hose in the garden. Love flows through you, just as water runs through this hose. Love comes from God, just as water comes from the well. The water doesn't depend on the hose, just as God doesn't depend on you. But the water needs the hose to pour on the garden, and the flowers need the water. God needs you to pour his love in the world, and people need his love. ~ Dragos Bratasanu

You are the protagonist and author of your life's story. ~ Jessica Hagy

It's nice to be chosen, to be that girl you have been searching for all your life. ~ Nikki Rowe

I killed your friends." – Abigail
"And I'm not happy about that. But your head wasn't screwed on right. It's easy to let the enemies in and listen to them sometimes, especially when they're pretending to be your best friends who only want the best for you. At least that's what they claim. They're insidious bastards, telling you what you want to hear and using your emotions to manipulate you think doing their bidding." – Sundown ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Who's teasing? I'm telling him the truth. He ain't going to have it. Neither one of 'em going to have it. And I'll tell you something else you not going to have. You not going to have no private coach with four red velvet chairs that swivel around in one place whenever you want 'em to. No. and you not going to have your own special toilet and your own special-made eight-foot bed either. And a valet and a cook and a secretary to travel with you and do everything you say. Everything: get the right temperature in your hot-water bottle and make sure the smoking tobacco in the silver humidor is fresh each and every day. There's something else you not going to have. You ever have five thousand dollars of cold cash money in your pocket and walk into a bank and tell the bank man you want such and such a house on such and such a street and he sell it to you right then? Well, you won't ever have it. And you not going to have a governor's mansion, or eight thousand acres of timber to sell. And you not going to have no ship under your command to sail on, no train to run, and you can join the 332nd if you want to and shoot down a thousand German planes all by yourself and land in Hitler's backyard and whip him with your own hands, but you never going to have four stars on your shirt front, or even three. And you not going to have no breakfast tray brought in to you early in the morning with a red rose on it and two warm croissants and a cup of hot chocolate. Nope. Never. And no pheasant b ~ Toni Morrison

A wicked smile spread across his usually serious face. "Hi, my name is Shane Decker. I'm not much for chatter, so I'll get right to the point. I have some cue cards here telling me to describe my 'type,' but that's not me. I respect and love women. All types of women."
His voice rang with sincerity and Cat found herself leaning forward, literally on the edge of her seat.
"So if you think you're too tall and skinny but have a smile that makes people want to smile back? You're my type. Curvy and always trying to lose that last ten pounds, with a loud, bawdy laugh? You're my type. A little older than me, with some lifelines that look earned and the confidence that comes with age? My type. Life is short, and I want to spend it with someone who recognizes that, and takes happiness wherever they can find it. If you think I might be your type, send a message to Shane84, and we can meet for coffee. ~ Christine Bell

Clothes as text, clothes as narration, clothes as a story. Clothes as the story of our lives. And if you were to gather all the clothes you have ever owned in all your life, each baby shoe and winter coat and wedding dress, you would have your autobiography. ~ Linda Grant

Psychological factors are critical in supporting immune function. If you suppress this psychological support by telling someone he's condemned to die, your words alone will have condemned him. ~ Luc Montagnier

In the New Testament, God's steadfast love and faithfulness are seen, not in an act of deliverance from foreign enemies, but in sending the Son and raising Him from the dead to enact a global rescue mission (Romans 8:3.) Jesus is God's supreme, grand, climactic act of faithfulness. Not only that, but "faithful" also describes Jesus. Paul writes, "We know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but in faith in Jesus Christ" (Galations 2:16...). A better reading is "faithfulness of Jesus Christ" -- which is found in footnotes of many Bibles -- and the two readings couldn't be more different... Paul isn't saying, "You are not justified by your efforts but by your faith." The contrast he's making isn't between two options we have; the contrast is between your efforts and Jesus' faithfulness to you, shown in His obedient death on a Roman cross. Paul is interested in telling readers what Jesus did, Jesus' faithfulness, not what we do. God's grand act of faithfulness is giving His son for our sake. God is all in. Jesus' grand act of faithfulness is going through with it for our sake. Jesus is all in. Now it's our move, which really is the point of all this. Like God the Father and God the Son, we are also called to be faithful. On one level, we are faithful to God when we trust God, but faith (pistis) doesn't stop there. It extends, as we've seen, in faithfulness toward each other, in humility and self-sacrificial love. And here is the real kick in the pants: When we ~ Peter Enns

HS is supposedly a story that is also a game. In games, the characters die all the time. How many times did you let Mario fall in the pit before he saved the princess? Who weeps for these Marios. In games your characters die, but you keep trying and trying and rebooting and resetting until finally they make it. When you play a game this process is all very impersonal. Once you finally win, when all is said and done those deaths didn't "count", only the linear path of the final victorious version of the character is considered "real". Mario never actually died, did he? Except the omniscient player knows better. HS seems to combine all the meaningless deaths of a trial-and-error game journey with the way death is treated dramatically in other media, where unlike our oblivious Mario, the characters are aware and afraid of the many deaths they must experience before finally winning the game. ~ Andrew Hussie

There's something I have to say," I said seriously, looking her in the eye.
She smiled. "Oookay." She was mocking me-mocking my tone-but I didn't care.
"Okay. Here it is. I love you," I said. "And I never, ever wanted to hurt you. It's like, the number one thing I never want to do, but somehow, I keep doing it. And I'm sorry, I just ... that's all I wanted to say all this time. All I was trying to do ... with that thing with your dad, not telling you ... was not to hurt you. And I'm sorry that I did.
Alley stared at me.
"And I'm sorry that I did it again. With the Chloe thing. Which was stupid. Like, really, really, stupid. And I-"
"Can you just stop, for a second?" Ally said, holding up a hand.
"What?" I said.
"Can you say the first part again?" she asked, rolling her fingers around for a rewind.
I racked my brain.
"Um ... I love you?" I said.
"That's the part, Cuz I love you, too. ~ Kieran Scott

Spill-what's the deal with Hottie McDreamMan?"
"Sage?" I laughed.
"No, I mean Minister Sanders." She threw a pillow at me. "Of course I mean Sage! He's the one, right? The guy from your dreams. Oh my God-he's real and he's hot! Does he kiss as well in real life as he did in your dreams?"
"I wouldn't know," I admitted. "We haven't kissed."
"What are you waiting for?"
"So the whole randomly-popping-up-in-pictures thing doesn't bother you?"
"Nope."
"The whole strange-cultists-chasing-after-him? That doesn't bother you either?"
"Nobody's perfect, Clea."
"How about if I told you he might be a serial killer? Would that bother you?"
"Debatable. Elaborate."
I told her about the nightmares and about what I'd seen in his house. As I unrolled the story, her expression went from flip and giddy to openmouthed and riveted.
"Oh my God, Clea."
"Crazy, right? And I still have no idea how he got into all those pictures."
"That part's easy."
"Really?"
"Of course," she said. "You're soulmates.
"Rayna…"
"Fine, I know, you don't like that word. But you can't possibly deny that you have a deep, powerful soul connection. By definition you have that. You said yourself, he found you in four different countries and four different times. Out of all the people in the world at any given time, he found you. The only possible way he could have done that is if your souls were connected. He's a soul-seeking missile."
Hilary Duff

Build my night with your cheeks. ~ Malak El Halabi

If we could believe we are deeply connected in the fragile places, we could drop the games. When you tell me the truth about yourself, I no longer hide from you. You become safe for me. So guess what? You are now a recipient of my truth too. I am drawn to you. Your vulnerability makes a path for my own. Your truth-telling says to me, "I will not despise, judge, or abandon you." Ironically, it gives me the courage ~ Jen Hatmaker

Now, kids ... wine is alcohol. That's a drink for grown-ups.
Gee, Mr. Percy Jackson, you say, can't we have some wine?
No, no, kids. Wine is dangerous. I don't want any of you to drink alcohol until you're at least thirty-five years old. Even then, you should get a doctor's note and your parents' permission, drink responsibly (like one swig a month), and never operate heavy machinery while under the influence!
Okay ... I think that covers my legal bases. On with the story. ~ Rick Riordan

The thing is, as a film director, you're essentially alone: You have to tell a story primarily through pictures, and only you know the film you see in your head. ~ Mike Nichols

Every paragraph should accomplish two goals: advance the story, and develop your characters as complex human beings. ~ Nancy Kress