If the story-tellers could ha’ got decency and good morals from true stories, who’d have troubled to invent parables?

God is up to something, but you will never know unless you figure out the difference between who is the messenger carrying your future and who is the person holding you back.

Live as if they’re going to tell stories about you.

I have my own story, and I love my story, but I know I can’t tell it alone, not now. Because stories have centers, but they don’t have edges. No boundaries.

Your eyes, ears and mind are imperfect in front of magic.

All stories told have been told before. We tell them to ourselves, as did all men who ever were. And all men who ever will be. The only things new are the names.

How to read this book:Even after I was told my father was dead, I believed (I still believe) that I could fix everything- that if I logged enough miles in my VW and kept telling...

Those places where sadness and misery abound are favoured settings for stories of ghosts and apparitions. Calcutta has countless such stories hidden in its darkness, stories that nobody wants to admit they believe but which...

Books can make a difference in dispelling prejudice and building community: not with role models and recipes, not with noble messages about the human family, but with enthralling stories that make us imagine the lives...

These were our bedtime stories. Tales that haunted our parents and made them laugh at the same time. We never understood them until we were fully grown and they became our sole inheritance.

Hollywood has its own way of telling stories. I was just telling stories that I was familiar with. And it’s what I want to do in the future: I want to take my audio cinema...

It’s good to pass on stories.

There were many words piled up inside my chest, stories waiting to be told. I wanted to hand all this knowledge to one other person, neither a master nor a disciple. I sought an equal...

For all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written plain as day in the faces of the people around him.

When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story....

When you’re here, an i in the Ocean, you’re no longer waiting for something to happen or to change. When you’re here you have what you seek. Your heart opens to the gift you receive,...

Often, the best stories aren’t when someone pulls one 180-degree turn, but when someone pulls 180 one-degree turns: the stories when someone experiences a slow and, at times, indistinguishable evolution; the stories where a million...

Stories not only give us a much needed practice on figuring out what makes people tick, they give us insight into how we tick.

Give a hundred writers the same idea and you’ll get a hundred different stories.

A story conducted by the time of a clock and calendars alone would be a story not of human beings but of mechanical toys.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it’s about and why...

I have so many different voices and stories to tell.

Anything is possible on a train: a great meal, a binge, a visit from card players, an intrigue, a good night’s sleep, and strangers’ monologues framed like Russian short stories.

Stories don’t always have happy endings.”This stopped him. Because they didn’t, did they? That’s one thing the monster had definitely taught him. Stories were wild, wild animals and went off in directions you couldn’t expect.

I tried to convey to the boy how people’s lives are often altered by curved lines read slowly from paper, sand, or stone.

Would you believe in a story without the heroes? There are stories without heroes.

You should never turn down the offer of another man’s story,’ the fox persisted, moving off a little further into the trees ahead. ‘Stories are the only thing that separates us from the animals after...

Fictions are realities we don’t think of, that are happening to people we know nothing about.

But she always kept on until the end. She knew, as i knew, that you don’t stop a story half done. You keep on going, through heartbreak and pain and fear, and times there is...

Without archives many stories of real people would be lost, and along with those stories, vital clues that allow us to reflect and interpret our lives today.

Life doesn’t happen to you, but for you. Lessons can be found in everyone’s story.

Stories don’t care who takes part in them. All that matters if that the story gets told, that the story repeats. Or, if you prefer to think of it like this: stories are a parasitical...

A story is inside of us all. Each word and sentence is alive and we grace the pages to keep it from dying.

Remember that the truth within yourself will always be greater than the truth found in these pages. These stories are here to guide us—to help us find that truth, not to tell us what it...

The sum of things to be known is inexhaustible, and however long we read, we shall never come to the end of our story-book.”(Introductory lecture as professor of Latin at University College, London, 3 October...

My story is of such marvel that if it were written with a needle on the corner of an eye, it would yet serve as a lesson to those who seek wisdom.

Our stories are the tellers of us. -Little Bee

I spent a lot of my childhood in my own head, making up stories. I didn’t have a lot of outside influences, so I was able to make my own decisions about what I wanted...

[W]e wouldn’t want to read a book about a perfect character who never struggles with character flaws, a difficult past, or interpersonal conflict. Writers can powerfully connect with readers when they venture to these thin...

You have to be careful what you write and not allow self righteousness to cloud your ability to be objective. This story is not about you, it’s about people and things that no one else...

‘The New Yorker’s fiction podcast I like a lot, where they have authors pick short stories by other authors that appeared in ‘The New Yorker.’

People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.

There are many things worth telling that are not quite narrative. And eternity itself possesses no beginning, middle or end. Fossils, arrowheads, castle ruins, empty crosses: from the Parthenon to the Bo Tree to a...

We live in a world where bad stories are told, stories that teach us life doesn’t mean anything and that humanity has no great purpose. It’s a good calling, then, to speak a better story....

There are no more battles between good and evil, no monsters to slay, no maidens in need of rescue. Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth...

Stories are different every time you tell them – they allow so many possible narratives.

I was dreading all of the ghost stories of working on American television, not in the least, the length. In Britain, a series is six episodes of an hour drama, maybe sometimes eight, but never...

Stories come alive in the telling. (…)They lay dormant, hoping for the chance to emerge. Once someone started to read them, they could begin to change. They could take root in the imagination and transform...

Jesus wastes none of our stories, even our tales of woe. He transforms them into epic adventures where we dare to face our past for the sake of our present.