holy mother of God! What have I done? How could I have been to casual with my crazy ways?”But the man on the bus just smiles and nods his head, and the casher takes a...

The moral of this story is that no matter how much we try, no matter how much we want it … some stories just don’t have a happy ending.

No one could say the stories were uselessfor as the tongue clackedfive or forty fingers stitchedcorn was grated from the huskpathwork was piecedor the darning was done…(from ‘The Storyteller Poems’)

The magic and the danger of fiction is this: it allows us to see through other eyes. It takes us to places we have never been, allows us to care about, worry about, laugh with,...

I told her about school and how I sat on a wall there and felt stories and words move through me …

Khattam-Shud,’ he said slowly, ‘is the Arch-Enemy of all Stories, even of language itself. He is the Prince of Silence and the Foe of Speech. And because everything ends, because dreams end, stories end, life...

We forget that the sweetest joys are found in the simplest acts: hugs, laughter, quiet observation, basic movements, holding hands, pleasant music, shared stories, a listening ear, an unhurried visit, and selfless service. It is...

In the South, we tell stories. We tell stories if you’re in a sales position, if you’re in a retail position, you lure your customer by telling a story. You just do.

A quote is a story, suspended in a sentence and treasured through time.

I have always loved horror very much. I used to write stories for DC’s House of Mystery. It was one of my first jobs writing for comics, and I loved it.

We tell stories to talk out the trouble in our lives, trouble otherwise so often so unspeakable. It is one of our main ways of making our lives sensible. Trying to live without stories can...

Stories are a communal currency of humanity.

To turn the tide of materialism in the Christian community, we desperately need bold models of kingdom-centered living. Despite our need to do it in a way that doesn’t glorify people, we must hear each...

Every story needs to be worth telling.

That’s why we get involved with other people, right? Not just for their bodies, but for everything else, too – their dreams and their scars and their stories.

As children we reveled in the dream that there was a place out there that was different from the one we lived in.

There is, I believe now, a force in stories, words in motion, that either drives them forward past things into feelings or doesn’t. Sometimes the words fly over the fence and all the way out...

Serial murders are just the worst stories. It can take an emotional toll on you.

A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility. The story should never be made up of improbable incidents; there should be nothing of the sort in it.

But this isn’t a ghost story: the ghost is in the background, where she has to be. If she was in the foreground she’d be a person.

Women.Lord God, I used to follow these girls. THey would come at me, those girls who were not really girls anymore. Grown up, wounded, hurt and terrible. Pained and desperate. Mean and angry. Hungry and...

I picked up a snake once. In Italy.””Why did you do that?””For a bet.””Was it poisonous?””We didn’t know. That was the point of the bet.””Did it bite you?””Of course.””Why of course?””It wouldn’t be much of...

You digest and absorb your life by turning it into stories,’ he says, ‘the same way this theater seems to digest people.’ With one hand, he points to a carpet stain, this dark stain sticky...

Luz’s manner of speaking made it clear that she had no idea what she might say next. It wasn’t that she made things up, strictly speaking–only that facts were merely a point of departure for...

What are stories for if we don’t learn from them?

You’ve just got to focus on excellence and try not to be distracted by the news and the rumors and the absurdities of the stories that were coming out.

I know that I too could try a story out, rebuild mine, make it live again several minutes before the full of the day, the sun, the city. But I haven’t the strength, stupidly. I...

…not stories, but histories. For this too I learned, that a storyteller’s tale may end, but history goes on always.

In a sense who you are has always been a story that you told to yourself. Now your self is a story that you tell to others.

Some stories end in despair, some begin there

But you’re an artist. you should know there’s more to a story than the part happening right now.

I eat stories like grapes.

David had left her,taking his insane jealousy with him.

Storytelling is fine as long as you can encourage people to act on the stories.

People take on the shapes of the songs and the stories that surround them, especially if they don’t have their own song.

We walk until there aren’t more houses, all the way to the part of the beach where the current makes the waves come in then rush back out so that the two waves clash, water...

If I am alive this is my book, and my father lives now in the afterlife that is a book, a thing not vague or virtual but something you can hold and feel and smell...

I love snowflakes simply for the reason that each one is unique; nonidentical to zillions of crystalized counterparts. It’s a difficult notion to wrap your brain around, and yet it reminds me that amidst the...

We carry our wounds and perhaps even worse, our capacity to wound, forward with us. If we learn not only to tell our stories but to listen to what our stories tell us … we...

The only thing worth thinking about, when I write a story, is whether I like it, whether I want to write it, whether it excites me.

By nature, a storyteller is a plagiarist. Everything one comes across–each incident, book, novel, life episode, story, person, news clip–is a coffee bean that will be crushed, ground up, mixed with a touch of cardamom,...

The voices in my head wouldn’t shut up, so I let them write their story.

All good writing is persuasive writing; persuading the reader to buy what you’re selling, to side with you, to believe the tales you tell.

We live vicariously through stories, because our own lives provide so few opportunities for high-stakes adventure and noble sacrifice.

Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.

I love it when there’s nothingLeft to see but tiny spots of what’s still lightStories piercing the night.

Wit smiled. “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.

her daughter”.

It is futile to spend time telling stories about the fleetness of each day.

There’s a chasm between writing about yourself and writing about your personal life. A lot of young writers want to turn their lives into stories, into films, books, because they feel their lives are somehow...