I can forgive almost any crime if a great story is left in its wake.

The depth of any story is proportionate to the protagonist’s commitment to their goal, the complexity of the problem, and the grace of the solution.

I am certain that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, nor any other creature can separate us from the love of God,” precisely because he lived on the far side of the resurrection.

If you just write the kinds of stories you think others will want to read, you’ll be competing with cartoonists who are far more enthusiastic for that kind of comic than you are, and they’ll...

Writing for children “compels you to throw all the force of the book into what was done and said. It checks what a kind, but discerning critic called ‘the expository demon’ in me.

First rate magician perform first rate magic effects, second rate magician performs third rate magic effects.

Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself.

A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.

Think about the word destroy. Do you know what it is? De-story. Destroy. Destory. You see. And restore. That’s re-story. Do you know that only two things have been proven to help survivors of the...

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.” [Letter to Harrison Blake; November 16, 1857]

We make our lives bigger or smaller, more expansive or more limited, according to the interpretation of life that is our story.

People like to separate storytelling which is not fact from history which is fact. They do this so that they know what to believe and what not to believe.

We tell ourselves stories in order to live.

Fiction, if done right, can bridge cultural divides. Stories can be a footpath for a reader to step into another land and view its indigenous practices and beliefs through a local lens, instead of a...

But I have already told the beginning, so right now it’s the middle. And Zeb is in the middle of the story about Zeb. He is in the middle of his own story.I am not...

Every great love starts with a great story…

These are old words, old stories and we are not here to blindly repeat them. They are not law. They are power, nourishment. There is a river of voices coming out of the past, resonating...

My father used to say that stories are part of the most precious heritage of mankind.

The difference between real life and a story is that life has significance, while a story must have meaning.The former is not always apparent, while the latter always has to be, before the end.

The folly and the glory of the world… the wild, the wise and the wicked… the hero, the madman, the wanderer and the fool… the earth, the seas, the wild heavens… are all part of...

All sorts of different things motivate people to do things – and from a storytelling standpoint, if you can take a character that’s grappling with issues in their lives and sort of force them to...

LOVE is measured in GAUGE TWENTY- specifically, love pressure in the surrounding area. If it drops below four percent, though, you may have trouble-the VW might get sad, slow down, or even stop altogether. If...

Doubt is a question mark; faith is an exclamation point. The most compelling, believable, realistic stories have included them both.

Sharing our story is one way we create intimacy. And like a good novel, it’s more engaging – and lasting – when we allow it to gradually unfold.

The more stories I study, the more I begin to suspect that there is only one story, and that we are, all of us, engaged in telling it.

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...

But I want to tell my stories, more than that, I have to in order to stay sane.

A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it...

A story has its purpose and its path. It must be told correctly for it to be understood.

Sadly, many storytellers and artists are still addicted to the old delusions (happy is boring, evil is interesting) about the risks of good mental health. Even those who don’t view peace of mind as a...

…when an old person dies, a whole library disappears.

Father may have been wanting in some things, but here he was masterful. Night upon night, I marveled at his power to hold listeners in rapt attention. He could tell a story with such detail,...

I’ve been obsessed with stories since I was a kid so it’s no surprise that I ended up writing for a living.

I think it’s a shame that something as creative and vital to the nature of the human species as story-telling is largely controlled by the soulless cretins known as publishers.

Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or substance. It is the generation by models...

To refrain from storytelling is perhaps one of the highest forms of respect we can pay. Those people, with no stories to circle them, can die without being misunderstood.

(…) a director should tell a story that is close to his own existential experience.

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.

It always puzzled him, when he was a child, that a woman who wrote books for a living should be so bad at telling bedtime stories.

I got this story from someone who had no business in the telling of it.

And it’s just dawned on me that I might be the author of my own story, but so is everyone else the author of their own stories, and sometimes, like now, there’s no overlap.

Sometime reality is too complex. Stories give it form.

Keep in mind that in the whole long tradition of storytelling, from Greek myths through Shakespeare through King Arthur and Robin Hood, this whole notion that you can’t tell stories about certain characters because someone...

I will tell you something about stories . . . They aren’t just entertainment. Don’t be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death.

You must never tell people their own stories. They have no interest in them, or they think they can tell them better themselves. Give them a stranger’s life, and then they’re content.

Narration, after all, isn’t just a literary function. It represents the human capacity to tell stories in such a manner that they yield meaning. Television replaced this concerted quest for meaning with a frantic pursuit...

Statements make sense for somebody who needs advice. I’m not giving advice. I don’t instruct. At my best, I delight. That’s my job.

In the tale, in the telling, we are all one blood. Take the tale in your teeth, then, and bite till the blood runs, hoping it’s not poison; and we will all come to the...

I could a tale unfold whose lightest wordWould harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres,Thy knotted and combined locks to part,And each particular hair to...

Myth is the isthmus which connects the peninsular world of thought with the vast continent we really belong to.