I must have been chosen because I know it all from beginning to end. I am certainly not the story itself. I am only the grass that tattles on the wind.

Once upon a time, there was a story. But no one to tell it.

The tragic fear and pity may be aroused by the Spectacle; but they may also be aroused by the very structure and incidents of the play—which is the better way and shows the better poet....

Asking storytellers to be genuine is like, asking a chain smoker to quit smoking . Habit of lying isn’t easy to fix. Pretend as believing is like selling cigarettes. What else we could do, if...

Storytellers think they’re writing for the audience. They’re writing, in a way, to hurt the audience.

Erzählen, das bedeutet einen Bogen spannen, wo zunächst keiner ist, den Entwicklungen Struktur und Folgerichtigkeit gerade dort verleihen, wo die Wirklichkeit nichts davon bietet.

When I got home, I seemed in a dream. My windows looked upon hers; I remained all the day looking at them, and all the day they were closed and dark. I forgot everything for...

Literature for me… tries to heal the harm done by stories. (How much harm? Most of the atrocities of history have been created by stories, e.g., the Jews killed Jesus.) I follow Sartre that the...

Here’s the conundrum: We want to tell our stories! But if condensation is the language of wishes—especially the most verboten and destructive ones—the more you spell the story out, the less aesthetically charged it becomes....

If a storyteller worried about the facts – my dear Lucian, how could he ever get at the truth?

Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, to rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless.

Probably every subject is interesting if an avenue into it can be found that has humanity and that an ordinary person can follow.

You know what a storyteller is, don’t you? It’s a person that has a good memory who hopes other people don’t.

A story, I had learned, through my own constant knitting and reknitting of remembered words, can lead us back to ourselves, to our lost innocence, and in the shadow it casts over our present world,...

The Gingerbread House has four walls, a roof, a door, a window, and a chimney. It is decorated with many sweet culinary delights on the outside.But on the inside there is nothing—only the bare gingerbread...

What’s going to happen next?” When they sense that a story is being told to them, they wake up. When they sense that it’s not being told anymore, they lose interest. I take this very...

Everything in the world was about creativity: belief and creation. Storytelling was the essence of both.

Maybe that’s why Jesus was so fond of parables: Nothing describes the indescribable like a good yarn.

There will always be reservations, things one must leave out, events one can’t explain without handing over a full map of one’s life, unfolding it, making clear that all the lines and contours stand for...

A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.

My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when...

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

I travel the world. I Take nothing but pictures, kill nothing but time and leave nothing but footprints.

When many story-tellers occupy themselves with a social world which offers no great variety of lively action, their stories will probably resemble one another as to many of the major incidents, and if they draw...

So there’s a freeing up that happens when I can go into that storytelling mode…It isn’t about how much sense you make, it is about how compelling you are. (interview)

Good story’ means something worth telling that the world wants to hear. Finding this is your lonely task…But the love of a good story, of terrific characters and a world driven by your passion, courage,...

George Banks and all he stands for will be saved. Maybe not in life, but in imagination. Because that’s what we storytellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instill hope again and again and...

The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.

You’ve got to make an effort to get the details right, because even through someone picks it up and knows it’s a novel, they know someone’s made it up and they know it’s not real,...

Literature might be called the art of story, and story might in turn be called a universal language, for every culture we know of has a tradition of storytelling. No doubt stories have touched your...

Write in pictures. With your words, let the reader see not letters, but images. Be specific about every detail, but don’t describe it–make it happen on the page, if you were writing fiction, or make...

The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.

If you just go get one of these little fine arts degrees or writing program degrees, it never forces you to confront your responsibility as narrator, whereas any of the social sciences make you at...

Stories nowadays are put in to squares, just like everything else. Stories are ever changing. They are like rivers that flow, but mankind is busy trying to dam them up and as a result, they...

The story hangs in the night air between them. It is very latem, and if father or daugther stepped to the window, tehyw ould see the Suktara, star of the impending dawn, hanging low in...

A story is based on what people think is important, so when we live a story, we are telling people around us what we think is important.

One doesn’t intentionally to alter the truth, just enhance it and make it more memorable.

Each word was shaped with certainty, and I felt, more strongly than ever before in my life, that I had at last found my true path. I knew the story would change as I told...

In life your rewards come from the gifts you give to others.

In the history of the world, a whole story has never been told.

She couldn’t disappoint the whole village. There were no wallscreens here, no newsfeeds or satellites bands, and touring soccer teams were no doubt few and far between. (…), that made stories a valuable commodity, and...

Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.

Narrative is an open-ended invitation to ethical and poetical responsiveness. Storytelling invites us to become not just agents of our own lives, but narrators and readers as well. It shows us that the untold life...

Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.

it was all I had, all I’ve ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. Memory.” p 380

Remember that writing things down makes them real; that it is nearly impossible to hate anyone whose story you know; and, most of all, that even in our post-postmodern era, writing has a moral purpose....

The truth is that, just as in the other imitative arts one imitation is always of one thing, so in poetry the story, as an imitation of action, must represent one action, a complete whole,...

What tale do you like best to hear?’ ‘Oh, I have not much choice! They generally run on the same theme – courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe – marriage.

It isn’t enough to have had an interesting or hilarious or tragic life. Art isn’t anecdote. It’s the consciousness we bring to bear on our lives. For what happened in the story to transcend the...

And if I’m guilty of having gratuitous sex, then I’m also guilty of having gratuitous violence, and gratuitous feasting, and gratuitous description of clothes, and gratuitous heraldry, because very little of this is necessary to...