Storytelling Quotes - Page 8

Have the courage to walk in truth, the strength to love always, and the integrity to never stray away from doing so.

The telling and hearing of stories is a bonding ritual that breaks through illusions of separateness and activates a deep sense of our collective interdependence.

Some stories are easy to follow, and easy to tell. There is an introduction, a twist, and a happily-ever-after. And when telling the story, everyone forgets those small details, like that one quiet morning when the two of you woke wake up with the sunrise and talked about cookies. Or that night when she had her period, and the cramps were killing her, and she just needed your hug and something warm.

Every story needs to be worth telling.

Parables release the adrenaline of urgency into our bloodstream.

It’s a new world. Stand up.

The deep map configures narratives. It is a matrix of intertexual storytelling, charting our movements through the landscape.

A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick.

IN THE END, THE JOURNEY OF THE STORY BEGINS

Whenever he told the story, Rat had a tendency to stop now and then, interrupting the flow, inserting little clarifications or bits of analysis and personal opinion. It was a bad habit, Mitchell Sanders said, because all that matters is the raw material, the stuff itself, and you can’t clutter it up with your own half-baked commentary. That just breaks the spell. It destroys the magic. What you have to do, Sanders said, is trust your own story. Get the hell out of the way and let it tell itself.

funny how a beautiful song could tell such a sad story

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it shor

If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.

Telling a story is like sowing a seed—you always hope to see it become a beautiful tree, with firm roots and branches that soar up in the sky. But it is a peculiar sowing, for you will never know whether your seed sprouts or dies.

But Andrew was right about one thing. Human beings need to tell stories. Historically, it's the quickest way we have for transmitting useful information to other members of our species. Stories are not simply nice things to have; they are essential survival tools. And yes, the stories we tell ourselves are just as important as the stories we tell other people.

We live in our tales of ourselves, she thought, and ignore as best we can the contradictions, and the lapses, and the abrasions of plot against our mortal souls...

Many more have died of attempting love than victory, and countless numbers hate love more than war. Honor has often been the dear prize awarded to the killers of lovers. The epics of war have always and still outnumber the epics of love. For those who love deeply and greatly gain a clairvoyant, excruciating awareness of the fear and suffering of the world along with their joy, which few warriors could endure. Who is not more truly afraid of a love story than of a tale of war?

When telling the story of your life, it is of great value to recognize and focus on the details that reveal or inspire an empowered unfolding of your being. Much like rewriting your own DNA, every aspect of your life and growth will emanate from the building blocks of your history—however you choose to tell it. This is not to suggest that you should deny or bury your mistakes, traumas or misfortunes, but rather, recognize and reveal them within an empowered context of a bigger picture.

Stories help us remember what we never want to forget.

Writing is something you do alone. Its a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don't want to make eye contact while doing it.", Nerdfighteria Wiki, January 17, 2012]

There is wisdom out there that can’t be relayed in musings or sage advice. Like the complexity of life itself, it simply won’t condense. It can only be shown in its entirety. It takes a story.

Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity.

Why don't you tell me a story?

When you’re telling a story, you’re trying to connect to people in a particular way … The way in which you guys have inhabited this world, this universe, has made you part of it, part of the story. You are living in Firefly. When I see you guys, I don’t think the show is off the air. I don’t think there’s a show; I think that’s what the world is like. … The story is our lives.

That's the problem with revealing true truths. They make people uncomfortable. The truth should be grand and exotic, but mostly it isn't. Mostly it's uncomfortable.

I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and laughter 'til they bloom, 'til you yourself burst into bloom.

Once upon a time there was what there was, and if nothing had happened there would be nothing to tell.

Nothing unleashes curiosity in an audience like good storytelling. Nothing inspires storytelling, in turn, like the results of curiosity.

These stories become what we know, what we understand, and what we are, or, perhaps we should say, what we have become, or can perhaps be.

A people that doesn't live at the center of the world, as defined and described by its poets and storytellers, is in a bad way. The center of the world is where you live fully, where you know how things are done, how things are done rightly, done well.

A world without fairy tales and myths would be as drab as life without music

While what I write is always largely consistent with the records that remain I freely admit that where historical fact proves a barrier to invention, I simply move a detail a little one way or another.

Storytelling can save you. Both the telling and the listening.

In the Ottoman times, there were itinerant storytellers called "meddah. " They would go to coffee houses, where they would tell a story in front of an audience, often improvising. With each new person in the story, the meddah would change his voice, impersonating that character. Everybody could go and listen, you know ordinary people, even the sultan, Muslims and non-Muslims. Stories cut across all boundaries. Like "The Tales of Nasreddin Hodja," which were very popular throughout the Middle East, North Africa, the Balkans and Asia. Today, stories continue to transcend borders

Intuition is truth.

There are books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story... don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words--the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers who won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book.

Things in life have no real beginning, though our stories about them always do.

For at least twenty minutes, she handed out the story.

I have the heart of an artist and the soul of a writer.

The most powerful words in English are, "Tell me a story.

The same principles that make up a good story also make up a good life.

Storytelling has been around since men and women were first created. Stories give meaning to life and provide people with history, information, and entertainment.

Too much truth destroys.

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 kick your ass every time.

Writers wake up the world.

Tell a story in lesser and simpler words.

He who writes is the martyr, seen through the eyes of the unassuming doll.

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

Be a burst of joy.

The presentation scene itself we skip. It is not a good idea to interrupt the narrative too often, since storytelling works by lulling the reader or listener into a dreamlike state in which the time and space of the real world fade away, superseded by the time and space of the fiction. Breaking into the dream draws attention to the constructedness of the story, and plays havoc with the realist illusion. However, unless certain scenes are skipped over we will be here all afternoon. The skips are not part of the text, they are part of the performance.

The heart is a repository of emotions--real, imagined, and invented, owned and borrowed, past, present, future--and there in your chest, operating at an average of 80 beats per minute at rest, is a heart that has stories to tell.

I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since.

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.

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

A great story can change the world.

The personal screenplay- where you dive into the terrifying depths of your soul, unearth the most intimate details about yourself, and put it on paper for the world to see. Proceed with caution, for madness lies ahead.

Whenever I'm asked what advice I have for young writers, I always say that the first thing is to read, and to read a lot. The second thing is to write. And the third thing, which I think is absolutely vital, is to tell stories and listen closely to the stories you're being told.

A story that must be told never forgives silence.

As I quietly stare off into space, eyes glazed over and brow thoughtfully taut, know that I am going about my business.  I am a storyteller.  Daydreaming is the best part of my job.

This story in my head is too hot to touch. I grabbed it anyway.