Telling Stories Quotes

“I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.”
― Octavia E. Butler

“When someone tells you a piece of their life, they’re giving you a gift, not granting you your due.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear

“The library is a whispering post. You don't need to take a book off a shelf to know there is a voice inside that is waiting to speak to you, and behind that was someone who truly believed that if he or she spoke, someone would listen. It was that affirmation that always amazed me. Even the oddest, most peculiar book was written with that kind of courage -- the writer's belief that someone would find his or her book important to read. I was struck by how precious and foolish and brave that belief is, and how necessary, and how full of hope it is to collect these books and manuscripts and preserve them. It declares that stories matter, and so does every effort to create something that connects us to one another, and to our past, and to what is still to come.”
― Susan Orlean, The Library Book

“However it ends, at least you had a story to tell.”
― Jay Kristoff, Darkdawn

“Like the moon shining bright
Up high with all its grace,
I can only show you at night
And hide half of my face.”
― Ana Claudia Antunes, Pierrot & Columbine

“I didn't tell him that I'd put his awful stories in boxes and stacked them on a shelf at the back of my mind. I could hear a quieter version of them still, from their dark place, through all the other business that occupied my brain, but I wouldn't unlid those boxes until I was ready to hear [his] stories again as they wanted to be heard.”
― Lauren Wolk, Wolf Hollow

“We testify of what we have experienced and witnessed. May our testimony inspired others to share their story.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!

“Don't think about the writing process too much. Just do one thing: tell the motherfucking story.”
― Don Roff

“Your darkest moments are not meant to be swept under the carpet, hidden from the world in the silent pursuit of perfection. The darkness you've overcome is your ticket into leadership. It's what you're meant to light up in the world.”
― Vironika Tugaleva

“On a couple of occasions I've shocked myself. Pet Sematery was appalling when it first came out on to the page.”
― Stephen King

“Seropusly, why do flies line up in the sky every time someone lies? Hovering over they long to take the shit out from where It belongs so They compete to eat it alive.”
― Ana Claudia Antunes, ACross Tic

“Roz is telling a story. That's what they will do, increasingly in their lives: tell stories. Tonight their stories will be about Zenia.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride

“I began to make notes. I began to write down everything I saw and heard and remembered and imagined. I began to write, or so I thought, another story.”
― Joan Didion, Let Me Tell You What I Mean

“Who do I write for? I thought about this again and again over the next few days until the answer crystalized in my consciousness. I write for all readers. But my primary interest is in representing the complex but universal experience of Somalis. I do this because the media representation of the global Somali community is one that is carved out of derivative clichés crammed with pirates, warlords, terrorists, passive women and girls whose entire existence seems to be nothing more than a footnote on the primitive dangers of female genital mutilation. I write because I want to give a long-overdue voice to a community that has experienced a tremendous array of challenges but who constantly face these challenges with the most wicked sense of humour, humility and dignity. My father always used to tell me that in our culture, the done thing when you’re facing hardship and your belly is empty is to moisturize your face, comb your hair, press your clothes and step out into the sun with your sense of humanity intact. It’s a lesson I’ve carried with me to this day.”
― Diriye Osman

“When I started school in 1958 there were no books written by Aboriginals in the school system and everything about Native life was written by white people through their eyes.

Now, Aboriginal writers can tell their stories. They have always been our narratives to tell, not others.”
― Rick Revelle, I Am Algonquin

“Ya yaşamayı ya da anlatmayı seçmek gerek.”
― Jean Paul Sartre, A Náusea

“Even if you're in the thick of revising another work, write something new. Something small. It's important to keep telling yourself stories.”
― Don Roff

“Not only truth can set you free, but forgiveness as well.”
― Oscar Auliq-Ice

“Do you really know yourself so well or are you making it up?' she asks. Some things I concoct, some I glean from my senses, most I thirst for.”
― Erri De Luca, Tre cavalli

“When my children were little, always I had to explain things.

Now they don't ask much more, have I become more stupid?”
― Hannu Vilponen

“If you are having private thoughts and ask an intimate friend to listen to them in privacy or on a date will that be considered too intimi-dating? And if the thoughts are proved to be untrue, but your friend still insists on believing in them anyway, would that be considered a cons-piracy?”
― Ana Claudia Antunes, One Hundred One World Accounts in One Hundred One Word Count

“I was facing him before the last word was out, but I should have been dead by then. In a way I did die, right there, all that time ago, and this is a ghost who has been telling you stories and drinking your wine. You don't understand. Never mind.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Innkeeper's Song

“Reasons were invented, and stories were reasons that allowed us to connect ourselves to the world, to compose ourselves in ways that others could read. Fragments were true but we needed stories greater than fragments. We needed stories in order to imagine the mad world we lived in.”
― Bilal Tanweer, The Scatter Here Is Too Great

“Philosophic thoughts allow people to use human reason and imagination to consider eternal matters and explore the ramifications of their own transience. American author Joan Didion postulated that we tell ourselves stories in order to live. Conceivably a personal crisis propels a person to delve into creating a guiding philosophy for living with reduced mental and emotional turmoil. Alternatively, perhaps we tell stories to examine, explain, and justify our failures.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Whenever we share a personal story with other people, we provide an enchanting testament that illustrates the distinctive tinting of our estranged and prose-like being.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Non tutti i racconti di Nuto si concludevano. Spesso rimanevano sospesi. Magari un giorno sarebbero continuati e prima o poi sarebbero finiti. I racconti sono fatti di storie. Le storie sono fatte di amori.
[...] Con le storie si possono fare due cose, diceva: viverle o raccontarle, non è possibile che si vivano e si raccontino contemporaneamente, bisogna scegliere, se non sei tu a scegliere è la storia che sceglie per te.”
― Gian Luca Favetto, La vita non fa rumore

“I was left with a scar. I think telling stories is a way of putting a scar into words. Since not all blows or falls leave marks, the words are there, ready to be put together in different ways, anywhere, anytime, in response to any fall, however serious or slight.”
― Brenda Lozano, Loop

“I wonder if I am ever able to truly and especially in an honest matter able to describe what we all have experienced. But I have so many fascinating stories that I am just dying to tell others about. But not today, tomorrow is another day.”
― Ryan Gelpke, Peruvian Days

“It was what the gleeman had called Plain Chant, those nights beside the fire on the ride north. Stories, he said, were told in three voices, High Chant, Plain Chant, and Common, which meant simply telling it the way you might tell your neighbor about your crop. Thom told stories in Common, but he did not bother to hide his contempt for the voice.”
― Robert Jordan, The Eye of the World