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"Make up a story... For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul."
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Exlpore more Storytelling quotes
"I am more one for the story, I think, than the action."
"No story is worth telling without the twists and turns. Make them count instead."
"Writing is more about telling other peoples' stories than your own."
"What so tedious as a twice-told tale?"
"As it unfolded, the structure of the story began to remind me of one of those Russian dolls that contain innumerable ever-smaller dolls within. Step by step the narrative split into a thousand stories, as if it had entered a gallery of mirrors, its identity fragmented into endless reflections."
"You will ask me, after this, why, I didn't tell you this before. It is because I know how powerful a story can be. It can change the course of history. It can save a life. But it can also be a sinkhole, a quicksand in which you become stuck, unable to write yourself free."
"To be stories at all they must be a series of events: but it must be understood that this series - the plot, as we call it - is only really a new whereby to catch something else."
"Whatever story you want to tell, tell it at the right size."
"What you need to remember is that there's a difference between lecturing about what you know and using it to enrich the story. The latter is good. The former is not."
"The story is one that you and I will construct together in your memory. If the story means anything to you at all, then when you remember it afterward, think of it, not as something I created, but rather as something that we made together."
Explore more quotes by Toni Morrison
"Writing is really a way of thinking--not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet."
"What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them."
"They hooted and laughed all the way back to the car, teasing Milkman, egging him on to tell more about how scared he was. And he told them. Laughing too, hard, loud, and long. Really laughing, and he found himself exhilarated by simply walking the earth. Walking it like he belonged on it; like his legs were stalks, tree trunks, a part of his body that extended down down down into the rock and soil, and were comfortable there--on the earth and on the place where he walked. And he did not limp."
"You marvel at the economy and this choice of words. How many ways can you describe the sky and the moon? After Sylvia Plath, what can you say?"
"I stood there a long while, staring at that tree. It looked so strongSo beautiful. Hurt right down the middleBut alive and well. Cee touched my shoulderLightly. Frank? Yes? Come on, brother. Let's go home."
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