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Storytelling Quotes
"Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it."
100
"Make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait."
36
"The still must tease with the promise of a story the viewer of it itches to be told."
26
"Never trust the storyteller. Only trust the story."
26
"The best stories don't come from "good vs. bad" but "good vs. good."
25
"Don't get me wrong, magic is cool. But a nervous mother singing to her child at night while something moves quietly through the dark outside her house? That's a story. Handled properly, it's more dramatic than any apocalypse or goblin army could ever be."
24
"In the story of the prince and the frog, there's always a frog. This story ... it has no frog."
21
"One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless. The tale is the map that is the territory.You must remember this."
20
"There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler's mind."
20
"And I here make a rule-a great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting-only the deeply personal and familiar."
19
"Nothing shortens a journey so pleasantly as an account of misfortunes at which the hearer is permitted to laugh."
18
"So, when the special effects are at the service of the story and draw you into it, that is really the magic."
17
"A good story should make you laugh, and a moment later break your heart."
17
"The heart of a story gives it life."
17
"Ambiguity is necessary in some of my stories, not in all. In those, it certainly contributes to the richness of the story. I doubt that thematic closure is never attainable."
16
"No story is worth telling without the twists and turns. Make them count instead."
16
"A first-rate story is easily killed by second-rate design."
16
"Whatever story you want to tell, tell it at the right size."
15
"Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed."
15
"When life gives you the gift of a great story, to not partake in the telling of that story would be a crime against humanity."
15
"I am more one for the story, I think, than the action."
15
"So what's your story? Ryan asks.Avery looks up at him, hand still in the water. "My story?"Yeah. Everybody has at least one."
15
"If the characters are not wicked, the book is." We must tell stories the way God does, stories in which a sister must float her little brother on a river with nothing but a basket between him and the crocodiles. Stories in which a king is a coward, and a shepherd boy steps forward to face the giant. Stories with fiery serpents and leviathans and sermons in whirlwinds. Stories in which murderers are blinded on donkeys and become heroes. Stories with dens of lions and fiery furnaces and lone prophets laughing at kings and priests and demons. Stories with heads on platters. Stories with courage and crosses and redemption. Stories with resurrections."
14
"Storytelling still matters in the digital age, because commencing in adolescences and continuing through adulthood, people receive training in using stories to describe the human contestants, organize the facts, communicate the moral message behind the messy human conflict, evaluate competing ethical issues, and render a final value judgment."
14
"If you're sitting in your minivan, playing your computer animated films for your children in the back seat, is it the animation that's entertaining you as you drive and listen? No, it's the storytelling. That's why we put so much importance on story. No amount of great animation will save a bad story."
14
"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."
14
"People don't remember lessons. They remember stories."
14
"You can wipe your feet on me, twist my motives around all you like, you can dump millstones on my head and drown me in the river, but you can't get me out of the story. I'm the plot, babe, and don't ever forget it."
14
"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."
13
"Postmen have a legendary aura. A ring at the doorbell may inflame a sense of expectation, suspense, secrecy, hazard or even intrigue. Ringing twice may imply a warning that trouble is on the way or an appeal to make the coast clear. Not all mailmen, though, will ring twice and await an eye-catching Lana Turner, whom they can whisper: "With my brains and your looks, we could go places. ['The postman always rings twice']"
12
"Have you thought of an ending?""Yes, several, and all are dark and unpleasant.""Oh, that won't do! Books ought to have good endings. How would this do: and they all settled down and lived together happily ever after?""It will do well, if it ever came to that.""Ah! And where will they live? That's what I often wonder."
12
"If someone tells you what a story is about, they are probably right.If they tell you that that is all a story is about, they are very definitely wrong."
12
"As the story grew, it put down roots into the past and threw out unexpected branches ."
12
"Stories close the gap and reconcile between what we want life to be and how it actually is."
12
"Since the dawn of humanity, stories have allowed each of us to be many."
11
"Wit smiled. "All stories told have been told before. We tell them to ourselves, as did all men who ever were. And all men who ever will be. The only things new are the names."
11
"I don't think there is another person in America that wants to tell this story as much as I do."
11
"Storytelling is an ancient art. The lucent vibes of stories express what we cannot articulate directly. When we hear someone's story, we respond to the spark of humanness within ourselves that seeks to come out in the light and greet the world. When we tell the stories of our lives, we give voice to people bereft of speech, we make the persons whom we love or loved immortal, and we pass along our familiarity with the natural and physical world."
11
"We who make stories know that we tell lies for a living. But they are good lies that say true things, and we owe it to our readers to build them as best we can. Because somewhere out there is someone who needs that story. Someone who will grow up with a different landscape, who without that story will be a different person. And who with that story may have hope, or wisdom, or kindness, or comfort. And that is why we write."
11
"Animation is the one type of movie that really does play for the entire audience. Our challenge is to make stories that connect for kids and adults."
11
"The seed of an urban legend find fertile soil at the corner of tragedy and imagination."
10
"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."
10
"That's the kind of stories I know. Sad ones. Anyway, taken to it's logical conclusion, every story is sad, because at the end everyone dies."
10
"The world is full of stories, but the stories are all one."
10
"A story has value whether it's true or not."
10
"Somebody gets into trouble, then gets out of it again. People love that story. They never get tired of it."
9
"That was what her parents did not understand-and had never understood-about stories. Liza told herself storied as though she was weaving and knotting an endless rope. Then, no matter how dark or terrible the pit she found herself in, she could pull herself out, inch by inch and hand over hand, on the long rope of stories."
9
"And, of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen. And I here make a rule - a great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting - only the deeply personal and familiar."
9
"Storytelling is ultimately the only way that we know besides song, dance, painting, and music to share with our tribesmen what it means to be human, express the indefinable feelings that unite humankind."
8
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