Stories Quotes

1. "He made a good salary but he did not flaunt it. He'd been raised in Chicago proper by a Lithuanian Jewish mother who had grown up in poverty, telling stories, often, of extending a chicken to its fullest capacity, so as soon as a restaurant served his dish, he would promptly cut it in half and ask for a to-go container. Portions are too big anyway, he'd grumble, patting his waistline. He'd only give away his food if the corners were cleanly cut, as he believed a homeless person would just feel worse eating food with ragged bitemarks at the edges – as if, he said, they are dogs, or bacteria. Dignity, he said, lifting his half-lasagna into its box, is no detail."
Author: Aimee Bender

2. "We tell stories. We talk about statistics. And in 1978, we added an element of the show that gave it its heartbeat: the long distance dedication."
Author: Casey Kasem

3. "Good grief," Alec muttered."Be afraid," Katie quoted. "Be very afraid."Alec squinted at her. "That sounds familiar. Revelations?""David Cronenberg. It's a long, scary story.""I like scary stories."
Author: Cecily White

4. "If you are alone, tell some stories to yourself. This is a different kind of pleasure and it has, indeed, its reward. I have tasted a little of everything, and I have truly never enjoyed anything more."
Author: Charles Nodier

5. "Eragon cried out, and in his desperation he reached for Saphira and the Eldunarí... and without meaning to, he drew from their stories of energy. And with that energy he cast a spell.It was a spell without words... His was a spell of instinct and emotion; language could not contain it."
Author: Christopher Paolini

6. "I certainly knew from an early age... how to tell stories; how to create pictures in other people's heads."
Author: Clive Barker

7. "I would not know how I am supposed to feel about many stories if not for the fact that the TV news personalities make sad faces for sad stories and happy faces for happy stories."
Author: Dave Barry

8. "Lunatics are writers whose works write them, Bat." "Not all lunatics are writers, Mrs. Rey-believe me." "But most writers are lunatics, Bat-believe me. The human world is made up of stories, not people."
Author: David Mitchell

9. "The human world is made of stories, not people. The people the stories use to tell themselves are not to be blamed"
Author: David Mitchell

10. "In this film George presents issues that are important, essential and vital, whoever you are, about constitutional rights and the bedrock of a democracy. I am drawn to those kinds of stories because they inspire me - they are responsible to a populace and responsible to man."
Author: David Strathairn

11. "My heart didn't break into a thousand pieces after he left. Instead, I realized all the things he didn't do. He didn't want to hear my stories. He didn't ask me questions. He didn't smile when I was talking to him. He didn't hug me out of the blue to make me feel good. His hugs were always a preamble to something else and after he was gone, I wondered if he ever knew me at all."
Author: Diane Les Becquets

12. "Stories in themselves are not automatically good; it has to be the right kind of story told by the right kind of person."
Author: Douglas Wilson

13. "First of all, tabloid stories are some of the richest and most important stories that we have. There's nothing wrong, per se, with tabloid stories."
Author: Errol Morris

14. "This kingdom of God life is not a matter of waking up each morning with a list of chores or an agenda to be tended to, left on our bedside table by the Holy Spirit for us while we slept. We wake up already immersed in a large story of creation and covenant, of Israel and Jesus, the story of Jesus and the stories that Jesus told. We let ourselves be formed by these formative stories, and especially as we listen to the stories that Jesus tells, get a feel for the way he does it, the way he talks, the way he treats people, the Jesus way."
Author: Eugene H. Peterson

15. "He had a lot of enemies. But whether those folks were wronged or just jealous is hard to say. Stories have a way of boiling over"
Author: Hannah Kent

16. "Among those who still have enough wisdom not to think fairy-stories are pernicious, the common opinion seems to be that there is a natural connection between the minds of children and fairy-stories, of the same order as the connection between children's bodies and milk. I think this is an error; at best an error of false sentiment, and one that is therefore most often made by those who, for whatever private reason (such as childlessness), tend to think of children as a special kind of creature, almost a different race, rather than normal, if immature, members of a particular family, and of the human family at large."
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

17. "We speak of stories ending, when in truth it is we who end. The stories go on and on."
Author: Jacqueline Carey

18. "Fairytales are stories that span every generation and they've been around for a long time."
Author: Jamie Dornan

19. "These ears aren't to be trusted.The keening in the night, didn't you hear?Once I believed all the stories didn't have endings,but I realized the endings were invented, like zero,had yet to be imagined.The months come around again, and we are in the same place;full moons, cherries in bloom,the same deer, the same frogs, the same helpless scratching at the dirt. You leave poems I can't read behind on the sheets, I try to teach you songs made of twigs and frost.you may be imprisoned in an underwater palace;I'll come riding to the rescue in disguise. Leave the magic tricks to me and to the teakettle.I've inhaled the spells of willow trees,spat them out as blankets of white crane feathers.Sleep easy, from behind the closet doorI'll invent our fortunes, spin them from my own skin.(from, The Fox-Wife's Invitation)"
Author: Jeannine Hall Gailey

20. "For minority actors, developing our own projects has to be the eventual path. We have a lot of stories to tell and a really unique voice. But none of that is going to be heard as long as we're just the hired hands, acting."
Author: Jimmy Smits

21. "One of the most interesting histories of what comes of rejecting science we may see in Islam, which in the beginning received, accepted, and even developed the classical legacy. For some five or six rich centuries there is an impressive Islamic record of scientific thought, experiment, and research, particularly in medicine. But then, alas! the authority of the general community, the Sunna, the consensus—which Mohammed the Prophet had declared would always be right—cracked down. The Word of God in the Koran was the only source and vehicle of truth. Scientific thought led to 'loss of belief in the origin of the world and in the Creator.' And so it was that, just when the light of Greek learning was beginning to be carried from Islam to Europe—from circa 1100 onward—Islamic science and medicine came to a standstill and went dead...."
Author: Joseph Campbell

22. "Truth came home one day, naked and wounded, having been beaten and cursed by the people who did not wish to hear, while his brother Falsehood went dressed in the brightest garments and feasted with every household."What shall I do?" cried Truth to the gods. "No man wishes to hear me and all beat me and throw things at me; look, I am covered with dung.""You are naked" said the goddess Maat, sympathetically. "No naked one can command respect. Therefore take these robes and you will walk without fear and all men will sit at your feet to hear your stories." And she dressed Truth in Fable's garments, and he was welcome at every house."
Author: Kerry Greenwood

23. "In the era of big brains, life stories could end up any which way. Look at mine."
Author: Kurt Vonnegut

24. "She was with her flying companion-her playmate. The one who was sacred to her, who was the other half of the mysteries of life for her. The one who would always be there for her, helping her, watching her back, picking her up when she fell down, listening to her stories-no matter how many times she told them. Loving her even when she was stupid. Understanding her without words. Being inside the innermost circle in her mind.Her soulmate."
Author: L.J. Smith

25. "You can't regret a whole period in your life. . . . It's part of who you are, one of your stories."
Author: Laura Fraser

26. "Many stories are invented about me - too many stories; almost everyone uses me, and I'd say about 0.01 percent of the gossip is true."
Author: Mario Balotelli

27. "I have heard stories that it was love at first sight for both of us, that we disappeared to a guest room at Merle's house, had our meals sent up, and didn't emerge for several days. This is absolutely untrue. I would never behave like that as a guest in someone's home. Carlos and I went to my beach house."
Author: Martha Graham

28. "Always listening, listening to the wet fluid speech with no order, unfinished stories, badly told jokes that he sober as a spider perfected in silence."
Author: Michael Ondaatje

29. "Keep your private life private. Be open to suggestions from different people. And just be nice. I have heard stories about people who are just plain rude to the press or fans."
Author: Michelle Trachtenberg

30. "Now, Anansi stories, they have wit and trickery and wisdom. Now, all over the world, all of the people they aren't just thinking of hunting and being hunted anymore. Now they're starting to think their way out of problems--sometimes thinking their way into worse problems."
Author: Neil Gaiman

31. "I had forgotten what fiction was to me as a boy, forgotten what it was like in the library: fiction was an escape from the intolerable, a doorway into impossibly hospitable worlds where things had rules and could be understood; stories had been a way of learning about life without experiencing it, or perhaps of experiencing it as an eighteenth-century poisoner dealt with poisons, taking them in tiny doses, such that the poisoner could cope with ingesting things that would kill someone who was not inured to them. Sometimes fiction is a way of coping with the poison of the world in a way that lets us survive it."
Author: Neil Gaiman

32. "Alice Munro is a particular kind of short story writer in that she writes long, character-driven short stories."
Author: Nell Freudenberger

33. "I want to see children curled up with books, finding an awareness of themselves as they discover other people's thoughts. I want them to make the connection that books are people's stories, that writing is talking on paper, and I want them to write their own stories. I'd like my books to provide that connection for them."
Author: Patricia Reilly Giff

34. "Stories don't end with the writers, however many started the race."
Author: Patrick Ness

35. "Human beings across every culture I know about require such stories, stories with cool winds and wood smoke. They speak to something deep within us, the capacity to conceptualize, objectify and find patterns, thereby to create the flow of events and perceptions that find perfect expression in fiction. We are built this way, we create stories by reflex, unstoppably. But this elegant system really works best when the elements of the emerging story, whether is is being written or being read, are taken as literal fact. Almost always, to respond to the particulars of the fantastic as if they were metaphorical or allegorical is to drain them of vitality."
Author: Peter Straub

36. "I trust my characters. They know their stories better than I do."
Author: Rayne Hall

37. "It is true that almost everyone in the foothills farmed and hunted, so there were no breadlines, no men holding signs that begged for work and food, no children going door to door, as they did in Atlanta, asking for table scraps. Here, deep in the woods, was a different agony. Babies, the most tenuous, died from poor diet and simple things, like fevers and dehydration. In Georgia, one in seven babies died before their first birthday, and in Alabama it was worse.You could feed your family catfish and jack salmon, poke salad and possum, but medicine took cash money, and the poorest of the poor, blacks and whites, did not have it. Women, black and white, really did smother their babies to save them from slow death, to give a stronger, sounder child a little more, and stories of it swirled round and round until it became myth, because who can live with that much truth."
Author: Rick Bragg

38. "It is the gift of stories that most repays life among settled people."
Author: Robert Michael Pyle

39. "She smiled. "Life is full of stories. Or maybe life is only stories. Good night, my dear Nao."
Author: Ruth Ozeki

40. "Family history, of course, has its proper dietary laws. One is supposed to swallow and digest only the permitted parts of it, the halal portions of the past, drained of their redness, their blood. Unfortunately, this makes the stories less juicy..."
Author: Salman Rushdie

41. "All love stories beget ghost stories."
Author: Sarah Blake

42. "So many times I've photographed stories that show the degradation of the planet. I had one idea to go and photograph the factories that were polluting, and to see all the deposits of garbage. But, in the end, I thought the only way to give us an incentive, to bring hope, is to show the pictures of the pristine planet - to see the innocence."
Author: Sebastiao Salgado

43. "It's not magic. I remember because I make comparisons. Not in terms of better or worse, just different. And not all of these memories are great, but they're mine.Which lends way to believe, that none of our lives are put together on an assembly line. We're not pre-packaged with memories or programmed with stories. We have to make our own."
Author: Shane Koyczan

44. "In December 2011, I will be opening up my production house, Sharmeen Obaid Films, and aspire to change the way Pakistanis approach nonfiction storytelling. There are thousands of stories to be found here."
Author: Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy

45. "If I can't live like Mom, how could she have wanted to live like that? Why did this thought never occur to me when she was with us? Even though I'm her daughter, I had no idea, so how alone must she have felt with other people? How unfair is it that all she did was sacrifice everything for us, and she wasn't understood by anyone?Sister. Do you think we'll be able to be with her again, even if it's just for one day? Do you think I'll be given the time to understand Mom and hear her stories and console her for her old dreams that are buried somewhere in the pages of time? If I'm given even a few hours, I'm going to tell her that I love all the things she did, that I love Mom, who was able to do all of that, that I love Mom's life, which nobody remembers. That I respect her."
Author: Shin Kyung Sook

46. "Perhaps all the science-fiction stories he read about time travel when he was a teenager had it right: you can't change the past, no matter how you try."
Author: Stephen King

47. "What if Science is God's way of reminding us that he is greater than the stories and dogma we have confined him to?"
Author: Steve Maraboli

48. "When I first read Lovecraft around 1971, and even more so when I began to read about his life, I immediately knew that I wanted to write horror stories. I had read Arthur Machen before I read Lovecraft, and I didn't have that reaction at all. It was what I sensed in Lovecraft's works and what I learned about his myth as the "recluse of Providence" that made me think, "That's for me!" I already had a grim view of existence, so there was no problem there. I was and am agoraphobic, so being reclusive was a snap. The only challenge was whether or not I could actually write horror stories. So I studied fiction writing and wrote every day for years and years until I started to get my stories accepted by small press magazines. I'm not comparing myself to Lovecraft as a person or as a writer, but the rough outline of his life gave me something to aspire to. I don't know what would have become of me if I hadn't discovered Lovecraft."
Author: Thomas Ligotti

49. "Stories of Fantasy are nothing more than the retelling of our own triumphs and sad, sad tragedies ... Tod LangleyI have that painted on my office wall and love to stare at it."
Author: Tod Langley

50. "It's no longer enough to teach our children Bible stories; they need doctrine and apologetics."
Author: William Lane Craig

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