Personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever, and not this outer life of telegrams and anger.
E. M. ForsterRead
Neanderthal man listened to stories, if one may judge by the shape of his skull. The primitive audience was an audience of shock-heads, gaping around the camp-fire, fatigued with contending against the mammoth or wooly-rhinoceros, and only kept awake by suspense. What would happen next? The novelist droned on, and as soon as the audience guessed what happened next, they either fell asleep or killed him.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the ancient origins of storytelling and the vital role it played in engaging audiences.
E. M. Forster's quote explores the historical significance of storytelling, suggesting that early human beings were captivated by narratives as a means to escape their harsh realities. It emphasizes the idea that storytelling is an intrinsic part of human culture, and that a storyteller's ability to maintain suspense is crucial; once the audience anticipates the end of a tale, their engagement wanes, illustrating the delicate balance in the art of narration.
Themes
StorytellingAudienceNarrativeSuspenseEngagement
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of storytelling in education, one could use this quote to illustrate its historical significance.
More from E. M. Forster
All quotes →A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.
E. M. ForsterRead
One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.
E. M. ForsterRead
Oxford is Oxford: not a mere receptacle for youth, like Cambridge. Perhaps it wants its inmates to love it rather than to love one another.
E. M. ForsterRead
The fact is we can only love what we know personally. And we cannot know much. In public affairs, in the rebuilding of civilization, something less dramatic and emotional is needed, namely tolerance.
E. M. ForsterRead
One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.
E. M. ForsterRead
Similar quotes
The musical scale is a convention which circumscribes the area of potentiality and permits construction within those limits in its own particular symmetry.
Iannis XenakisRead
In the theater, while you recognized that you were looking at a house, it was a house in quotation marks. On screen, the quotation marks tend to be blotted out by the camera.
Arthur MillerRead
For me, the glory of my first 25 years as a writer was I could put things off as long as I wanted.
Neil GaimanRead
For two extraordinary years I have been working on it - learning to write - but mostly learning how to tell the truth. At first it is quite impossible. You make yourself better than anybody, then worse than anybody, and when you finally come to see you are "like" everybody - that is the bitterest blow of all to the ego. But in the end it is only the truth, no matter how ugly or shameful, that is right, that fits together, that makes real people, and strangely enough - beauty.
Louise BrooksRead
A novel is a great act of passion and intellect, carpentry and largess. From the very beginning, I wrote to explain my own life to myself, and I invited readers who chose to make the journey with me to join me on the high wire.
Pat ConroyRead
To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail, that failure is his world and the shrink from desertion, art and craft, good housekeeping, living.
Samuel BeckettRead