Quotes on Stories

Is there an intelligent man or woman now in the world who believes in the Garden of Eden story? If you find any man who believes it, strike his forehead and you will hear an echo. Something is for rent.

If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.

Writing a poem is like having an affair, a one-night stand; a short story is a romance, a relationship; a novel is a marriage-one has to be cunning, devise compromises, and make sacrifices.

Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently.

I like to compare the holiday season with the way a child listens to a favorite story. The pleasure is in the familiar way the story begins, the anticipation of familiar turns it takes, the familiar moments of suspense, and the familiar climax and ending.

As Sokrates tells it, your story begins the moment Eros enters you. That incursion is the biggest risk of your life. How you handle it is an index of the quality, wisdom, and decorum of the things inside you. As you handle it you come into contact with what is inside you, in a sudden and startling way. You perceive what you are, what you lack, what you could be.

There are times in our lives when we have to realize our past is precisely what it is, and we cannot change it. But we can change the story we tell ourselves about it, and by doing that, we can change the future.

Listen, and you will realize that we are made not from cells or from atoms. We are made from stories.

I love playing and chatting with children...feed ing and putting them to bed with a little story, and being away from the family has troubled me throughout my...life.

This is the role of writers: to turn their tears into a story - and perhaps into a prayer.

The story of my billion-dollar business starts like this. I borrowed $1,000 from a friend.

Can one be passionate about the just, the ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit no labor in its cause? I don't think so. All summations have a beginning, all effect has a story, all kindness beings with the sown seed. Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of light is the crossroads of - indolence, or action. Be ignited or be gone.

My clothes have a story. They have an identity. They have a character and a purpose. That's why they become classics. Because they keep on telling a story. They are still telling it.

You know, who tells the stories of a culture really governs human behavior. It used to be the parent, the school, the church, the community. Now it's a handful of global conglomerates that have nothing to tell, but a great deal to sell.

If you can write a nation's stories, you needn't worry about who makes its _x000D_ laws. Today, television tells most of the stories to most of the people _x000D_ most of the time.

My eighth grade teacher, Mrs. Pabst, had done her master's thesis on Tolkien. She showed me how the trilogy was patterned after Norse mythology. She was also the first person to encourage me to submit stories for publication. The idea of writing a fantasy based on myths never left me, and many years later, this would lead me to write Percy Jackson.

I have every sympathy for writers. It's a mystery to me what they do. I can edit. I can cross out and say, 'I'm not saying that' or, 'How about we move this to here? Wouldn't that make that bit of the story better?' But where any of it comes from is beyond me. I will never write a play or a novel.

We are our stories. We tell them to stay alive or keep alive those who only live now in the telling.

The only story that seems worth writing is a cry, a shot, a scream. A story should break the reader's heart.

Over the years I have become convinced that we learn best - and change - from hearing stories that strike a chord within us ... Those in leadership positions who fail to grasp or use the power of stories risk failure for their companies and for themselves.

One mark of a second-rate mind is to be always telling stories.