Quotes on Story

I'm always drawn to stories that people don't know about, particularly when they're inside of a story that everyone knows about.

I have got my story. Adoptees rarely get our stories. We only know what we are told. I don't even have my story, really. My mother won't tell me. She won't tell me who my father is. She won't tell me the story of my birth.

If you sit down and read with your kid, either having your child read to you or you reading to your child at a regular time each day, it deepens the relationship. You don't have to talk about stuff; the story will do that work for you.

'Brown Girl Dreaming' was a book I had a lot of doubts about - mainly, would this story be meaningful to anyone besides me? My editor, Nancy Paulsen, kept assuring me, but there were moments when I was in a really sad place with the story for so many reasons. It wasn't an easy book to write - emotionally, physically, or creatively.

I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.

I can't honestly account for the very personal response that I have to one story and not another, a sense of an orbit, the orbit of a world that draws me as my own life recedes.

That's been the story of my life - obstacles: trying to figure a way over them, around them, under them; sometimes you have to go straight through them.

When I lock myself up to write, I cannot allow myself to think about the censor or the reviewer or anyone but my characters and their story!

I felt like there was something I needed to do - speaking to kids and sharing my story with them and helping them understand racism has no place in the minds and hearts of children.

When I sit down to write, I don't think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to write a story which is hard enough.

If the pitch starts with a sob story, I'm out. If the pitch talks about personal issues, I'm out. If the pitch starts off with how big the market opportunity is, I'm out. If the pitch tells me what is unique about the product, how it can make a profit, and it's an area where I have expertise, I will read on.

If you get a call to go to a certain place in the middle of the night to pick up stolen goods, and it turns out the stolen goods don't show up but the cops show up, I think you're going to have a very weak story saying, 'Well, I got swindled here.'

The function of a book or a poem or a story is to delight, to enchant, to beguile.

I don't tell people, 'You're okay the way that you are.' That's not the right story. The right story is, 'You're way less than you could be.'

Jewish history turns out not to be an either/or story - as in, either pure Judaism detached from its surroundings or else assimilation - but rather, for the vast majority, the adventure of living in between.

When I am experiencing a complex story or novel, the broader planes, and also details, tend to fall away.

I think each time you start a story or novel or whatever, you are absolutely at the bottom of the ladder all over again. It doesn't matter what you've done before.

There's a reason poets often say, 'Poetry saved my life,' for often the blank page is the only one listening to the soul's suffering, the only one registering the story completely, the only one receiving all softly and without condemnation.

I think we're going to enter a phase where there's less interest in the CGI and there's a demand for story again. I think we've dropped the ball a little bit on stories for the sake of the amazing toys that we've played with.

At Christmas, I am always struck by how the spirit of togetherness lies also at the heart of the Christmas story. A young mother and a dutiful father with their baby were joined by poor shepherds and visitors from afar. They came with their gifts to worship the Christ child.

It's great if a pilot starts off great and if it doesn't start off so great it's not that big a deal: everybody's baby is born ugly. But you want to know, if given the opportunity: Where are we going? What's the story we're trying to tell?