Quotes on Story

Each day has a story to - deserves to be told, because we are made of stories. I mean, scientists say that human beings are made of atoms, but a little bird told me that we are also made of stories.

You want the story to be about something, have some deeper meaning, but there is also an emotional, almost instinctual, element, which is, does this story seize some part of you and compel you to get to the bottom of it?

There must be a story within him/her that wants to come out. That's the reason why 'Dil Chahta Hai,' 'Lagaan,' and 'Rang De Basanti' worked so well: Ashutosh, Farhan, and Rakesh had a story inside them. It's very important that the director should have the fire in the belly to tell the story.

I sent The World Well Lost to one editor who rejected it on sight, and then wrote a letter to every other editor in the field warning them against the story, and urging them to reject it on sight without reading it.

Starting a band is the easy part. Once you've formed the band, you have to tell a story, and that story requires songs. And not just good songs, but great songs. After a while, great songs won't do - they have to be the best. Success doesn't make it any easier. Each time I start a new record, it's a brand-new search.

Plots are artificial. Does your life have a plot? It has characters. There is a narrative. There's a lot of story, a lot of character. But plot? Eh, no.

What I've learned over the years is that the craft of songwriting is trying to take the personal and make it universal - or in the case of telling a story, taking the universal and making it personal.

In my career as a director, there's always been some point where you get halfway through it, or three-quarters, and you go: 'What is this thing all about, and why am I telling the story? Does anybody really care about seeing this?' At that time you have to say: 'OK, forget that and just go ahead.'

It's kind of the filmmaker's job to use visual, cinematic language in a way possible to tell a story that reaches and touches as many people as possible.

I've gained a lot from James Joyce, Tolstoy, Chekhov and R. K. Narayan. While writing, I try to see if the story is going to radiate spokes. Their literature has always done that and gifted me beautiful things.

My story starts with my dad, a black boy born to a single mother in a small town in North Carolina. It starts with my parents meeting in Washington, D.C., in the '60s, at a time of incredible activism.

In the normal course of things, journalists want their story, and as soon as they are through with it, they pack their cameras and go. That was never the impression that David Astor gave when you were interviewed by him. It was far deeper than that.

Children will go with any story as long as it's good, but white adults sometimes think that if a black child's on the cover, it is perhaps not for them.

It might be a very human thing across the board, but we, in America, love a story - we need a story to get involved in. But then everything becomes more about how the story protects a certain perception as we pick sides.

For me, any story I tackle begins with the human relationships and not the plot.

From my very first movie, what was my concentration, my inspiration, was I didn't want to narrate something, I didn't want to tell a story. I wanted to show something, I wanted for them to make their own story from what they were seeing.

I always think first about the nature of the story. When I had the idea for 'The Namesake,' I felt that it had to be a novel - it couldn't work as a story.

It's really, always, the story and the characters that come first, and the other things are kind of dealt with in time or, in fact, driven by the story.

I use New York to talk about home, but the ideas in 'Colossus' could be transferred to other cities. The story about Central Park is really about the first day of spring in any park. The Coney Island chapter is really about beaches and summer and heat waves.

I don't care whether the story is real or fantastical. I tell the story that needs to be told.

In my writing class, we never, ever talk about the writing - ever. We never address a story that's been read. I also won't let anyone look at the person who's reading. No eye contact; everybody has to draw a spiral. And I would like to do a drawing class where we could talk about anything except for the drawing. No one could even mention it.