Storytelling Quotes

Write in pictures. With your words, let the reader see not letters, but images. Be specific about every detail, but don't describe it--make it happen on the page, if you were writing fiction, or make it happen over again, if you were writing about history or some recent event.

I travel the world. I Take nothing but pictures, kill nothing but time and leave nothing but footprints.

Maarten Schäfer

You've got to make an effort to get the details right, because even through someone picks it up and knows it's a novel, they know someone's made it up and they know it's not real, if you make a small mistake they will cease to imaginatively engage with the story.

People want to do business with you because of 'who you are' and 'what you stand for'... not because of 'what you do'."Create your story... publish it online and make sure people will find you when they Google you.

Anouk Pappers & Maarten Schäfer

I am the unseen. For centuries I have been here, beneath this great city, this metropolis. I know your language. I know all languages. . . . My cave is broad and cool. The sun cannot send its heat down here. The damp soil is rich and fragrant. I turn softly on my back and place my eight legs to the cave ceiling. Then, I listen. I am the spider. I see sound. I feel taste. I hear touch. I spin this story. This is the story I’ve spun.

It was always the best way of finding out information; just go and ask a woman who keeps her eyes and ears open and who likes to talk. It always worked. It was no use asking men; they simply were not interested enough in other people and the ordinary doings of people. That is why the real historians of Africa had always been the grandmothers, who remembered the lineage and the stories that went with it.

Alexander McCall Smith

See . . . um . . . the thing is, I met with Lisa a few days ago. She wanted to apologize for . . . Halloween, and not calling . . . Thing is, her previous story . . . um . . . She wanted me to read it. She . . . wanted to explain her issues. She was jealous . . . of you and me becoming friends and . . . kinda lost it, I guess.My point is, um . . . she used the story to put it into words . . .I think she is writing messages. . . to you.

Stjepan Šejić

Storytellers have as profound a purpose as any who are charged to guide and transform human lives. I knew it as an ancient discipline and vocation to which everyone is called.

Technology allows more people to tell more stories in more ways. Storytelling knows no boundaries. I believe print and web can work beautifully together.

Publishers, readers, booksellers, even critics, acclaim the novel that one can deliciously sink into, forget oneself in, the novel that returns us to the innocence of childhood or the dream of the cartoon, the novel of a thousand confections and no unwanted significance. What becomes harder to find, and lonelier to defend, is the idea of the novel as—in Ford Madox Ford’s words—a “medium of profoundly serious investigation into the human case.

The Book CharmYour Story Will Never End As Long As Your Chapters Are Shared

I know that I too could try a story out, rebuild mine, make it live again several minutes before the full of the day, the sun, the city. But I haven't the strength, stupidly. I rise and carry on. One more time.

Danielle Collobert

The Gingerbread House has four walls, a roof, a door, a window, and a chimney. It is decorated with many sweet culinary delights on the outside.But on the inside there is nothing—only the bare gingerbread walls.It is not a real house—not until you decide to add a Gingerbread Room.That’s when the stories can move in.They will stay in residence for as long as you abstain from taking the first gingerbread bite.

Roger left the cricket stumps and they went into the drawing room. Grandpapa, at the first suggestion of reading aloud, had disappeared, taking Patch with him. Grandmama had cleared away the tea. She found her spectacles and the book. It was Black Beauty. Grandmama kept no modern children's books, and this made common ground for the three of them. She read the terrible chapter where the stable lad lets Beauty get overheated and gives him a cold drink and does not put on his blanket. The story was suited to the day. Even Roger listened entranced. And Deborah, watching her grandmother's calm face and hearing her careful voice reading the sentences, thought how strange it was that Grandmama could turn herself into Beauty with such ease. She was a horse, suffering there with pneumonia in the stable, being saved by the wise coachman.After the reading, cricket was anticlimax, but Deborah must keep her bargain. She kept thinking of Black Beauty writing the book. It showed how good the story was, Grandmama said, because no child had ever yet questioned the practical side of it, or posed the picture of a horse with a pen in its hoof."A modern horse would have a typewriter," thought Deborah, and she began to bowl to Roger, smiling to herself as she did so because of the twentieth-century Beauty clacking with both hoofs at a machine. ("The Pool")

Daphne du Maurier

There's a Palestine that dwells inside all of us, a Palestine that needs to be rescued: a free Palestine where all people regardless of color, religion, or race coexist; a Palestine where the meaning of the word "occupation" is only restricted to what the dictionary says rather than those plenty of meanings and connotations of death, destruction, pain, suffering, deprivation, isolation and restrictions that Israel has injected the word with.

In these story telling moments we equip our children, with crucial solution tools for life. To deprive them of these necessary teachable moments is like denying a carpenter the tools of his trade.

Story telling or teachable moments, provides us with a vast reference base of real life antidotes for possible future problems. They not only entertain and give us a resource of proven solutions, but they also help shape and mold our character. Therefore, when we don’t take our time to communicate with our kids, then we rob them of critical life lessons that we and our forefathers learn the hard way - lessons that they would needlessly have to learn through trial and error themselves.

Storytelling comes naturally to humans, but since we live in an unnatural world, we sometimes need a little help doing what we'd naturally do.

Growing a culture requires a good storyteller. Changing a culture requires a persuasive editor.

Relying only on logic, on what can be factually established, may inform or intimidate, but it will rarely stir anyone into action or change.

Charlotte Beers

Magic is a very beautiful mystery. Even the ages old magic effects still surprises the most modern men.

A dessert to a deserter in the desert burst, "You trust your thirst. And you are too hot! You scream for ice cream. And believe it or not, I may not be your first. But I might be your lust! Give it a shot...

Ana Claudia Antunes

Have the courage to walk in truth, the strength to love always, and the integrity to never stray away from doing so.

The world is with you.

You know that when a utility company is going down the fantasy route, they are likely hiding some illegal activity that they are engaging in. Fabricating fictional stories to their government regulator is just one of the many illegal activities that they engage in.

Pour your heart onto the page.

Your life should reflect your heart.

The flower doth not worry, and the tree doth not waver.

Yes, if the stones that we walked on could talk, they would surely tell our story.

Cliches are the viruses that infect your writing with diseases.

Writing a story is like going on a date—you will spoil it if you aren't living in the moment.

Don’t break the rules when you haven’t fully figured them out yet.

Dreams are good at playing with your memory. They love leaving no trace behind and hate to show up once again in the morning.

A writer can do without food for a few hours, but not without the sight of books.

Ideas either age like fine wine or rot like potatoes over time.

If you are a singer, you must sing. If you are a dancer, you must dance. If you are a writer, you must write. Don’t suffocate your heart.

Remember, when we're lost in a story, we're not passively reading about something that's happening to someone else.

Lisa Cron

Film is the ultimate canvas, the elixir of art, and the magic of life.

The personal screenplay- where you dive into the terrifying depths of your soul, unearth the most intimate details about yourself, and put it on paper for the world to see. Proceed with caution, for madness lies ahead.

If you don’t think screenwriting is a work of art, good luck in your life without a soul.

Find beauty in the madness.

Time is tick, tick, ticking away. How many souls will I capture today? Will they be a challenge or will they be given? Only time will tell as the clock keeps tick, tick, ticking. Your god has arrived with enough hatred for y’all, with enough evil for the big and small, so come one, come all. I will shred your souls and place them in my satchel, call you a settler and make you my peddler. Come one, come all, come stand behind your god. I will lead you into the darkness of Earth's end. Come one, come all, my wilted flowers, come claim your title, speak out and cheer it. Come one, come all, let’s have a ball, my wilted flowers . . . Sweet, Unconquerable Spirits.

A.K. Kuykendall