A Single Story Quotes

#1. Never again shall a single story be told as though it were the only one.

John Berger

#2. The hospital was a low and narrow building of a single story, with a small garden.

Victor Hugo

#3. Never again will a single story be told as though its the only one.

John Berger

#4. When we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#5. How many new discoveries does not a person make when on some high point he ascends but a single story higher.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

#6. Myth is never a single story. It is always a tree with many branches.

Roberto Calasso

#7. The post-war American newsroom resembled a vast factory churning out multiple editions through the night. Reporters spent days, sometimes weeks, on a single story.

Lionel Barber

#8. With 'Noontide Toll', I wanted to cater to a single story but also collectively more than a single story.

Romesh Gunesekera

#9. I've always chosen the roles that aren't the direct lead because I like being a very poignant character in the story, rather than being seen in every single seen.

Chloe Grace Moretz

#10. There are many reasons I love novels with multiple narratives. In novels where the events are filtered through the consciousness of a single 'reliable' narrator, I often wonder, is this the whole story? What could be missing here?

Susan Barker

#11. He must shape simultaneously (in an expanding creative moment) his characters, plot, and setting, each inextricably connected to the others; he must make his whole world in a single, coherent gesture, as a potter makes a pot ...

John Gardner

#12. I'm not straight, and I'm not gay. I'm not bisexual. I want out of the labels. I don't want my whole life crammed into a single word. A story. I want to find something else, unknowable, some place to be that's not on the map. A real adventure.

Chuck Palahniuk

#13. I'll work to ensure that every single refugee who seeks asylum in the United States has a fair chance to tell his or her story. This is the least we can offer people fleeing persecution and devastation.

Hillary Clinton

#14. I loved him the way some people are to be loved - from a distance.

Sanhita Baruah

#15. Facebook was founded on February 4th, 2004, and around February 5th, we were feeling pretty confident it would be bigger. We would see Facebook on every single laptop in class. We knew there was a bigger story here.

Dustin Moskovitz

#16. After fifty-five years of dedicating his life and work to the story of ethical systems, Sol Weintraub had come to a single, unshakable conclusion: any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal principal which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being was evil.

Dan Simmons

#17. I think 'Overlord' has definitely benefited because I work with every single level designer, and working where we have space to tell the story. That's what it's all about - getting writers and storytellers involved in the team and being a back and forth process.

Rhianna Pratchett

#18. Mine is a story about a teenage single mother who struggled to keep her young family afloat. It's a story about a young woman who was given a precious opportunity to work her way up in the world. It's a story about resiliency, and sacrifice, and perseverance. And you're damn right it's a true story.

Wendy Davis

#19. A story with a single ending seems to us a bare and diminished thing, like a tree with a single branch; and each ending seems to us an expression of something that is buried deep within the tale and can be brought to light in that way and no other.

Steven Millhauser

#20. Only a woman could make so much out of so little. Give them a single fact and they'd fashion it into a story before taking a single breath.

Ted Dekker

#21. The newly released movie 'Noah' features a retelling of the creation story that clearly depicts Darwinian evolution transforming a single-cell organism into a monkey. The movie also seems to show magic in scenes more reminiscent of the occult than of the Bible story.

Aaron Klein

#22. No thanks. I'm not an artist." "You don't have to be. That's the beauty of creating art. It's cathartic. Think of your past, your present, your future. Draw what troubles you. It can be a face, a place, a story inside of one single image.

Keri Lake

#23. I feel 'The Night Circus' has a complete story arc in one book. I like it as a single volume. It feels complete to me, and I wouldn't want to stretch it out into something it's not.

Erin Morgenstern

#24. You never find yourself involved in a single action story. Your family is always being with you. And you cannot separate whatever is going on in your life with your relationship with your son, with your wife ...

Jose Padilha

#25. A story is about a single moment in a character's life when a definitive choice is made, after which nothing is the same.

John L'Heureux

#26. Grace is thoughtful. It considers a back-story, an upbringing, the entire person, and not just a tiny single slice of their life.

J.S. Park

#27. E. A. Poe defines a short story as readable in a single sitting. I imagine a "single sitting" was longer back in his day. But I digress again.

Gabrielle Zevin

#28. A lot of cable television is shot on a single camera. Our eyes are more trained to that. It takes the camera off the crane, away from observing the action, to becoming a character in the story along with everyone else. People are getting used to that.

A. J. Bowen

#29. Never oversimplify yourself by using a single word or category to describe who you are. Take the time to tell your story.

Derek Webb

#30. Just for the sake of amusement, ask each passenger to tell you his story, and if you find a single one who hasn't often cursed his life, who hasn't told himself he's the most miserable man in the world, you can throw me overboard head first.

Voltaire

#31. I was starstruck and completely confused; making a film of this story hadn't even occurred to me, and I hadn't written a single line of the book yet. I had no idea how this man knew anything about my book proposal.

Laura Hillenbrand

#32. I was surprised that every single person I talked to had a story about how depression had affected their lives. Carmelita Gamboa, a teenager in Michigan, later wrote to me, "The sad thing is, after a while, it starts to feel like home". It does, doesn't it?

Brent Runyon

#33. The range of rhythms in prose is larger and grander than it is in poetry, and it can handle discursive ideas and plain information as well as character and story. It can do everything. I felt as though I had switched from a single reed instrument to a full orchestra.

Annie Dillard

#34. Change a word or two, even a single letter, and you change the entire story.

Samantha Shannon

#35. I try to push a single idea to its absolute limit. So for all of those ideas that existed in the story, you attempt to find a physical realisation in the space.

Simon McBurney

#36. This story began with a single, starving family, hunted and alone on the plains of Mongolia - and ends with Kublai Khan ruling an empire larger than that of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar. Over just three generations, that is simply the greatest rags-to-riches tale in human history.

Conn Iggulden

#37. People see their own lives as stories; a lifelong story with a single hero or heroine ... much contemporary unhappiness is due to the fact that people in high tech societies receive neither strong myths and stories from their culture nor the ability to construct their own ... they lose the plot.

Guy Claxton

#38. Within a scantily plotted, novella-style narrative (the movie is an adaptation of a short story by Tom Bissell), single shots become story events that mere mention would spoil.

Karina Longworth

#39. When good things happen in the moment of happiness a ball of light will appear. It's not known what it is. What is certain though is that it is a sign of happiness. And if one could obtain it they could grant a single wish... -Yukine Miyazawa After Story ep. 8

Key

#40. I want out of the labels. I don't want my whole life crammed into a single word. A story. I want to find something else, unknowable, some place to be that's not on the map. A real adventure.'
A spinx. A mystery. A blank. Unknown. Undefined.

Chuck Palahniuk

#41. When I accept an invitation for a public speaking engagement, my purpose is to share the TOMS story and our giving mission. In no way do I believe this means I endorse every single aspect of that organization. That may be naive, and you may disagree, but it is my sincere belief.

Blake Mycoskie

#42. the technology is not a single cause of a cultural transformation like the Renaissance, but it is, in many ways, just as important to the story as the human visionaries that we conventionally celebrate.

Steven Johnson

#43. I am 39. I am single. I am a black woman. I have too many advanced degrees. Many a news story tells me finding true love is likely a hopeless proposition. Now is the time when I need to believe in fairy tales.

Roxane Gay

#44. Then his beautiful lips touched hers. A fluttering of wings, a cry of angels, a single beat of two hearts.

Chris Lange

#45. I'm working on something that's not yet novel-shaped but is something of a film-noir-flavored 'Alice in Wonderland.' It will also very likely be a single volume story and not the start of a series.

Erin Morgenstern

#46. A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.

Edgar Allan Poe

#47. I always tell my writing students that every good piece of writing begins with both a mystery and a love story. And that every single sentence must be a poem. And that economy is the key to all good writing. And that every character has to have a secret.

Silas House

#48. Words are clamor-filled shells. There's many a story in the miniature of a single word!

Gaston Bachelard

#49. 'The New Jedi Order' was a pure publishing project: a single massive story - virtually one huge novel spread across multiple volumes - told by a succession of authors.

Matthew Stover

#50. I know a lot of people in the business recommend the many Story Structure seminars being offered here, but I point to them as the single biggest contributor to lousy scripts.

Douglas Wood

#51. As we die from one life into the next ... we may also die and be reborn in a single lifetime ... and the story, the journey, goes on and on ...

Dan Millman

#52. Comics are expensive. Don't make me resent the money I spend buying yours. Every single moment in your script must either move the story along or demonstrate something important about the characters - preferably both - and every panel that does neither is a sloppy waste of space.

Mark Waid

#53. If there's any single talent a writer needs, it's persistence. If you can keep at your writing and you can learn as you write, you can tell any story you want to tell.

Octavia Butler

#54. Every single person has a story that will break your heart. And if you're paying attention, many people ... have a story that will bring you to your knees. Nobody rides for free.

Brene Brown

#55. The story is told of a famous German chemist that his marriage did not take place, because he forgot the hour of his wedding and went to the laboratory instead of to the church. He was wise enough to be satisfied with a single attempt and died at a great age unmarried

Sigmund Freud

#56. It's getting a little chilly in here! Why don't we sit by the fireplace and I'll tell you the story of how I single handedly killed the Medina boys!

Angel Ramon Medina

#57. I'd love to adapt more contemporary novels. But there isn't really enough story and character to make a really satisfying serial, so they tend to be single dramas.

Andrew Davies

#58. With me, a story usually begins with a single idea or mental picture. The writing of the story is simply a matter of working up to that moment, to explain why it happened or what caused it to follow.

William Faulkner

#59. I don't sit down to write a funny story. Every single thing I sit down to write is meant to be sad.

Lorrie Moore

#60. My lord, I'd rather be alone."
His smile vanished. Not a single muscle in his body bulged, but the color of his eyes turned to dark ashes.
"And I'd rather not.

Chris Lange

#61. The role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a single problem into another form ... It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell.

Haruki Murakami

#62. Writing a story, regardless of length, begins always with a single word.

Don Roff

#63. I hope telling the story of how I went from being a single mom to serving in the Texas State Senate to running for governor will remind others that with the right leadership in government, where you start has nothing to do with how far you go.

Wendy Davis

#64. Never gonna forget a single day, baby. Good and bad, they all add up to the story of us. I'm gonna take everyone one and cherish it, come what may.

J.T. Geissinger

#65. Do you know what it means to be that beautiful & still hunted & still alive?
Who knows this story but the elephants & the trees?

Who says the grace of a black man in motion is not perfect
as a tusk in the sun or a single leaf taking its sweet time to the ground?

Danez Smith

#66. A typical twenty-page short story would work quite well as a graphic novel. A single graphic novel of maybe 120 pages would condense down into a short story quite nicely.

Richard K. Morgan

#67. A short story is a short prose narrative, requiring from a half hour, to one or two hours in its perusal ... having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out ...

Edgar Allan Poe

#68. I have seldom written a story, long or short, that I did not have to write and rewrite. There are single stories of mine that have taken me ten or twelve years to get written.

Sherwood Anderson

#69. I don't think there is a single sentence in this whole book [East of Eden] that does not either develop character, carry on the story or provide necessary background.

John Steinbeck

#70. Many people think of the Bible as a book of moral teachings with stories sprinkled through to illustrate the teachings. But it's a lot BETTER THAN THAT ... the Bible is a single true story with teachings sprinkled through to illustrate the story.

Timothy Keller

#71. To me, it's so much about doing your homework, going into a situation, getting to know the subject, making them feel comfortable, getting intimate access, getting access to all different aspects of people's lives so that I am essentially telling an entire story and not just a single image.

Lynsey Addario

#72. Of course I want my films to look really good, but every single element is chosen for a reason. It's telling something in the story.

Pedro Almodovar

#73. Better than a meaningless story of a thousand words is a single word of deep meaning which, when heard, produces peace.

Gautama Buddha

#74. There were so many things Sebastian and I had to work out: we'd both been single for so long that blending our lives together wasn't going to be easy.
I'd promised Sebastian we'd find a way. He deserved to be loved for everything he was. And for whatever crazy reason he had, he loved me, too.

Jane Harvey-Berrick

#75. All poets and story tellers alive today make a single brotherhood; they are engaged in a single work, picturing our human life. Whoever pictures life as he sees it, reassembles in his own way the details of existence which affect him deeply, and so creates a spiritual world of his own.

Haniel Long

#76. What is truly arresting about our kind is better captured in the story of the Tower of Babel, in which humanity, speaking a single language, came so close to reaching heaven that God himself felt threatened.

Steven Pinker

#77. I'm so drawn to photography because you can convey a complex story in a single frame.

Gia Coppola

#78. Most of all, I'll remind them each morning that we make a choice to bring positivity or negativity into the world, and that within every single person where lies an extraordinary story waiting to unfold.

Adam Braun

#79. Discipline yourself to boil down your story/new business/philanthropic enterprise to a single page.

Steven Pressfield

#80. The man on the rock had pitched five outs in the losing game, and had given up two runs on a single. But he'd inherited loaded bases. The story of his life. The story of all our lives.

David James Duncan

#81. Salute to the Thief. Junaid of Baghdad was passing the scene of a public hanging, where a thief was on the scaffold. Junaid bowed towards the criminal. Someone asked him: 'What did you do that?' Junaid said: 'I was bowing before his single-mindedness. For his aim, that man has given his life.

Idries Shah

#82. In the original novel [ Anthem], the story unfolds in the mind of a single character. Maybe that's why Ayn Rand called the work a poem.

Jeff Britting

#83. Simply put, you can read a story in a single sitting and hold it all in your mind. You can experience all of its rhythms, beginning to end, during that span. Consequently it has, I think, greater emotional power than a novel because of this real-time effect. Stories can stun you.

Adam Ross

#84. 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.

Cory Booker

#85. I read somewhere that every life is the story of a single mistake, and then what happens after.

Andrew Gross

#86. In Mozambique, the story goes, monkeys do not talk, because they know if they utter even a single word some man will come and put them to work.

Carl Sagan

#87. In short, a premise is any single image, moment, feeling, or belief that has enough power and personal meaning for the author to set her story on fire, and propel it like a rocket for hundreds of pages.

Donald Maass

#88. In this sense, according to Harding, every gene is a different highway, and we have only barely begun to map the routes. No single gene is ever going to tell you the whole story,

Bill Bryson

#89. Everything we see in a Catholic church is there for a single purpose: to tell a love story.

Donald Wuerl

#90. The lyrics to the single 'Survivor' are Destiny's Child's story, because we've been through a lot, ... We went through our drama with the members ... Any complications we've had in our 10-year period of time have made us closer and tighter and better.

Beyonce Knowles

#91. There is no single way to serve God, but the point is this: We each have only one life to live to tell a story about Him, about His ways, about His love. And if we are Christ followers, then God calls us to use our gifts, to exercise our faith, and to become salt and light right where we are.

Sally Clarkson

#92. If I'm doing a story on how a single mother copes in a refugee camp, I'll go to her tent; I'll follow her when she's working, see what her daily life is like, and try to pack that into one composition, with nice light, in one frame.

Lynsey Addario

#93. The "germ," wherever gathered, has ever been for me, "the germ of a story," and most of the stories strained to shape under my hand have sprung from a single small seed, a seed as remote and windblown as a casual hint.

Henry James

#94. My family's story isn't special. What's special is the America that makes our story possible. Ours is a nation like no other, a place where great journeys can be made in a single generation. No matter who you are or where you come from, the path is always forward.

Julian Castro

#95. I did not look like my story. I would respond by saying that none of us really do; it is impossible to tell, from a single glance, the journeys someone has traveled, the experiences that have made them who they are.

Steve Pemberton

#96. I can't conceive of nursing babies and taking care of children and writing, too. I know there are writers that do that, but I'm too single-minded. I can't stand to be interrupted, whether I'm writing a story or dressing a child.

Ellen Gilchrist

#97. I never read a single book as a child. I did not read as a child. I worked on the farm. I had books in the classroom, but that was it. I never read a single book outside of the classroom.

Story Musgrave

#98. I've always admired the tradition of storytellers who sat in the public market and told their stories to gathered crowds. They'd start with a single premise and talk for hours - the notion of one story, ever-changing but never-ending.

Nicolas Roeg

#99. Thus many a melody passed to and fro between the two nightingales, drunk with their passion. Those who heard them listened in delight, and so similar were the two voices that they sounded like a single chant. Born of pain and longing, their song had the power to break the unhappiness of the world.

Nizami Ganjavi

#100. What we learn from the story of Adam and Eve is simple. What we can have is never what we want. And when we can have what we wanted we want something else. It's human nature in a single luminous story. Our sin. Our fall. Our problem.

R. Joseph Hoffmann