Back Story Quotes

#1. What it taught me was forgiveness. It taught me that when people present themselves in a certain way, there's probably some back story or issue or reason for the way that they are. It's not you. It's them. And a lot of times, its about something that's completely out of their control

Denzel Washington

#2. I had a great time making the last movie, 'Eclipse.' We shot my back-story stuff from the 1930's. But I was waiting for 'Breaking Dawn' because I love the relationship Rosalie has with Jacob and the rest of her family and Bella. She also provides comic relief.

Nikki Reed

#3. I admire writers such as Elmore Leonard who can nail a character in three or four lines of dialogue, so he doesn't need pages of back story or clumsy exposition.

Mark Billingham

#4. The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn't very interesting.

Stephen King

#5. There's not a lot of direct back story but you do get to see them playing around each other a lot.

Ray Stevenson

#6. In a series, you really need to stay open-minded. It's not like a play or a film, where you can create and fully commit to your character's back-story.

Johnny Galecki

#7. Most of the names in my books have secondary meaning. Sometimes they foreshadow; sometimes they tell you about the character's origin or back story.

Gail Carriger

#8. I always do make a back story for myself, but I'm not sure how necessary it is. I just like to.

Gena Rowlands

#9. I won't even think about acting in a role where I didn't do a back story for a character.

Quentin Tarantino

#10. Why should Americans care about the Nazi back story in World War II? If you don't have the Nazi back story in World War II, World War II is simply not comprehensible.

Peter Bergen

#11. For a song cycle to work, you have to feel these things when you hear them and you either have an emotional reaction to it or you don't. The plotline is something that gets woven together in the back-story.

Tori Amos

#12. I'm not really one of those people who goes and writes some big back story and agonizes over characters. I think you kind of can get it. For me personally, it's just kind of more instinctive. But I don't have kind of an acting background. I fell into it accidentally.

Rose McGowan

#13. The back story of a songwriter isn't important to me - I don't listen to music needing to know who the guy is.

Jakob Dylan

#14. I think with drama, at least for me, my process, there's a lot of thought. I do a lot of back story. I listen to a lot of music. I'm very committed to a process when it comes to drama, but with comedy, I think it's really about letting loose.

Jamie-Lynn Sigler

#15. I think with anything where you delve into the back story of an artist, it kind of explains their work more intimately.

Aaron Johnson

#16. I'm not famous for my back story investigations; I'm lucky that I work with good writers and it's usually in the script.

Bill Nighy

#17. The unknown is the most frightening and mysterious thing, especially in the modern world where we can practically Google anything and find out the back story. I think to have that element of mystery [in your movie], it almost creates a frustration that is closer to real life.

Larry Fessenden

#18. It's all about creating a back story for the character and developing emotional responses that are true to life in relation to the character. It isn't necessary to live a tragic life to create from that place.

Corin Nemec

#19. My mentor Jon Simmons introduced me to the Stanislavski system, which is so heavy on back-story. So you write and write and write these back stories about a character and then you throw it away. So then on set, if it doesn't come, then you didn't do your work.

Chris Zylka

#20. Every Adventure Has a Back Story. When we look at our past relationships, often there are one or two we may tend to go back to in our minds, and we see them through the magic of the seven veils.

Barbara Becker Holstein

#21. 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

#22. I think back story can help guide your choices, but when you're playing a scene, you're not making choices; you're just intuitive.

Willem Dafoe

#23. I'm completely ecstatic when a woman has own back story and brings something to the table and has a real strong kind of independence.

Dane Cook

#24. For people who are invested in these characters and the back-story of the
universe and everything, all of these things come to a resolution in
Mass Effect 3. And they are resolved in a way that's very different
based on what you would do in those situations.

Casey Hudson

#25. Look at Austen. In her novels, you get a dance, followed by an encounter, followed by a letter, then a period of solitude. No flashbacks and no backstory. Let's have no more back story!

Colm Toibin

#26. I'm sure everyone's got their back story. I don't come from a place of where I was tortured and needed to let something out. I came from a very happy home. I was a little out of control at times. But my family ... we all liked to be funny, we all liked to make each other laugh.

Adam Sandler

#27. For each book, there's a back story of where the idea came from. Sometimes it's derived from a current event or topic of discussion. Often it begins with a character. And often, I have NO idea what sparked the idea. It's just there.

Sandra Brown

#28. I remember my dad working with me on breaking down my script and writing out a back story for my character and all that stuff.

Jason Bateman

#29. If there is a book that the script came from you have to read it, you have to see what you can get out of it: mood, back story and things that may not even be in the film. They kick off your imagination and broaden the character, I think.

Miranda Otto

#30. Part of an actor's job is to draw up a back story.

Bryan Cranston

#31. We felt we had to know something of his back story. I don't think people in the cinema would just accept that he's there. I think we had to learn how he (got there).

Andrew Lloyd Webber

#32. I don't think people really understood what I did. And you know, in my book, 'A Helluva High Note' deals with my back story, that I was a songwriter, that I spent years trying to hone my craft and being rejected and then finally becoming a successful songwriter, record executive and publisher.

Kara DioGuardi

#33. I always tell my students to seek out other writers as models, and though it took me years to heed my own advice, it really was life-altering when I found writers who wrote long stories, full of back story and side plots and sub-histories.

Molly Antopol

#34. The way I prepare is through script analysts and back story. I create back story for a character based on script analysts, filling in as many details as possible. I also do a lot of research.

Katie Cassidy

#35. I'm a really big advocate of ethical fashion. I actually have a travelling boutique called Maison de Mode, which is all about ethical fashion. I also like Maiyet from Paris. They're very Celine-esque in their silhouettes. I love their back story, too: they work with orphans in Colombia and India.

Amanda Hearst

#36. A lot of actors, whatever movie you're working on, you make up a back story just for your own, to work off, even if the audience doesn't have it revealed to them. I think it's important that the audience makes up their own mind.

Jacki Weaver

#37. Perhaps that same concept applied to people as well. Did we love them more when we knew their full story? How they came to be who and what they were? Or was the mystery what kept us coming back for more, slowly enticing us, knowing that once the truth was out, the appeal would be lost?

Amber Lynn Natusch

#38. True story," Horse chimed in. "Fuck with us, we'll fuck you back. Harder. Always.

Joanna Wylde

#39. Well, how did you die, then?" the old man finally asked.
"Die?" Matthew threw back. "Are you crazy? I'm not dead. I'm just very late.

J. Tonzelli

#40. I encourage anyone who has gone through hardships to look back through their life's chapters and see what can be turned into a book. For you never know what heartache God, one day, can turn into a redemptive story.

Jolina Petersheim

#41. And with that the Time Traveller began his story as I have set it forth. He sat back in his chair at first, and spoke like a weary man. Afterwards he got more animated.

H.G.Wells

#42. One of my favorite things in watching an actor is feeling, The story is safe in your hands. I can lean back and trust you with this.

Alison Pill

#43. I'm the least confident person in so many ways. But I believed that if somebody gave me the chance to tell a story, I would tell a story [well enough] that the person who gave me the chance would get their money back.

Joss Whedon

#44. I've taken all the scandals back and made them part of my story and my music.

Demi Lovato

#45. Going slowly [ ... ] was the best way of being reminded that there is a relationship between Here and There, and that travel narrative was the story of There and Back.

Paul Theroux

#46. The first time you see the film it takes you right back to those times and those moments. It's very difficult to be objective about the work because you really have to remove yourself and see it a couple of times before you can really involve yourself in the story.

Djimon Hounsou

#47. He made me feel unhinged ... like he could take me apart and put me back together again and again.

Chelsie Shakespeare

#48. We cling to the most painful reminders of our youth, our memories or our injuries, perhaps so we can look back to our former selves, console them, and say: Keep going. I know how the story ends.

Sarah Domet

#49. The script of 'Shogun' was so tight that you could not take a word out of a sentence, you could not take a sentence out of a scene, and you certainly couldn't take out a scene without putting ripples right through the back or the front of the overall story.

John Rhys-Davies

#50. Every time we are willing to let the story line go, and every time we are willing to let go at the end of the out-breath, that's fundamentally renunciation: learning how to let go of holding on and holding back.

Pema Chodron

#51. I went back to look for you.
Not understanding the language of hello,
I thought I'd speak it just the same.

Rod McKuen

#52. You've gone far away to a place with no horses and very little grass, and you're studying how to write a story with a happy ending. If you can write that ending for yourself, maybe you can come back.

Jennifer Echols

#53. The story of Rod Stewart, the story of Carlos Santana is so inspiring to young musicians because it shows in this trendy business how long a career can last. It shows how you can soar back, regardless of age.

Clive Davis

#54. If I wake up during a dream I can usually go back to sleep and finish the story.

Marion Cotillard

#55. The story of my life is about back entrances, side doors, secret elevators and other ways of getting in and out of places so that people won't bother me.

Greta Garbo

#56. Cursed, he once cried in a fit of rage. His temper has always been as restless and unpredictable as the sea itself. But his words had power behind them and I felt the effects instantly. Too late to take it back.

Jennifer Silverwood

#57. If I see anything remotely like a telcom-run faster internet that you have to pay more to get preferential traffic on, I'm out folks. I've seen this story before, I ran an ISP back in the late 90s.

Drew Curtis

#58. You know, most reporters can't go back to the towns they wrote stories about. I never wrote that kind of story.

Charles Kuralt

#59. Here, we tell the story: why the people came here, what they did when they got here, going back to the Native Americans and coming all the way forward.

Robert Patterson

#60. When you were born, did your parents shove a book of world history in your face? No, absolutely not. They gave you what you could handle, and that's exactly how you need to treat the reader.

A.J. Flowers

#61. Let memories of your own hometown flow back to you as you read this fascinating story, "A Place called Gouyave," about the author's recollection of the characters, stories and the lessons learnt in his hometown during his youth on the Caribbean island of Grenada.

Collis Decoteau

#62. Just give me more, better memories to replace the bad ones. I'll be back to normal before we know it.

A.R. Von

#63. A good writer should draw the reader in by starting in the middle of the story with a hook, then go back and fill in what happened before the hook. Once you have the reader hooked, you can write whatever you want as you slowly reel them in.

Roland Smith

#64. It turns out that every person alive today can trace his or her ancestry back to Africa. Everyone's DNA tells a story of a journey from an African homeland to wherever you live.

Spencer Wells

#65. plews." Glass paid the captain his full attention. Every citizen of St. Louis knew some version of Drouillard's story, but Glass had never heard a first-person account. "He did that twice, went out and came back with a pack of plews. Last thing he said before he left the third time was,

Michael Punke

#66. Everything we come across becomes a part of us. It doesn't matter how small or insignificant it is ... or how devastating. One story here, one story there, that's what I see when I look back at my life. An accumulation of everything I went through.

Bhaskaryya Deka

#67. Bittersweet? No, just bitter, the taste of your tongue.
Words you can't have back, so they linger.

Coco J. Ginger

#68. Immigration is a kind of pilgrimage. That's the way I see it. Just to go back to the desert, biblical metaphors, that's the story of great migration right there, the Old Testament.

Ruben Martinez

#69. Your life is nothing more than a love story. Between you and God. Nothing more. Every person, every experience, every gift, every loss, every pain is sent to your path for one reason and one reason only: to bring you back to Him.

Yasmin Mogahed

#70. Stories are not like the real world; they aren't held back by what we know is false or true. What's important is how a story makes you feel inside.

Tahir Shah

#71. I just want you to know that I love you with everything I am - a million times a million and to the moon and back.

Laura Miller

#72. We heard recently the touching story of a young flier who was killed in action. Before he died, he had time to scrawl only a few words as a brief final message to his parents back home. The note read: "Dear Mom and Pop; I had time to say my prayers. Jack."

James Keller

#73. Writing is an act of discovery in which you peel back the layers of the story as you write it down.

Matt Forbeck

#74. Maybe this was what Aunt Peg meant all along - returning was a weird thing. You can never visit the same place twice. Each time, it's a different story. By the very act of coming back, you wipe our what came before.

Maureen Johnson

#75. Orien," Birle protested again.
"You can stay if you must." Orien's cheeks were hollow with hunger and he had little strength for anger. "But I wish you'd come. I don't know how long it would be before I could come back for you."
So she followed him, since he would return for her.

Cynthia Voigt

#76. I miss you because memory
is a kind editor.
The past is a long scroll and
in it is the story of us,
told with gentle metaphor, and
words that bring
you back and back, even as you
lie there, lying.

Corey Mesler

#77. Linguists traditionally observe that esteemed writers have been using they as a gender-neutral pronoun for almost a thousand years. As far back as the 1400s, in the Sir Amadace story, one finds the likes of Iche mon in thayre degree ("Each man in their degree").

John McWhorter

#78. I love movies. And I dig a great love story: the kind that wrecks me, then builds me back up and leaves me inspired. I write what I want to see.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

#79. You can go back and try to generalize, but then you end up saying things that all editors say about everything that ever gets published. Something about voice, about urgency, about actually having a story to tell.

Lorin Stein

#80. My first draft is the skeleton of the story. I have to go back over it from start to finish repeatedly, adding all the layers of meat to the bones until, eventually, it becomes a living, breathing thing.

Alisha Ashton

#81. Several days later he'd worked his way back to the late 1800s. The entire history of Wall Street was the story of scandals, it now seemed to him, linked together tail to trunk like circus elephants.

Michael Lewis

#82. His words had tossed the book that was her life into the air and the pages had been blown into disarray, could never be put back together to tell the same story.

Kate Morton

#83. Judging a story by the ending alone, or life by its death alone, is as pointless as judging a long hike through the mountains by the fact that when you get back to where you parked your car, there's a pit toilet full of you know what and beer cans.

Emily Henry

#84. In the frantic search for an elusive 'cure,' few researchers stand back and ask a very basic question: why does cancer exist? What is its place in the grand story of life?

Paul Davies

#85. Normally when I'm sent a script I'll read it through to see how it hangs as a story and then I'll go back and read it through again and look at the character.

Colm Meaney

#86. The story that you tell yourself is exactly what holds you back from being successful.

Jordan Belfort

#87. It doesn't matter to me whether I go back to outer space or not [while acting]. The job's the same and I don't have any sort of genre preferences. I'm looking for a good story and a good character, whether earthbound or not.

Harrison Ford

#88. And maybe now it's about telling the occasional story that I recently believe in and think would be good to put out there into the world. But I look back, that crying taught me how to approach everything in life. Acting or Otherwise.

Drew Barrymore

#89. You are like a garbage man, what will you do with my life story?

Ambeth R. Ocampo

#90. In his dark story collection Poachers, Tom Franklin, who once worked in a grit factory, offers the sad and sorry lives of people stuck in the back-waters of the Alabama River, who tend to subsist on a steady diet of moon-shine and stale crackers.

Nancy Pearl

#91. I was very pleased with the way that the show ended creatively and personally. It just feels like we've completed the piece. And now to be able to step back a little bit and look at it from beginning to end, I feel good about the complete story that is 'Battlestar Galactica.'

Ronald D. Moore

#92. I've been told by people who write historical novels that you just sort of write the emotional truth first, the story at the core, and then you go back and research it at the end.

Jami Attenberg

#93. I hope the story of 2011 is that America gets its mojo back. You've got to remember that America has the best universities; it's got some of the best businesses. It's got an unbelievable work ethic, rule of law. The story of 2011 will be America blossoming again.

Jamie Dimon

#94. When I was in college, I worked at a state hospital that was a dumping ground for all manner of the criminally insane and 'mental defectives' as they called them back then. It was a horrible place, like Arkham, mostly in terms of total neglect of the inmates, so I wanted to write an Arkham story.

Ann Nocenti

#95. For many people, God is primitive, behind, trying to drag everything back to some prehistoric era as opposed to spirit, force, love, drawing us into a better future, which to me is - that story has done something in me and I've seen it do things in other people.

Rob Bell

#96. The whole story, paradoxically enough, strengthens our relish for real life. This excursion into the preposterous sends us back with renewed pleasure to the actual.

C.S. Lewis

#97. The thing you gotta get is, a sister's any sister at all, she stands by her sisters side or takes her back no matter how she feels about her sisters man or the shit that goes down between her sister and her man.

Kristen Ashely

#98. And suddenly I am washed over by a wave of happiness for it, for my little story, because it is a place, a home even, and I can go back to it from wherever I am

David Grossman

#99. Sometimes that's a year, sometimes it's 18 months, where all I'm doing is taking notes. I'm reconstructing the story from the back to the front so that I know where the front is.

John Irving

#100. I'm not sure why that story came back to me while I sat huddled in Sydney's car on the way to the lake. It happened so long ago. I guess maybe it was because it gave me the assurance that when things got bad, there were certain people you could always count on.

D.J. MacHale