Top 100 Good Story Quotes
#1. A man who can tell a good story can make a good living as a broker.
Michael Lewis
#2. There's a reason we eat popcorn during a movie. If I want to zone out, be brainless and entertained, then I watch TV, go to a movie. If I want a good story, then I read a book." "Ah
Penny Reid
#3. Jewish, black, Filipino, whatever the specificity is, it's specificity that makes a good story. And I think people are tired of seeing the same old shtick on network television. It's just a group of white people hanging out talking about their jobs. Who cares? We've seen that.
Rachel Bloom
#4. A good story is like a road. If it's well put together, you don't notice the road at all; you just enjoy the ride. If the road is bad, you notice the whole way.
Ken MacGregor
#5. I hope you liked them, Reader; that they did for you what any good story should do
make you forget the real stuff weighing on your mind for a little while and take you away to a place you've never been. It's the most amiable sort of magic I know.
Stephen King
#6. Both types of books - fiction and nonfiction - are a search for story. As a writer and a reader, there's nothing I crave more than a good story!
Susan Campbell Bartoletti
#7. To hell with the cost, if it's a good story, I'll make it.
Samuel Goldwyn
#8. I tend to really enjoy being swept up in fiction. I love a good story and I admire fiction authors.
Augusten Burroughs
#9. The key is a good story. If you have a good story, you have enough emotional beats that you can hit.
Adam McKay
#10. A good story is like a bitter pill, with the sugar coating inside of it.
O. Henry
#11. We pride ourselves on making a good history of our lives, a good story to be told. And
Terry Pratchett
#12. I project love, music and love, and I pray for peace. A good song cuts straight to the heart; sometimes it doesn't need to be too many lines - of course, I do love a good story.
Cass McCombs
#13. Tension is the cornerstone of any good story.
Eric Nylund
#14. In documentary films, you're a storyteller using found objects. You still have to have a story arc and all the elements that make a good story. It really helped me mature as a storyteller.
Garth Stein
#17. It's valuable to me as an artist and actor to explore all kinds of outlets. So if a local filmmaker in Milwaukee had a good story, I'd be part of it in a second.
Tanya Fischer
#18. Be unpredictable, be real, be interesting. Tell a good story.
James Dashner
#19. I almost never let reality get in the way of a good story.
Elizabeth Bard
#20. That's always disappointing when you find a good story and you realize the person has died, because then it's difficult to report.
Joshuah Bearman
#21. I'm not a purist - I like films that are narrated and films that aren't, films that are beautiful and films that are clumsy but heartfelt. Mostly, I just like a good story and good characters.
Marshall Curry
#22. A good story will always outlive the truth.
Marty Rubin
#23. A good story, just like a good sentence, does more than one job at once. That's what literature is: a story that does more than tell a story, a story that manages to reflect in some way the multilayered texture of life itself.
Karen Thompson Walker
#24. Original, pacy, and hugely entertaining-Seanan McGuire knows how to tell a good story!
Alma Alexander
#25. A good day is a good day. A bad day is a good story.
Glennon Melton
#26. I always think if it's a good story, the audience can't wait to run out of the theater and go tweet somebody with the gist of a story, in a nutshell, almost, because it was that interesting.
Steven Spielberg
#27. What I expect from a good story is that it will tell me today what I can't know from any other source but that story, from its unique way of putting something into words, from the feeling that it implies.
Elena Ferrante
#28. Mellow doesn't always make for a good story, but it makes for a good life.
Anne Hathaway
#29. Give yourself an impossible task and solve it - then you've got a really good story.
Carl Reiner
#30. I don't know if I have a brand. I just see myself as an athlete and a competitor, someone who just works really hard at trying to get better at golf. I guess I'm kind of the feel-good story who's seen every level of professional golf.
Zach Johnson
#31. For the last 20 years of my life, I've had the mantra to do amazing parts with amazing people in amazing projects, so I'm attracted to good story, writing and character and good people. That's what I'm always searching for and I don't think that's ever going to change.
John Hawkes
#32. I used to think that one day I should write a really great novel, but I've long ceased even to hope for that. All I want people to say is that I do my best. I do work. I never let anything slipshod get past me. I think I can tell a good story and I can create characters that ring true.
W. Somerset Maugham
#33. I just want to tell a good story, so I always ask myself, 'Are these people real to me?'
Ruth Rendell
#34. To me, it's about good work, a good story, and tastefully done. There's so many stigmas - oh, you're on the small screen or you do films or you do reality. It's about the project and not the medium on which it's delivered. It's the story you tell, period.
Keshia Knight Pulliam
#35. A good story makes a journey go by more quickly. A really good story makes you forget you are even on a journey.
Lynne Rae Perkins
#36. It's the purest form of silver and our tagline is "Taking the 'except fors' out of movies." We're trying to make movies with pure story - without the derogatory sex, violence and language to (rely on) a good story.
Drew Waters
#37. Isn't that what a good story does? It pulls you in and never lets you go.
Jennifer Donnelly
#38. Many a good story has been found in the bottom of a decent Rioja.
Ken Scott
#39. There were certainly some people who wanted me to do a feel-good story that affirmed a lot of very commonly held beliefs.
Adrian Tomine
#40. I just like a good story. I want the story to be good and I want the character to be different than the last one I played. That's not always possible, but that's what I want.
Garret Dillahunt
#41. I look for the character to be something interesting, the script to have a good story and be original, and a director that I admire.
Josh Hartnett
#42. That's probably when I get the most angry at American movies, when they just so cynically manipulate the audience without even trying to give a good story.
Gene Siskel
#43. Sensationalism sells: Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Tiger Woods
#44. I found out a long time ago that if I didn't have a good story for a song, I could just make one up! Now it seems over half the stories in my show are made up. The funny thing is, those seem to be the ones that resonate the most with the audiences.
Ronny Cox
#45. Nothing spoils a good story like the arrival of an eyewitness.
Mark Twain
#46. Good story' means something worth telling that the world wants to hear. Finding this is your lonely task ... But the love of a good story, of terrific characters and a world driven by your passion, courage, and creative gifts is still not enough. Your goal must be a good story well told.
Robert McKee
#47. In terms of writing characters or stories, at least initially, there's no difference between live-action and animation. A good story is a good story, whatever the medium.
Michael Arndt
#48. Why do bad things happen to good people?'
'Because it makes a good story.
Andrew Kaufman
#49. A good story will keep you wondering about what's happening, what's going on, where does this go? Now it's going to go that way, now it's going to go that way. It has to do that. If it's predictable, it's just boring.
Fede Alvarez
#50. I think about how much of a good story seems to happen elsewhere, off the canvas or screen or page, in Europe or a backwater New Brunswick town, in what is left unsaid. A word on the tip of the tongue, ungraspable. The teasing smush of a feather boa over naked breasts in a striptease.
Lisa Moore
#51. The way the films look will never entertain an audience alone. It has to be in the service of a good story with great characters.
John Lasseter
#52. It's not an epitaph. I felt I could look back at my life and get a good story out of it. It's a picture of somebody trying to figure things out. I'm not trying to create some impression about myself. That doesn't interest me.
Alan Alda
#53. My uncle told a great story with his life, but I think there was such a sadness at his funeral because his story wasn't finished. If you aren't telling a good story, nobody thinks you died too soon; they just think you died. But my uncle died too soon.
Donald Miller
#55. I'm just trying to tell a good story and make thought-provoking, entertaining films. I just try and draw upon the great culture we have as a people, from music, novels, the streets.
Spike Lee
#56. No reporter worth his buttons will let the facts intrude on a good story.
Barbara Kingsolver
#57. A good story is elegantly wrapped, and the child discovers things bit by bit.
Robert Ingpen
#58. It's interesting that in the Bible, in the book of Ecclesiastes, the only practical advice given about living a meaningful life is to find a job you like, enjoy your marriage, and obey God. It's as though God is saying, Write a good story, take somebody with you, and let me help.
Donald Miller
#59. Every good story needs a good ending. Don't write the beginning of a novel without knowing the end of it.
A.D.Y. Howle
#60. Your first obligation as a writer is to tell the truth and to tell a good story.
Lena Waithe
#61. I think the writer makes a good story good or a good story bad. The writer has a great deal of responsibility.
Tom Robinson
#62. As writers, we must keep throwing problems at our characters. Conflict is the heart of good storytelling. Hiking in nature along a twisting trail can remind us what a good story feels like. It's the opposite of a treadmill - or an interstate highway.
Kate Klise
#64. People prefer a good story to sound theology!
Rossol Ian
#65. I am filled suddenly with hope. I don't think I will ever die. We are looking for ghosts, but, I think, a good story will do.
Tony Earley
#66. That's what was so amazing about 'Mulan.' Here is this story with all Chinese characters, and yet so many people related to her character and loved the story. So I really think as long as you have a good story that relates to a lot of people, it doesn't matter what ethnicity it is.
Ming-Na Wen
#67. A good story is [a] kind of irritant. You read it, then you cannot stop thinking about it. Eventually, your mind and heart encyst about it, and what occurs is a pearl of the soul.
Jane Yolen
#68. A good story should make you laugh, and a moment later break your heart.
Chuck Palahniuk
#69. And, of course, one of the great true facts of the world is this: for every old-timer who dies, there's a new old-timer coming along. And a good story never dies; it is always passed down.
Stephen King
#70. I'd love to do another film version of 'Romeo & Juliet.' I'm not too picky as long as it's a good story.
Rutina Wesley
#71. Narrative is the way to communicate ideas. Philosophy just tastes bad to most people unless you wrap it up in a good story.
Lily King
#72. You know, I remember watching Morgan Freeman when he did the two Alex Cross movies, and he's so confident that he's going to knock the scene dead. And I'm really confident that I can tell a good story now, so I just don't worry about things.
James Patterson
#73. A good story gives you more of a license to be forward and progressive with the music.
Sam Hunt
#74. As a rule, anyone who can tell a good story can write one, so there really need be no mistake about his qualification; such a man will be careful not to be wearisome, and to keep his point, or his catastrophe, well in hand.
James Payn
#75. I have always felt that a good story is a good story, and that it transcends setting and genre
Julia Blake
#76. I have no problems with remakes, and I think it's interesting. I mean, coming from the theater, we've been remaking 'Hamlet' for a hundred years, so it's no problem to me at all. A good story can be told in many different ways in different places; I just think it's interesting.
Baltasar Kormakur
#77. The story was gradually taking shape. Pilon liked it this way. It ruined a story to have it all come out quickly. The good story lay in half-told things which must be filled in out of the hearer's own experience.
John Steinbeck
#78. When it comes to bending the truth to assist a story's plot versus staying completely true to the facts, we can assure you any dramatist will always select the former. Mark Twain's old saying "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story" still reigns in Hollywood.
James Morcan
#79. Writing is a tough business, but never forget the reason why you write. It's for the love of story telling. Fame and fortune may elude you, but that's no reason to give up. Remember, there's always someone ready to listen to a good story.
Robert Bartram
#80. A good story remains a good story, whether it is on glossy paper or a mobile phone display, is carved into marble tablets or appears as a Bild headline.
Mathias Dopfner
#81. I'm drawn to a good story, really, as I hope most people are. For me, it's the story that's going to stay with you eventually, not necessarily the genre. I go to watch a film because of the story, not because it was a Western or a comedy.
Ryan Kwanten
#82. I didn't ever think of it as a social thing at the time. I took it as a good story. Maybe because I've always been kind of progressive so I never thought of it, you know.
Rod Steiger
#83. To be completely honest, I just like whatever tells a good story. Put me in whatever setting, scenario, genre. If you're telling a good story, it's great and it's fun to get caught up in.
Drew Roy
#85. I do think a good story in a novel is fair game and there's nothing wrong with adapting that. It sometimes gets a bit facile where they think: "Let's get the next best-seller and see if we can turn it into a film."
Colin Firth
#86. Great writers know what to cut out. It's the same in life. Clear ambitions. Clear relationships. This is the stuff of good story.
Donald Miller
#87. A movie can and should have some real dissonance throughout - rage, heartache, tears, conflict, catharsis and all the other elements Aristotle demanded of a good story - but the chord has to be resolved.
Josh Radnor
#88. The important thing about any book is that you have to have a good story and that it has to be exciting. Then it's nice to add other levels underneath that people can pick up on.
Jonathan Stroud
#89. I have no skills. I mean, I can make jokes, I'm pretty good at talking to people on the Judge John Hodgman podcast. I can figure out what makes a pretty good story, and I can make eggs really well.
John Hodgman
#90. I come from a long line of serial embellishers. Sometimes a good story's got a ghost in it; sometimes a panther chases my Uncle Bill and Fred Price home from a coon hunt.
Tony Earley
#91. I'm not a religious person; I would call myself an atheist. I don't have a good story behind it, I'm just reasonable.
Anthony Jeselnik
#92. As a media member, my goal is to inform the American fans of persons of character. It's a joy for me, either writing a good story or telling a story on video.
Dominique Dawes
#93. I think a good story, well told is a good story, well told, whether you're watching the episodes all in a row or not. However, it might be fun to take a closer look at how the previous episode ends and how that end relates to the beginning of the next episode.
Jenji Kohan
#94. Friendship warms like a sunbeam; charms like a good story; inspires like a brave leader; binds like a golden chain; guides like a heavenly vision ...
Newell Dwight Hillis
#96. Action is the pulse of any good story, but the character is the heart. If the action has no consequence to the character, the story loses heart.
Linda W. Yezak
#97. Not that I've always loved the movie when they finally come out, or if they ever come out-because many of them don't come out-but I've gotten to work with really good story editors and stuff like that.
John Sayles
#98. What's the point of having a good story if no one gets to hear it?
Claire Fayers
#99. I don't look at stories in genres. A good story is a good story, no matter what planet it happens on, whether the characters are mice or human or whatever. That's how I look at it.
Tony DiTerlizzi
