Top 100 I Have A Story To Tell Quotes
#1. I have a story to tell to anyone who is willing to listen.
Samy Dib
#2. I have a story to tell. It is a tale for those who can still see, can still question.
A story of where you are and how you got here. A tale foretold by your poets and prophets through the ages. Read their words, their thoughts, so that you may understand.
W.H. Wisecarver
#3. I would like a food/lifestyle show. We're not sure what that is yet. I want to be able to share what I do and how I raise my family. I feel like I have a story to tell. I enjoy talking and listening, sharing ideas and sharing advice.
Cat Cora
#4. You may have heard the news that the independent bookstore is dead, that books are dead, that maybe even reading is dead - to which I say, Pull up a chair, friend. I have a story to tell.
Ann Patchett
#5. Like most writers, I just create because I have a story to tell, really.
Tom Stoppard
#6. I do all the things that singer-songwriters do. I introduce the songs, I have a story to tell about everything all the time - I cannot be on stage and have something on my mind without telling the audience. I'm super emotional and expressive and vulnerable in that moment.
India.Arie
#7. The Irish tell the story of a man who arrives at the gates of heaven and asks to be let in St. Peter says, "Of course, just show us your scars." The man says, "I have no scars". St. Peter says, "What a pity was there nothing worth fighting for"?
Martin Sheen
#8. I have from the first felt sure that the writer, when he sits down to commence his novel, should do so, not because he has to tell a story, but because he has a story to tell. The novelist's first novel will generally have sprung from the right cause.
Anthony Trollope
#9. I think the business of writing a great deal of it is the business of paying attention to your characters, to the world they live in, to the story you have to tell, but just a kind of deep attention and out of that if you pay attention properly the story will tell you what it needs.
Salman Rushdie
#10. I never try to give a message in my books. It's about living with characters long enough to hear their voices and let them tell me the story. Sometimes I would love to have a happy ending, and it doesn't happen because the character or the story leads me in another direction.
Isabel Allende
#11. Whenever I work on a film, I have three rules. Only three and I tell them to every screenwriter. I say let's retain the spirit and the intent of the overall story. Let's make it the best film that we possibly can.
Nicholas Sparks
#12. But hey, at least we'll have this strange story to tell, love and death and blood and daddy-issues. And holy crap, I'm a psychiatrist's wet dream.
Kendare Blake
#13. People like to come up to me and tell me that I've got nice ink. Except these tattoos aren't just decorations. They are declarations. Every tattoo I have tells its own story about who I am. Drug-free. Honor. And a war against the system.
CM Punk
#14. Saying my story makes me want to change it, make it sound pretty the way I do with the stories I tell the workers. I'd like it to have a beginning as grand as a ball and an ending in a whisper, like a mother tucking in a child for sleep.
Shannon Hale
#16. I love 'Memory Keeper's Daughter,' but in some ways I think 'The Lake of Dreams' is a stronger book. I was able to tell the story I wanted to tell. That's all you can ever do as a writer. From there on you have no control over it.
Kim Edwards
#17. I read a zombie story, and I have nightmares for days. But my youngest sister loves zombie stories. So when she insisted it was time for Bards and Sages to put together a zombie book, I couldn't tell her 'no.'
Julie Ann Dawson
#18. I don't really set out to explore grand themes. I set out to tell a story. And one I have to be able to imagine right through.
John Irving
#19. I smile quietly. She is with me all the time. I feel stupid now, for not seeing it sooner. But hey, at least we'll have this strange story to tell, love and death and blood and daddy-issues. And holy crap, I am a psychiatrist's wet dream.- Cas Lowood, Anna Dressed in Blood
Kendare Blake
#20. I have noticed that when people tell their own stories, often it has less to do with wanting to communicate an idea to another than with clarifying an emotion to themselves. Or when the subject of the story is beloved and missing, as a way to make them here and alive.
Lydia Minatoya
#21. In the end, I will have to make a choice about how to tell my story ... There has to be a moment of going forward, when all the possibilities are left behind.
Helen Humphreys
#22. I have not forgotten my story I want to tell Millennial women. I'm still waiting for them all to gather out there. I sent out a request for people to call Millennial that they know.
Rush Limbaugh
#23. What seems most significant to me about our movement [Impressionism] is that we have freed painting from the importance of the subject. I am at liberty to paint flowers and call them flowers, without their needing to tell a story.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
#24. I think any good singer needs to be a good actor. You have to be able to tell the story.
Erica Schroeder
#25. I have said before that I'm not a a "curist" and I'm not an "ablist" but a "neutral" because I believe everyone has a story to tell without going to unhealthy extremes if we listened with our hearts we would learn about each others experiences.
Paul Isaacs
#26. I like directing. It takes a lot out of you, but I'd like to do it again - I just have to find a story I want to tell.
Kevin Bacon
#27. That's a very real feeling - that I don't have a story to tell. I'm not a pure storyteller. I have a tough time with story.
Aaron Sorkin
#28. If eavesdropping on someone else's nightmares is supposed to make me feel better, I'd rather stay feeling like shit. I don't think telling them about my horror story would do me any good. And besides, I'm not even supposed to have a story to tell. - Nastya Kashnikov
Katja Millay
#29. And what if I fail?" "Ah! Then you'll have a story to tell.
Julie Orringer
#30. It's a luxury to be able to tell a long form story. I love novels, and I love to have a long relationship with characters.
Jane Campion
#31. You have a low opinion of yourself, Helen."
"I wasn't born with it."
"Where did you get it?"
'The story" she said, "is too long to tell, and too dull to listen to.
Margaret Millar
#32. I think I have always wanted to tell stories. My mother was the real catalyst. I kept talking about it and so she pulled out a story I wrote (and illustrated) back in elementary school. She used that as proof that I should be writing and had been doing so unconsciously for years.
Kim Smith
#33. I couldn't have known 'Crank' was going to be published, let alone become a big hit. That book was very personal for me: I had to tell the story for myself.
Ellen Hopkins
#34. When Josh and I are recording a record, we're very mindful of how the music will manifest itself live. That's where we have to live every day. When we tour for the next record, I imagine there will be a new story to tell, and we'll introduce new characters.
Tyler Joseph
#35. If your hair has never given you any trouble, if you've never had huge fights with your mother about it, then you might not have a story to tell. But I think most people do.
Elizabeth Benedict
#36. I failed everything in school. I left when I was 13 because I had no comprehension of what the hell they were talking about up there at the blackboard. I must have that ADD thing. But, listening to people I thought, that's wonderful to be able to tell a story.
Malachy McCourt
#37. I have been sent three or four scripts for television series, but there wasn't anything I really wanted to do. I want to tell a good story, whether it's a TV show, a movie, whatever. That's really my No. 1 criteria.
Jorge Garcia
#38. Unfortunately I have no rags-to-riches story to tell. Money never played a big role for me. My parents just had it.
Stelios Haji-Ioannou
#39. A Writer says: read what I have written An historian says: listen to my lecture A critic says: listen to what I think A journalist says: let me tell you a story.
Gideon Haigh
#40. President Obama was asked not long ago to reflect on any mistakes he might have made. He said, well, 'I haven't communicated enough.' He said his job is to 'tell a story to the American people' - as if that's the whole problem here? He needs to talk more, and we need to be better listeners?
Paul Ryan
#41. I have a nice little idea from some people I met there who are now in their seventies, and I want to tell their story about the revolution through the eyes of musicians, in fact. The '59 Revolution. And what has happened to them since. It's very much a Cuban story. They haven't fared too well.
John Gimlette
#42. The way I think of my work is that I have to think up the way to tell a story, starting from scratch. The changes in the industry concern me in a general way because I think civilization is doomed.
Aleksandar Hemon
#43. To me, he is art, poetry for the eyes and heart. He is the most terrifyingly beautiful guy I have ever seen. And his scars have to tell a story ...
Jessica Sorensen
#44. Actually, I met a lot of directors and most of them have that fantasy to make a silent movie because for directors it's the purest way to tell a story. It's about creating images that tell a story and you don't need dialogue for that.
Michel Hazanavicius
#45. The only thing of value I have in this life is my ability to tell a story, whether in print, orating, writing it down or having people acting it out. That's why I'm always hoping society never collapses because the first ones to go will be entertainers.
Kevin Smith
#46. I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story.
Wilkie Collins
#47. I've had frustrated storytelling juices that have been lying dormant for a long time, and I guess the documentary was a way of me telling a story that I felt most qualified to tell. And I loved it, and I'd love to do something else someday, probably more narrative-based. But I'm in no rush.
Eric Bana
#48. I have found that a story leaves a deeper impression when it is impossible to tell which side the author is on.
Leo Tolstoy
#49. Each stroke of your fingers is a different word that describes the story. By itself it's meaningless, but - " I pushed down on a few fingers helping her play a few notes. "String them together and you have a melody. You have a story. So, Saylor, what story do you want to tell?
Rachel Van Dyken
#50. I tend over the years to have developed a certain hesitancy about believing that headlines tell the whole story.
Donald Rumsfeld
#51. I'm giving away my family's story. Who owns the family's story? I don't. But you could turn it around and ask, 'Who is to deny me to write my family's story?' I have hurt people, but I don't think in a dangerous way. But you can't tell.
Karl Ove Knausgaard
#52. The most questionable thing I did was make Superman a government agent. If this had been a Superman story, I'd never have done that - and I know that, because I have a Superman story I want to tell someday. In this story, Batman was the hero, so the world was built around him.
Frank Miller
#53. I try to let go of the intellect and just tell the story. I only read the page I have in front of me on the screen. Then when the whole story is told, I print it, wait a week and read it.
Isabel Allende
#54. I have a blog where I keep in touch with my fans. I write about things that are important to me. Sometimes on there I'll just tell a little story about the things that happen in my everyday life. People seem to enjoy them well enough.
Patrick Rothfuss
#55. I think there's a story inside every one of us and we all have different talents that allow us to tell our story whether that be through words, art, crafts, music or simply by sharing our life with those we love. Don't let your story go untold.
Susan Rushmore
#56. If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending ...
But if it's a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone.
You don't tell a story only to yourself. There's always someone else. Even when there is no one.
Margaret Atwood
#57. I think I have a disease called spontaneous disclosure. I need to tell everyone my life story instantaneously.
Kelly Ripa
#58. I have spent a lot of my life trying to do good and be a humanitarian, to write about difficult places, and to tell the story of oppressed peoples.
Andrew Solomon
#59. I'm proud of 'Black Hawk Down' because I think it told a provocative story and it was honest. It could have had more opportunity to tell both sides of the story, but I'm still proud of it.
Josh Hartnett
#60. Relax Guild Boss. You have my word of honor that I won't tell a soul about your connection to Watson Whitaker." she winked. "Frankly,though, I doubt if the story would do you any real damage if it did get out. Might even give you a boost in the popularity ratings back home. People love legends.
Jayne Castle
#61. I would say as a journalist, I would envision travelling to other countries that have had to reckon with their past and see how they've done it: what worked, what didn't work, finding characters that would tell the story of how that process was done.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
#62. I don't really know what is shocking. When you tell the story of a man who is beheaded, you have to show how they cut off his head. If you don't, it's like telling a dirty joke and leaving out the punch line.
Roman Polanski
#63. When I don't have a story to tell, I'm a terror to live with.
Steven Spielberg
#64. It is my belief that we as human beings have a need to tell stories - I think it's evolutionary. So you can think of the short story as a literary form, or you can instead think of stories.
Aleksandar Hemon
#65. Jack Benny was, without a doubt, the bravest comedian I have ever seen work. He wasn't afraid of silence. He would take as long as it took to tell the story.
Bob Newhart
#66. I guess it's a sequel to our story From the journey 'tween heaven and hell With half the time thinking of what might have been and half thinkin' just as well. I guess only time will tell.
Harry Chapin
#67. I always have a contract with a character. Even when he's unappealing. The contract is to give him his due. To tell his story. And to keep his secrets.
Stephen Lang
#68. I feel with this film that as long as we tell Philomena's story and as long as we're true to her, which Jeff and Steve have already done by writing the story ... we must not sell her short;. She's a most remarkable woman and all my concern was that we must be absolutely true to her story.
Judi Dench
#69. I'm supposed to share the Lord with people. All of us are disciples on some level. You don't have to be behind the podium to tell a story, connect with people and share the Gospel.
Trai Byers
#70. You have to start by changing the story you tell yourself
about getting older... The minute you say to yourself, 'Time
is everything, and I'm going to make sure that time is used
the way I dream it should be used,' then you've got a whole
different story.
Diane Sawyer
#71. When I read 'The Water Diviner,' I was having the same kind of visceral reaction that I would normally have acting in something. I believed that I was the only person that could tell this story the way it needed to be told. That's the real arrogance of a director!
Russell Crowe
#72. I have found, writing a blog, that being non-opaque is necessary. You pretty much have to say what you know in much more firm terms or risk that the legions who always know more than you do will tell the story better.
Kara Swisher
#73. I think I've learned that if you want to be successful, you have to tell your story honestly and from your heart - and I think a healthy sense of humor doesn't hurt either.
Dorothea Benton Frank
#74. A filmmaker has to have great vision in order to tell a compelling story that is both distinctive and stylistic. I remember playing all movies in my head hundreds of times before they were ever made. You have to see it in your imagination. It has to be real to you.
Nicholas Ozeki
#75. I think a lot of people, including me, clammed up when a civilian asked about battle, about war. It was fashionable. One of the most impressive ways to tell your war story is to refuse to tell it, you know. Civilians would then have to imagine all kinds of deeds of derring-do.
Kurt Vonnegut
#76. Someone asked me if I was afraid to write my memoirs. I told him: 'We have to stop drawing up accounts of fear! We live in a society in which people are allowed to tell their story, and that is what I do.'
Salman Rushdie
#77. I have a hard time keeping a story straight when I tell the truth because when you start lying you have to remember what you said, and I'm not very good at that.
Lisa Vanderpump
#78. I've tried, in 'Bloodmoney,' to tell a story that gets at the crazy relationship between the ISI and the CIA, these absolutely fascinating, often mutually destructive two scorpions in a bottle kind of relationship that they have.
David Ignatius
#79. 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
#80. I think decor says a lot about someone's social position, their taste, their sensibility, their work - and also about the aesthetic way I have chosen to tell their story.
Pedro Almodovar
#81. I'll tell you right now, the doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is the door; if you have an old, old story, that is the door.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
#82. My wish has always been to write my own story, to create a life that's worth writing about. But is a story worth anything at all if I have no one to tell it to?
Charlotte Eriksson
#83. To name the world in your own terms, to tell your own story, is an act of authority and power. When you write, you are saying, in effect, 'I have a voice. I have a story. This is what I have to say.'
Rebecca McClanahan
#84. I am only a mouthpiece through which to tell the story of lynching and I have told it so often that I know it by heart. I do not have to embellish; it makes its own way.
Ida B. Wells
#85. I wake up in the morning and I still have a passion for what I do, and I'll be doing it when I'm 105, I'll be scribbling away. If it was 100 years ago I'd be sitting by the campfire, saying, "Have I got a story to tell you."
Jackie Collins
#86. 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
#87. If I lived through this day, nay this adventure, I would have one heck of a story to tell when I returned home. If I ever went home again.
Rae Z. Ryans
#88. The reason why I love people, and writing about them, is because they don't always respond with hate and anger. If they did I wouldn't have a story to tell. Who wants to know about someone who was brutalised and became brutal? I'm interested in the exceptions.
Chris Cleave
#89. I have never made a game that wasn't explicitly about empowering players to tell their own story.
Warren Spector
#90. I believe in heaven more than hell, lessons more than jail.
In the ghetto, let love prevail with a story to tell.
My eyes see the glory, and well,
The world waiting for me to yell, "I Have A Dream!"
Common
#91. I have an obligation as a writer to tell a story as interestingly as possible, but with integrity and not inserting false drama ... I'm looking to be subtle, but being a wordsmith does not interest me - I want to communicate.
Jonathan Coleman
#92. When I was in college, I did sort of want to be a journalist. Being an actor, you kind of have the same interest. You go into a story, and you tell it from your point of view for people who aren't there. That's what an actor does with a character. But the real life is more more interesting.
Sigourney Weaver
#93. I'm happy to have a physical part in 'High Tension,' in 'Hereafter,' and in a lot of French movies and Belgian movies. But its not by chance directors choose me for physical parts. I like to do that. I like to tell a story also with the body. It's important, because you can tell a lot of things.
Cecile De France
#94. I've allowed some of these points to stand, because this is a book of memory, and memory has its own story to tell. But I have done my best to make it tell a truthful story.
Tobias Wolff
#95. I like directing much better. It's more fun, that's all there is to it. It's essentially the same job, which is storytelling, but you have more control over the way you want to tell the story. It's a high. I love it.
Mel Gibson
#96. I can't tell a story about a working-class family on a premium channel that you have to pay to get.
Cristela Alonzo
#97. The library was magical because every time I walked through the door, there were literally thousands of voices ready and willing to have a conversation with me. I walked through the door, stared at all those stacks and bindings, and whispered, Tell me a story.
Charles Martin
#98. I would've never done a 1970's road movie. It just wouldn't have occurred to me. So when he started talking about it he brought up all these movies and he'll do that with you guys and you'll feel the Goosebumps as you start realizing the story that he wanted to tell.
Todd Farmer
#99. I do have screenplays I've written that never saw the light of day, but I don't usually go back to them. When I've told a story, I want to tell another story.
Joss Whedon
#100. I have such pride in furthering the American musical and using it as a way to tell story.
Rachel Bloom
