My Story To Tell Quotes

#1. On the one hand I wonder, Was this really my story to tell? On the other hand, I just wanted the story to be told. But the truth is that I didn't think anybody was going to read it.

Kathryn Stockett

#2. My scars tell a story. They are a reminder of times when life tried to break me, but failed. They are markings of where the structure of my character was welded.

Steve Maraboli

#3. When I make movies, I don't ever go out there to please anyone other than myself. I never try to make a film for the masses. I just try to tell my story.

Lee Daniels

#4. Dumb luck brought on the move from business to acting. I had moved to New York when I was 23, in the year 2000. On a lark, I went to audition for a soap opera. I thought, 'Hey, this will be a really fun story to tell my grandkids one day, that I auditioned for a soap!'

Teddy Sears

#5. My family, they're story tellers. My mom is Irish, and my dad is Italian. In my family, we weren't allowed to watch TV while we ate - we had to sit around the table and tell stories about our day.

Meg Cabot

#6. 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

#7. If someone knows me and likes me or my work, they're more likely to allow me to tell their story. But it also cuts the other way.

Anderson Cooper

#8. There are very few works of fiction that take you inside the heads of all characters. I tell my writing students that one of the most important questions to ask yourself when you begin writing a story is this: Whose story is it? You need to make a commitment to one or perhaps a few characters.

Julia Glass

#9. I chose to tell a personal story. When you tell a movie like this that's as emotionally charged as this is, it's a risk. As one of my great cinematic heroes, Francis Coppola, would say, "If you aren't taking the highest, greatest risk, then why are you a filmmaker?"

Christian Bale

#10. But I have forgotten to tell you how I came into the world, and am telling you my father's story instead of my own. You seem to like hearing about it though, and you can't understand one without the other.

Thomas Hughes

#11. 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

#12. I don't think "I'm going to publish this as fiction" but I think "I'm going to tell this story to a friend" and then I start telling the story in my mind as the experience transpires as a way of pretending it's already happened.

Ben Lerner

#13. Wait till it's my turn to tell the story! They'll be like 'Bear who?

T.J. Klune

#14. I do like playing the darker side of life but as much as the lighter side as well. They all resonate out of the same place, which is that everyone has a story to tell. Depending on their upbringing and their history, it determines who they are as an adult. My job is to take the role from there.

Michael Eklund

#15. I could never have a mistress, because I couldn't bear to tell the story of my life all over again.

Oscar Levant

#16. I am one man with a laptop. When I give the world my characters, it's because I don't want to keep them for myself. You don't like what I made them do? Fucking tell me I'm wrong! Rewrite the story. Throw in a new plot twist. Make up your own ending.

J.C. Lillis

#17. I always choose my projects for the script or what the director want to tell with that story. And if I like the story.

Elena Anaya

#18. I don't want you to write about what you know, because you don't know anything. I don't want to hear about your boyfriend or your grandma ... I'm getting a little tired of 'my life story as fiction'. Please don't tell me about your little life - is there nothing larger? More important?

Toni Morrison

#19. Writers are given one great story to tell their story. I'm telling my story as a political document.

Larry Kramer

#20. For a long time, I was portrayed as the Osama bin Laden of the Internet, and I really wanted to be able to tell my side of the story. I wanted to be able to explain exactly what I did and what I didn't do to people who thought they knew me.

Kevin Mitnick

#21. I think no one but me has the right to write about my life as I want to write it in a particular way. I don't think any other person will be able to tell the story of my life like how I have approached it. It works best when it's written by someone who has experienced it herself.

Preity Zinta

#22. I just wrapped 'Eclipse' yesterday and the last scene we shot is probably my favorite thus far. I finally got to tell my story, in a very gentle yet elaborate way.

Nikki Reed

#23. A lot of banging in the head has built up over the decades, and for my own sanity, I needed to write. I wanted to see if I could tell an honest, organic story about characters that interest me.

Martin Donovan

#24. 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

#25. I do not put myself in a box and say, for instance, I'm writing post-colonial literature. I don't know what I'm writing. That's the business of professors and critics. My job is to tell a story, and that's it.

Isabel Allende

#26. If I could have found what I needed at thirteen, I would not have lost so much of my life chasing vindication or death. Give some child, some thirteen-year old, the hope of the remade life. Tell the truth. Write the story that you were always afraid to tell. I swear to you there is magic in it.

Dorothy Allison

#27. 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

#28. I think the impulse to get to the heart of the story and to tell it well is in my genes.

Amy Bloom

#29. Whenever people ask me what the story is for my next film, I won't tell and people feel it's because I'm being secretive or something, but it's actually because I'm ashamed to sum up a film in three sentences.

Abbas Kiarostami

#30. So I am content to tell my simple story, without trying to make things seem better than they were; dreading nothing, indeed, but falsity, which, in spite of one's best efforts, there is reason to dread.

George Eliot

#31. The framed tale is, in my opinion, one of the most natural ways to tell a story. If you think of it, the conceit of the frame-less story is actually the odd way of doing things. Without the frame, how do you know the context for a story?

Patrick Rothfuss

#32. I think the hardest stories we tell are always the ones about ourselves. And as a journalist, I was taught that I'm never supposed to put myself in the story. So I spent what, 11, 12 years of my life writing about other people so I don't have to face my own life.

Jose Antonio Vargas

#33. Gastronomy is my hobby. I'm simply the casting director. Once I've brought all the right people together, it is they who must work together to tell a story.

Alain Ducasse

#34. I compromised my ability to tell my story, at the most basic level.

Joyce Maynard

#35. I am a story-teller working with a craft. My job is to use my craft - which is a different thing to my race - and tell a story well.

Gavin Hood

#36. And so, when I was a young writer I always worked hard on imagery, and I knew that the roots of imagery were the senses - and that if my readers could feel, taste and see what I was talking about, I would be able to tell them a story.

Adriana Trigiani

#37. 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

#38. As a historian, what I trust is my ability to take a mass of information and tell a story shaped around it.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

#39. The EU lacks a story. For previous generations, the peace argument was a sufficient. But what story do I tell my 20-year-old son? How do I explain to him that we need the EU for the future?

Margot Wallstrom

#40. 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

#41. I try not to think too much about where my voice comes from. I'm channeling characters and emotion to come up with beautiful words that tell a story.

Gin Wigmore

#42. My gift seems to be that I am able to tell a story in a comprehensible and engaging way.

Peter Coyote

#43. My dad has a great expression. He always says, 'Tell me a fact and I'll learn, tell me the truth and I believe, but tell me a story, and it will live in my heart forever.' Interestingly enough now, my dad's story is going to be in Canton and hopefully that will live forever, too.

Steve Sabol

#44. When my wife passed, I stopped doing interviews and I stopped doing meet-and-greets, mostly because I sort of became this suicide ambassador. Everybody wanted to tell me their story.

Gary Allan

#45. I don't want to tell what the songs are about for me, because then people can't decide for themselves, which is why I write; it's for you to find your own meaning in. For me it's my story, for someone else it's theirs; if I tell exactly what it means, then it's only my story.

Brian Fallon

#46. I simply want to tell the story of my experiments with truth ... as my life consists of nothing but those experiments.

Mahatma Gandhi

#47. Now all the mute objects of my life seem to tell my story, to stretch back in time, if I look closely enough.

Jeffrey Eugenides

#48. I want my music to be able to tell a story about what I've experienced and what I think my fans will be able to understand also.

Cody Simpson

#49. 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

#50. In my work, I just want to tell a story and help people go on a journey. I'm glad any fans that I do have, and I'm usually not aware of it until I get out there or read a message board. I want to thank everyone who follows my work.

Kenny Johnson

#51. I am proud of having drawn the first comic about a lesbian - and it didn't even occur to me that I was drawing a first. I just wanted to tell the story of my roommate.

Trina Robbins

#52. When I am writing anything in general, I just want to tell the story that exists in my head; I don't try to write a parable or make a point.

Lauren DeStefano

#53. The first 'Monsters, Inc.' represents starting at Pixar for me, I have a special place in my heart for it. So to be able to tell a story with those ideas is an honor.

Dan Scanlon

#54. If I show consideration for others," Lillian Lynburn said grumpily, "will you tell me again about how you shot my husband?"
Jon rolled his eyes. "Yes, Leigh, if you manage to approximate human behavior for half an hour, I will tell you your favorite story again.

Sarah Rees Brennan

#55. I mean, if I went into my closet, I could find a previous draft and try to figure that out, but it takes a long time for me to find the voice to tell a story in. I was working from other points of view for a couple years there.

Alice Sebold

#56. It's why I am a writer...To avoid the narrow mesh of Mrs Winterson's story I had to be able to tell my own.

Jeanette Winterson

#57. That's why I'm compelled to tell this story - don't we all have one secret that has shaped us we are burning to reveal? - to convince myself that I'm entitled to my own life. (pg 4)

Jill Bialosky

#58. As a writer, my main objective is to tell the story urgently - as if whispering it into one ear - and to know the characters intimately.

Julianna Baggott

#59. My mission is to tell the story of the birth of ourselves as a universal humanity, awakening all of us to our unique opportunity to participate through our own conscious evolution.

Barbara Marx Hubbard

#60. The highest admiration I have for my colleagues is not for someone in a studio in New York but for somebody on the ground in places that they've gone to fight to tell the story.

Charlie Rose

#61. I make the surprised O with my mouth, although I am not really that surprised. It was the kind of story that grownups tell children to complicate a thing when they could just tell you the thing itself, much faster.

Claire King

#62. My dad knows how to tell a story. He'd make me laugh by doing all the different voices.

Lily Collins

#63. I'm just looking at whatever moment I'm at, trying to tell a story that at that time feels like it needs to be told, like I want to see it and how I'm feeling in my life.

Daryl Wein

#64. I am a hopeless pantser, so I don't do much outlining. A thought will occur to me, and I'll just throw it into the story. I tell myself I'll worry about untangling it later. I'm glad no one sees my first drafts except for my poor editor and agent.

Marie Lu

#65. I think, even a lot of people that make movies forget is that, in my mind, a movie should work with the sound off. You should be able to watch a movie without the sound and understand what's going on. That's your job, to build a series of chronological images that tell the story.

Channing Tatum

#66. As soon as I saw tattoos as a way to tell your story, I thought, 'Oh my gosh, I totally get it.' So I got my first tattoo a couple of years ago, and it's the word 'hope' on my left arm. It has a couple of dots at the end for each of my kids.

Kristian Bush

#67. What makes for a good argument, at bottom, is being more prepared than anyone else in that courtroom, and being willing to fight to tell your client's story - the story of why the right view of the law and my client's interests are one and the same.

Patricia Millett

#68. I want to know about my mom. And other stuff. I want to know the whole story, good or bad."
"Me, too," said Gazzy. "I want to find my parents so I can tell'm what total scuzzes they are. Like, 'Hi, mom and dad, you're such scum!

James Patterson

#69. Sugar, that's what they always say. Ya know, everybody wantz to tell stories but they just end up makin' their own story with me to tell to someone else. I haven't heard any stories but I bet I'm in a lot. You don't know it now, but it costs money for my stories.

Chad Faries

#70. Which story do you want to hear my child?"he picked him up and made him sit on his lap.
"Tell us the story of that fairy who lived in a house of wafers,had a garden of chocolate trees and a pond full of goldfishes,"the child wrapped his arms around his shoulder.

Chitralekha Paul

#71. My intent, here, is to tell our story in a dramatically truthful way. While the facts may be less than accurate, please understand that the emotion is true. The intent is true. And, dramatically speaking, intention is everything.

Garth Stein

#72. Just remember, please, most of that stuff is in the past. It isn't the story I want to tell. At all.
You needed to know it, but for the rest of this, I'm choosing my own story.
Because if you can't do that, you might as well just give up.

Patrick Ness

#73. I'm an audience member first. My inspiration is still based on hunger. Often, when people try to tell me "nobody wants that story; I'm like bullshit because I want it."

Victoria Mahoney

#74. I got a certain type of respect in the streets, that's why they call me Tha Truth. And I gotta speak the truth. I gotta stand up for what's right. Every great person and true soldier has a great story to tell and this is a part of my story.

Trae Tha Truth

#75. My goal always is to tell a universal story, meaning it's about a person who has an idea, a vision, a dream, an ambition to make the world somewhat less chaotic.

Irving Stone

#76. When my father made 'Jean de Florette' and 'Manon des Sources' back to back, everybody said, 'Why two movies?' But you need two movies to show how criminality evolves, and to tell the story: You can't show a man in love with so many women in one big biopic.

Thomas Langmann

#77. I just use my life story as a kind of device on which to hang comic observations. It's not my interest or instinct to tell the world anything pertinent about myself or my family.

Bill Bryson

#78. I need to tell you a story, a tale of fate and emergence.

Emma Richler

#79. I usually don't like to 'spoon feed' my audience, because I grew up idolizing story tellers who tell stories using symbolism, so it was in my nature to do the same.

The Weeknd

#80. Honestly, I expected to get a cold reception because of my subject matter. But when editors took a look at the story I had to tell, and saw that this was not a parochial story at all, they really warmed to it.

Laura Hillenbrand

#81. I've evolved in my writing to tell a more emotional story - my publisher, Random House, has urged that.

Alan Furst

#82. Think of it this way instead: I got better and I have a story and I want to tell the world what Jesus has done in my life because I want Jesus to be glorified. God may use counselors, medications, doctors, and all that, but it's Jesus who heals you.

Louie Giglio

#83. I try to tell my story as simply as possible, with the camera at eye level.

Howard Hawks

#84. Nobody gets to tell me how my story ends but me, she thought, and the words were true enough that she repeated them aloud: "Nobody gets to tell me how my story ends but me.

Seanan McGuire

#85. That's always my ambition is to create a character out of what will help tell the story. I've never been an actor to say my character wouldn't do that, because he should do that in order to help tell the story.

Harrison Ford

#86. Opera tells stories through the pure emotion of music. An exhibition has to tell a story purely visually. I've tried to incorporate both of those things - pure emotion and being more visual - into my writing.

Lisa See

#87. Certainly, I want to capture the reader's attention from the beginning and hold it until the end: that is half the purpose of my art. The other half must be to tell my story in the most honest way that I can.

Edward Abbey

#88. What I always tell my clients is to put yourself in your potential customer's shoes - what would you want to hear about this story/book and does this [marketing material] deliver that information?

Carol White

#89. Yes, in all my research, the greatest leaders looked inward and were able to tell a good story with authenticity and passion.

Depak Chopras

#90. It's my opinion that if you're trying to tell a realistic story that centers around realistic characters, you can't help but touch on important issues. Those issues are what make us human.

Patrick Rothfuss

#91. I had an advantage over a lot of people who had gone to school and earned degrees in writing and had learned the rules for writing, so to speak. My style was just to tell a story but to tell it well, and that has worked out for me so far.

Robert Kurson

#92. 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

#93. 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

#94. Readers often tell me after they've read the books, they find it difficult to sum up the plot in a simple way. My response is, "It's a story about the love a father shares for his daughter. All the rest is just filler."
- MJ Mancini, on his best-selling trilogy, "Revelation".

M.J. Mancini

#95. I didn't think before that I'd done enough to justify publishing an autobiography but after 40 years in show business I'm now ready to tell my story.

Cilla Black

#96. I wanted to come back to Sighet to tell you the story of my death. So that you could prepare yourselves while there was still time. To live? I don't attach any importance to my life any more. I'm alone. No, I wanted to come back, and to warn you. And see how it is, no one will listen to me.

Elie Wiesel

#97. I never make notes; just a few small details when I'm writing, but nothing much. The plot is never written down. I will tell the story to myself, but I won't plan it. I'll speak the narrative in my head for a while.

Ruth Rendell

#98. I've learned a lot since I was a new mother. My approach to struggle and shame now is to talk to yourself like you'd talk to someone you love and reach out to tell your story.

Brene Brown

#99. My primary goal is always to tell a story that will resonate with people on a deeply emotional level.

Chris Milk

#100. I came from a family where, you know, we sat down at the table every night, and you better have a story to tell. My father never wrote his stories down. And you know, I learned that they went farther if you wrote them down.

Ruth Reichl