Own Stories Quotes

#1. The recounting of a life is a cheat ... even our own stories are obscenely distorted ...

Carol Shields

#2. The world disappoints us all, and the ways we change our own stories to survive that disappointment are beautiful and tragic and hilarious.

Daniel Abraham

#3. We are curious creatures, we Taiwanese. Orphans. Eventually, orphans must choose their own names and write their own stories. The beauty of orphanhood is the blank slate.

Shawna Yang Ryan

#4. If you don't recount your family history, it will be lost. Honor your own stories and tell them too. The tales may not seem very important, but they are what binds families and makes each of us who we are.

Madeleine L'Engle

#5. The thought was sobering. How many people's motives didn't match up with what I'd taken for their actions? How many villains were the heroes of their own stories? I didn't know, and I was terribly afraid that I was never going to find out.

Mira Grant

#6. In America, we have so many movies and so much media about the Islamic world, the sub-continental world, but it's not a conversation, it's a monologue. It's always from one point of view. 'If we don't tell our own stories, no one will tell them' is my mantra.

Mira Nair

#7. I've always loved books. I was an avid reader, with any number of my own stories rolling around in my head. Writing them down seemed a logical step.

Kat Martin

#8. There is great nobility in ordinary people. The world disappoints us all, and the ways we change our own stories to survive that disappointment are beautiful and tragic and hilarious. On balance, I find much more to admire about humanity than to despise.

Daniel Abraham

#9. Personal style isn't simply an exercise in parroting but rather an exhibition for our own stories - from the gait of our walk to the rhythm of our speech to the manner in which the necktie falls from the knot.

LZ Granderson

#10. 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

#11. America is an unlikely place - a country built on defiance of the odds; on a belief in the impossible. And I remind you of this because as you set out to live your own stories of success and achievement, it's now your turn to help keep it this way.

Barack Obama

#12. He admired writers whose own stories were as interesting as the ones they wrote.

Adam Langer

#13. I saw everyone, a shifting sea of discomfort and sadness, each person carrying his own pain, each telling her own stories, no story more or less tragic or triumphant than any other.

Jennifer Brown

#14. Have fun, entertain yourself with your work, make yourself laugh and cry with your own stories, make yourself shiver in suspense along with your characters. If you can do that, then you will most likely find a large audience; but even if a large audience is never found, you'll have a happy life.

Dean Koontz

#15. We are all carriers of our own stories. We have never trusted our own voices. Reforms came, but we don't make them. They were presented by people removed from schools, by 'experts'. Such changes bi passes school. School by school changes, however slow, could make a powerful difference.

Deborah Meier

#16. I write my own stories. I like telling stories to little children. I think the good thing about stories is they carry you to another place which you've never been. And you feel like you're just enveloped by the book and the characters.

Georgie Henley

#17. We're all the heroes of our own stories. So, when I am inside the head of a character who would otherwise be considered a villain, I have a great deal of affection for that character and I'm trying to see the world and the events through their eyes.

George R R Martin

#18. People have to identify with their own stories, with their own lives, so a movie belongs to a country and to a culture. Sometimes we can share, but it's very rare.

Carole Bouquet

#19. Perhaps this is what we mean by sanity: that, whatever our self-admitted eccentricities might be, we are not villains of our own stories.

Teju Cole

#20. Seeing 'Pretty Little Liars' fans adapt and create their own stories is both exciting and flattering, and I think what Amazon Publishing is offering through Kindle Worlds is a great way to reward their ingenuity.

Sara Shepard

#21. Sometimes when we say "God is silent," what's really going on is that he hasn't told the story the way we wanted it told. He will be silent when we want him to fill in the blanks of the story we are creating. But with his own stories, the ones we live in, he is seldom silent.

Paul E. Miller

#22. The tabloids create their own stories about people's lives that don't exist.

Elizabeth Olsen

#23. 'Sunshine' is really an experiment for me to see if I am a filmmaker beyond having my own stories to tell.

Dexter Fletcher

#24. What I like best in Baltimore is the people, the neighborhoods and what goes on in the neighborhoods. Each has its own stories, own diners and own quirks. It's about community. I also like everything Old Bay.

Barbara Mikulski

#25. At the end of the day, my life isn't about other people's work. I've got to stop giving stuff away. I've got my own stories to tell, and a great need to tell them. I've got these images, these thoughts in my head, and I need to find a way to cope with them.

Paddy Considine

#26. I can write my own stories and I can write myself in.

Octavia Butler

#27. I love telling stories; I always have, and I think women need to be more proactive about telling their own stories and sharing their points of view.

Dylan Penn

#28. And it's just dawned on me that I might be the author of my own story, but so is everyone else the author of their own stories, and sometimes, like now, there's no overlap.

Jandy Nelson

#29. I always assumed people wanted to hear me tell stories, but then I had 'The Sunset Tree.' It turned out, my own stories were the ones that registered with people the hardest.

John Darnielle

#30. I'm a New Zealand actor, and I really want to be doing our stuff here, and our stuff includes plays from overseas. In terms of survival, maybe I should have taken a shot elsewhere at some point, but it gets back to the same theme - we should have our own people telling our own stories.

Peter Hambleton

#31. It's often difficult to get perspective on your own stories, on your own experiences, without talking them through with someone who is genuinely interested in thinking about them. And that's the key.

Phil Klay

#32. Reading is like breathing in and writing is like breathing out, and storytelling is what links both: it is the soul of literacy. The most powerful tool that we have to strengthen literacy is often the most underused and overlooked, and that is a child's own stories.

Pam Allyn

#33. It's extremely important for women to be writing their own stories and giving them to people to really be emotionally impacted by

Rosario Dawson

#34. Isn't it boring ... how people always want to tell you their own stories instead of listening to yours? I suppose that's why psychiatrists are better than friends; the paid listener doesn't interrupt with his own experiences.

Helen Van Slyke

#35. We all have our own stories, and they part and intersect in many different places. It's

Ginger Scott

#36. We all tell our own stories the way we live our lives. My story is: Life is too short to not believe in fresh voices. I don't have Hollywood stars. I have great American artists.

Kevin McCollum

#37. I don't like captions. I prefer people to look at my pictures and invent their own stories.

Josef Koudelka

#38. I must have been 3 years old or less, and I remember paging through these comics, trying to figure out the stories. I couldn't read the words, so I made up my own stories.

Daniel Clowes

#39. Alone, over my dead fire, I tend to see the thin places in my own stories.

Virginia Woolf

#40. If folks don't like the way you look, they almost never take the time to find anything out about you. They just make up their own stories

Ann Haywood Leal

#41. There are nearly thirteen million people in the world. None of those people is an extra. They're all the leads of their own stories. They have to be given their due.

Charlie Kaufman

#42. Stories have inspired me all my life. I like reading about what other people have done and it inspires me to share my own stories, and encourage people to make their own life stories.

Phil Keoghan

#43. Every articulate family ... generates its own stories, explanations and myths to illuminate the differences in temperament and talent among its children, the lines of allegiance and influence between parent and child.

Elizabeth Fishel

#44. You must never tell people their own stories. They have no interest in them, or they think they can tell them better themselves. Give them a stranger's life, and then they're content.

Karen Lord

#45. Technique does not need to be interpreted. It interprets itself. You have to choose the right objects and focus on them precisely and they will tell you their own stories.

Albert Renger-Patzsch

#46. If we don't tell our own stories, no one else will.

Mira Nair

#47. keep bees and grow asparagus.
listen to the wind
instead of the politicians,
make up your own stories
and believe them if you want to live
the good life

Miriam Waddington

#48. Until lions start writing down their own stories, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter. - AFRICAN PROVERB

Ellen Bass

#49. When we, any of us who have been transformed by Christ, tell our own stories, we're telling the story of who God is.

Shauna Niequist

#50. But we're all characters in our own stories, Iggy.

Kate Klise

#51. Because they're my stories, they're my version of events of the past three years. But I really hope people can hear their own stories within the songs and they can become our version of events.

Emeli Sande

#52. It was a worrying trend. Everybody else was deep into their own stories, and all the stories were woven together just beneath the surface into a web that included Plum. But what was Plum's story?

Lev Grossman

#53. Isn't it amazing how we always have to put our mark on things? And how, from the natural world, we find evidence over and over again that reminds us, not so much of the birds, but of our own stories and our own kinds of art?

Rosamond Purcell

#54. Simona: Truth doesn't exist?
Katie: ...because everyone's got their own side of a story
...If there's no real truth, then all we can do is offer up our own stories and listen to other people's and try and make sense of it all

Jenny Downham

#55. Where do storytellers find the wisdom to discover their own stories? From no place more mysterious than their own hearts.

Marion Dane Bauer

#56. Encourage children to write their own stories, and then don't rain on their parade. Don't say, 'That's not true.' Applaud flights of fantasy. Help with spelling and grammar, but stand up and cheer the use of imagination.

Gail Carson Levine

#57. I guess when you write a personal story, people feel compelled to share their own stories.

Darin Strauss

#58. Writers, because they write, are condemned never to be readers of their own stories ... The memory of first putting a story into words will always prevent writers from reading their work as an ordinary reader would.

Elena Ferrante

#59. In the light, we read the inventions of others; in the darkness we invent our own stories.

Alberto Manguel

#60. My experience with songwriting is usually so confessional, it's so drawn from my own life and my own stories.

Taylor Swift

#61. I believe young female directors in particular should always remind themselves of the truths of their own stories and not let outsiders influence the authenticity of their films.

Shahad Ameen

#62. Before I published any of my own stories, I read a great many stories by people as passionate about writing as I was, and I learned something from everyone I read
something most important what I should not try to write.

Dorothy Allison

#63. Taylor is a musician who does things under her own name and tells her own stories-her songs and her albums are her.

Emma Stone

#64. Design your own universe, make your own stars, write your own stories, and create your own destiny.

Karina Halle

#65. Ford considers that development journalism means getting behind the cliches of starving children and getting people to tell their own stories: "We are looking at big policies affecting developing countries and looking at how this relates on the ground to those who expect to be benefiting.

Anonymous

#66. sometimes the very best thing to do, I find, is to turn off the news and keep writing our own stories and lullabies.

Shauna Niequist

#67. Dorado Beach's rich history provided amazing inspiration to put forward a bold menu celebrating the legacy of the people and cuisine that shaped this unique destination and to push me to share some of my own stories.

Jose Andres

#68. I think women have every right to feel like they're the protagonists in their own stories.

Kelly Sue DeConnick

#69. We as Black people have to tell our own stories. We have to document our history. When we allow someone else to document our history the history becomes twisted and we get written out. We get our noses blown off.

Erykah Badu

#70. He got to see his friends differently, not as just appendages to his life but as distinct characters inhabiting their own stories;

Hanya Yanagihara

#71. Independent of politics, the changing narrative on immigration is directly correlated to the fact that we have new technologies that are allowing people to talk to each other and tell their own stories and organize themselves.

Jose Antonio Vargas

#72. All of us to one degree or another disconnect from God's story because we are fundamentally committed to being the author of our own stories.

Bill Delvaux

#73. Nobody is a villain in their own story. We're all the heroes of our own stories.

George R R Martin

#74. You are your own stories and therefore free to imagine and experience what it means to be human ... And although you don't have complete control over the narrative (no author does, I can tell you), you could nevertheless create it.

Toni Morrison

#75. When I read, I hear what's on the page. I don't know whose voice it is, but some voice is reading to me, and when I write my own stories, I hear it, too.

Eudora Welty

#76. When writers stop believing in their own stories, readers tend to sense it.

Tracy Kidder

#77. It might be more difficult because you haven't got a book or a prop, but for the most part I like to write unpaid ... initially and my own stories.

Peter Morgan

#78. Women don't have to be defined by others. We have the power to define ourselves: by telling our own stories, in our own words, with our own voices.

Sarah Kay

#79. I'm great at telling stories with the kids. I do all my different accents. We make our own stories up all the time, the four of us, me and Hannah and the kids.

Stephen Graham

#80. These heads sheltered by umbrellas
be they of Zeb-un-Nisa, or Catherine
of Cleopatra or Fenichka
live with their own stories

Suman Pokhrel

#81. I have my own stories. A few are known and some untold. Be a tragic one or a comedy one, stories are meant to end at a certain point. Stories ... teach us whether we are the option or we are comparing.

Upasana Banerjee

#82. We don't often see our own stories. Good artists are the ones that whisper our own stories back to us.

Tori Amos

#83. The longer the silence remains untouched the longer the miscommunication creates its own stories.

Christina Strigas

#84. I've got the best job in the world; I love it. I get to meet so many interesting people, and I get to make sure that other people with disabilities can tell their own stories as well.

Stella Young

#85. Don't worry about trying to develop a style. Style is what you can't help doing. If you write enough, you draw enough, you'll have a style, whether you want it or not. Don't worry about whether you're "commercial". Tell your own stories, draw your own pictures. Let other people follow you.

Neil Gaiman

#86. We all have our own stories. The story you tell about yourself, even if you only tell it to yourself, drives your actions and has a significant impact on your focus.

Mani S. Sivasubramanian

#87. I edit my own stories to death. They eventually run and hide from me.

Jeanne Voelker

#88. I was a very imaginative child, and my parents were very encouraging of that. My sister and I would put on plays; I would write my own stories.

Hannah Kent

#89. At Marvel, I was lucky enough to work with really talented people, but I always had this nagging thought: 'One day I'll write my own stories.'

David Mazzucchelli

#90. I made a rule for myself that the only television things I would do would be my own stories.

Nigel Kneale

#91. Life really is a story, and every story comes to an end. At the same time, it seems we all leave in the middle of our own stories. It's who we become that gives the story body, form and meaning.

Melinda West Seifert

#92. Over and over, we start our own tales, compose our own stories, whether our lives are short or long. Until at last all our beginnings come down to just one end, and the tale of who we are is done.

Cameron Dokey

#93. I never get sick of writing my own stories because there's a certain comfort in knowing you will never run out of material. It's relaxing, actually, to write.

Augusten Burroughs

#94. Go out and find your own stories.That is what I want to tell you.

Gloria Steinem

#95. Instead of worship or ignorance of the past, we must make our own tools, our own stories, and our own legends.

Curious George Brigade

#96. I want to be able to work on a project that will give people around the world the chance to represent their own people, their own culture, their own stories, rather than just Hollywood - really, you know, dominated Hollywood. And that's a dream of mine.

Steven Seagal

#97. I know as a child, I was really interested in becoming a manga artist, to create my own stories and illustrate them and present something that people would be interested in reading and looking at as well.

Shigeru Miyamoto

#98. Great characters tell their own stories. The author just writes it down for them.

Molly Evangeline

#99. I am always at a loss at how much to believe of my own stories.

Washington Irving

#100. Just when we think we have our own stories figured out, heroes arise in the most unexpected places.

Camron Wright