Top 100 Quotes About Telling My Story
#1. My clothes have a story. They have an identity. They have a character and a purpose. That's why they become classics. Because they keep on telling a story. They are still telling it.
Vivienne Westwood
#2. The story unfolded quickly as I typed, in a way I was becoming familiar with. There was something about putting the truth on paper, bringing facts into the light of day where everyone could look at them, that made my fingers move faster -- it was becoming one of my favorite sensations on earth.
Gwenda Bond
#3. It will be a great story when I'm an old man telling my grandkids that I was once the best player in the world.
Luke Donald
#4. [A]ll these years, I had been telling myself that my feelings for you were a juvenile infatuation; a dream inspired by my secret hope that somewhere there could be a creature who could love me.
Kellyn Roth
#5. You want to have a song that people will listen to and go, 'Oh, yeah! That reminds me of something in my life,' or, 'something I'm currently going through,' or maybe something happens later and you hear the song and go, 'Wow! That really was telling a story that I can relate to now.' That's my hope.
Pegi Young
#6. I remember facing him on opening day in 1987. It was Oakland at the Minnesota Twins, the first time I got him out on a breaking ball down-and-in and next at bat he hit the same pitch for a home run. I was telling my kids that story yesterday.
Curt Young
#7. Admittedly, the masturbation story is just a "Hey, this is one of my best-of's, I'll throw it in the special." But the grandmother stuff, really, I feel like is part of the theme and part of the best way to end the story that I'm telling with the special.
Jen Kirkman
#8. Of course I want my films to look really good, but every single element is chosen for a reason. It's telling something in the story.
Pedro Almodovar
#9. Actors can be many things - vain, venal, self-serving, obnoxious, bullies - but all of the good ones are great storytellers. I wanted to watch what my actors were doing and how they were telling the story.
Paul Bettany
#10. My function as a writer is not story-telling but truth-telling: to make things plain.
Laura Riding
#11. When I started working in film, I loved photography, I loved the image, I loved telling the story within a frame, but as I started playing around with film and video, it was like, 'Oh my god.' You just have so much more to play with.
Lynn Shelton
#12. 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
#13. 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
#14. By telling my own story, I hope to help remove the stigma. It never should be something to hide.
Richard Dreyfuss
#15. I was hugely formed by stories I was told as a child whether that was in a book, the cinema, theatre or television and probably television more than any medium is what influenced me as a child and formed my response to literature, story-telling and, therefore, the world around me.
David Tennant
#16. She stared at his nude body in awe. "My God, you look like a Greek god in the moonlight," she whispered.
'Darlin', Greek gods do not have black hair. They're all blonds," he said.
"Darlin,' I'm telling this story and you are a Greek god in it.
Carolyn Brown
#17. In fact, after a while it was the machines I was looking at, not my father at all. They had become him. They were telling me his story. Which
Daniel Wallace
#18. Designing the technical aspects of my camera movement for me is very important. I want the camera to be a big part in telling the story as well, like what I really believe in with all the films I make.
James Wan
#19. My music is just about story telling. I don't have much to say, and I'm not trying to change anyone's mind. I'm just singing through conviction about what I love and what I care about, starting with the very small.
Sufjan Stevens
#20. Literary modernism kind of grew out of a sense that, "Oh my god! I'm telling a story! Oh, that can't be the case, because I'm a clever person. I'm a literary person! What am I going to do to distinguish myself? I know! I'll write Ulysses."
Philip Pullman
#21. Writers are given one great story to tell their story. I'm telling my story as a political document.
Larry Kramer
#22. Fiction is about telling a good story, first and foremost. But of course, everything I'm interested in or angry about leaks into my writing, from art to violence against women.
Lauren Beukes
#23. I think this is pretty clear, but maybe not to everybody: Despite the fact that the work is personal or taken from life, it's not about me telling my personal story.
Frances Stark
#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 see myself as an explorer more than a storyteller. A great storyteller, in control of her craft, must be the same person when she finishes telling a story as she was at the start. But I want to be transformed by my filmmaking, by the journey I take.
Joshua Oppenheimer
#26. My father's death when I was eighteen and his struggles as a Jewish immigrant provided me with the raw material, but for a long time I went from painting to fiction and then finally to poetry before I could find the right way of telling this story.
Philip Schultz
#27. As a boy, I remember my father telling me a bedtime story about the day my grandfather was decapitated.
Justin Bienvenue
#28. My mom has a tape from when I was, like, 2 years old, talking with my grandma, telling her a story that's really elaborate about werewolves and wolves.
Amanda Hocking
#29. What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this
two things: I crave truth. And I lie.
Tana French
#30. My daughter had carried within her a story that kept hurting her: Her dad abandoned her. She started telling herself a new story. Her dad had done the best he could. He wasn't capable of giving more. It had nothing to do with her. She could no longer take it personally.
Regina Brett
#31. Anytime you're feeling stressed, anxious, or depressed, ask yourself, "What story is my mind telling me now?" Then once you've identified it, defuse it.
Russ Harris
#32. I am not interested only in telling a story, but I want to tell it my way. I don't want my accent, my temperament, my narrative style to be compromised to fit into a mold of the Hollywood type.
Haile Gerima
#33. Audiences want great story telling; it's why white people watch my show 'Black in America.' It's why black people watch 'Latina in America.' All of that is statistically shown and proven but it was because it was good story telling about people who were outsiders.
Soledad O'Brien
#34. My success is not measured in money. I have no financial security, I have no savings account. I measure my success by asking myself if I'm telling a story that the world needs to hear, if I am educating people.
Aaron Huey
#35. I always have the best story at the party. Anyone telling a story at a party is like, 'No, no, you've got to listen to my story!' I'm like, 'Step aside, everybody. I'm going to blow the doors off this place.'
Mike Birbiglia
#36. I guess that is my favorite thing - to make people laugh and also to maybe engage them emotionally and touch them somehow in telling the story.
Lesley Nicol
#37. Another strand of my writing is the importance of the idea. If you think about fiction writing as a spectrum, where at one end of the spectrum in the infrared, are the story tellers, and the people for whom creation of wonderful characters and telling a good story is the most important thing.
Alan Lightman
#38. All of my favourite albums have this incredible amount of conceptual glue to them, even if they are not telling a story.
Gerard Way
#39. If I had to define my philosophy, it would be about exploration, a journey, a story-telling.
Hussein Chalayan
#40. Here I was, telling him a heartwarming story about my first and only pet, a goldfish that died the day after I won it with a well-placed ping-pong ball at the County Fair, and he had a still-breathing corpse in the trunk.
Nicole Castle
#41. 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
#42. No love story worth telling is easy. The hills and valleys that make a relationship, in my opinion, is really a dynamic worth watching.
J.H. Wyman
#43. There was no way to take the story back, folding it neatly into the place I'd kept
it all this time. No matter
what else happened, from here on out, I would always remember Wes, because
with this telling, he'd become part of that story, of my story, too.
Sarah Dessen
#44. Did I actually reach out my arms
toward it, toward paradise falling, like
the fading of the dearest, wildest hope-
the dark heart of the story that is all
the reason for its telling?
Mary Oliver
#45. Well I'm not a storyteller, as far as telling stories which relate to experiences in my own life. That's not what I do. I write songs which have a narrative and attempt to make sense and tell a story - sure! But whenever I hear the word "storyteller" I think of a children's musician.
Freedy Johnston
#46. I love to do fashion. I always put fashion in all of my storytelling because that's what I am, but I'm not selling clothes, I'm telling a story.
Patricia Field
#47. I've read up on magic, and I think it sets you free, and it gives you hope. You can explore worlds you didn't know existed. It stretches your imagination, and I like my own imagination to be stretched and also the children I'm telling the story to. It gives you a sense of wonder.
Jenny Nimmo
#48. Telling my story was supposed to be a good thing but it had just made everything worse.
Sara Novic
#49. Telling my story is to empower people to believe in their own power. We have so much power individually.
Angelique Kidjo
#51. I don't judge in my books. I don't have to have the antagonist get shot or the protagonist win. It's just how it comes out. I'm just telling a story.
Elmore Leonard
#52. My dad's a Pentecostal minister, meaning that he's full of charisma. If he's telling a story about Noah's ark, you best know each tiger is going to be having their own little conversation and narrative.
John Boyega
#53. My [story] outlines are usually about 5-6 pages long. I'm essentially telling myself the story in short form. I try to make it clear who the major characters are, what they want, and what obstacles they face.
Chevy Stevens
#54. My biggest thing is telling a truthful story, something that is rooted in something and is very honest. If I read a script and you want me to take off my top, and it doesn't serve a purpose, then I'm not going to do it.
Danielle Brooks
#55. I see myself as anybody, as everybody; I'm not just telling the story of my life to give the reader a picture of who I am.
Paul Auster
#56. I see myself as a novelist, period. I mean, the material I work with is what is classified as science fiction and fantasy, and I really don't think about these things when I'm writing. I'm just thinking about telling a story and developing my characters.
Roger Zelazny
#57. The first time I heard Sam Cooke was in the 'Malcom X' film. I was with my father, and that's the first time I heard his song. I remember my father telling me the story of Sam Cooke.
Leon Bridges
#58. I know the responsibility that entails from telling a story. The one thing I despise the most is when I go to a movie and I see a whole bunch of lazy actors making me waste my time and money.
Zoe Saldana
#59. In truth, this was a bad thing that Yan Chang had done, telling me my mother's story. Secrets are kept from children, a lid on top of the soup kettle, so they do not boil over with too much truth. After
Amy Tan
#60. Since I was a child, I've liked telling stories. Maybe because my father's a director, I grew up loving stories. I'm not good at spinning them at a dinner table because I do go on a bit, but I love writing them, and directing is just a way of editing the story.
Mary Stuart Masterson
#61. It is a story I never tire of telling, because to me it is the perfect coming together to science and spirituality-the twin driving forces of my life.
A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
#62. I had always attended classes and written stories as a creative outlet because I need that, and I thought, in my previous career in a model, the way I approached that was that I believed I was telling a non-verbal story.
Jessica Clark
#64. I need to keep my story count high. I'm trying to get as many stories in my hour as is humanly possible. We're telling more stories in our hour than any national newscast has in the history of this business, I think.
Shepard Smith
#65. I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. and anyone who does not remember betrays them again.
Elie Wiesel
#66. I'm not a go-in-for-the-kill kind of interviewer. It's a great thing to me, that kind of interviewer, but I'm not it. It doesn't play to my strengths at all. I like to interview people who are interested in telling their story and tell it as truthfully as they can.
Ira Glass
#67. I have to say in premise 'Winter Journal' is really not a memoir. And I don't even think of it as an autobiography. I think of it as a literary composition - similar to music - composed of autobiographical fragments. I'm really not telling the story of my life in a coherent narrative form.
Paul Auster
#68. 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
#69. I've been drawing my whole life. My mom says my sister and I were drawing by age 1. Animation seems a real, natural extension of drawing as a way of telling a story visually.
Jennifer Yuh Nelson
#70. I try to act cool. I've never had a hand on my thigh, under the table. Cathy - my brother's wife - is telling a very funny story about the family's trips to Bridlington, and her elderly Grandmother is doling out peas, which makes the experience even stranger.
Charlotte Stein
#71. I'm interested in telling the character's story, not my beliefs, political or otherwise.
Sarah Paulson
#72. Telling our personal story reveals the shape shifting landscape of our mind.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#73. And at that point, I think my experience in covering the subject helped me. I think editors felt comfortable with the idea of me telling this story because I had demonstrated that I know this business pretty well.
Laura Hillenbrand
#74. I don't want my novel to be like Madame Bovary, finely crafted with the life edited out of it. I want my novel to be like a friend telling me a story
so we go off on thoughts; that's the way it is.
Tama Janowitz
#75. Whether I'm acting or making it, at the end of the day it's telling the story; action, drama. You want the audience to feel it - the story, the action, the scene, or a particular shot. I just keep working on crafting my art, on how to make action movies.
Donnie Yen
#76. In my career as a director, there's always been some point where you get halfway through it, or three-quarters, and you go: 'What is this thing all about, and why am I telling the story? Does anybody really care about seeing this?' At that time you have to say: 'OK, forget that and just go ahead.'
Clint Eastwood
#77. How blindly the world reads a man's mien! That I wear a smile does not mean I am in my comfort zone. I am only telling my challenges that I can't be distracted from the beautiful ending of my story.
Bayode Ojo
#78. I'm just basically telling a story of my life.
Jose Canseco
#79. I usually make sure that my stories are from Africa or my own background so as to highlight the cultural background at the same time as telling the story.
Buchi Emecheta
#80. 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
#81. I've never once thought about the interpretative, the storytelling aspect of life, of my life. I always felt like I was in a story, yes, but not like I was the author of it, or like I had any say in its telling whatsoever. You can tell your story any way you damn well please. It's your solo.
Jandy Nelson
#82. I can't say L'Etranger influenced me to write, but for the first time I considered the possibility of telling a story that resembled my own experiences in my own voice.
Sefi Atta
#83. For the doubters out there, of course I was going to have help from Penguin's editorial team in telling my story, which I talked about from the beginning.
Zoe Sugg
#84. I get letters from people about my work. The thing that pleases me most is that my work touches their feelings. In fact, they don't talk about the paintings. They end up telling me the story of their life or how their father died.
Andrew Wyeth
#85. You asked me 'Why you?' And I'm telling you, I've never been more intrigued, more confused, more frustrated or more turned on by any girl. In my life. It certainly hasn't been a classic boy-meets-girl love story, but here we are.
Kate Sterritt
#86. My partner, Danny Strong, came to me with this idea of telling a story about my life and merging that with music and the hip-hop world. He wrote 'The Butler' and originally wanted to do 'Empire' also as a movie.
Lee Daniels
#87. I'd say Rob Reiner's 'When Harry Met Sally' is my all-time favorite. It made me realize there's a way of telling a story where the audience is so in love with the characters that they forget you're even telling a story.
Tim Story
#88. How much of our lives is consumed with meeting people, attracting people, keeping people and missing people? Usually, when everything is resolved romantically in one of my books, the characters stop talking in my head, and I stop telling the story.
Susanna Kearsley
#89. Certainly, I devote my energy to both telling my personal life story and seeking self- obliteration. However, I will not destroy myself through art.
Yayoi Kusama
#90. 'Baby Boy' is one of my favourite films, and Tyrese keeps telling everybody we're going to make a sequel. I mean, we have a story right now but we don't know where we're going to take it.
John Singleton
#91. I beg of you, you good people who want to hear stories told: look at this page and recognize the wisdom of my grandmother and of all old story-telling women!
Isak Dinesen
#92. 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. The next day, when I was walking with
Donald Miller
#93. I never troll for material. It simply presents itself, and is always unmistakable. This is why I want to roll my eyes when people interrupt themselves in the middle of some story they're telling me to say, "You know you can't write about this."
Dani Shapiro
#94. As a girl, I sat awestruck at the feet of Harriet Ne, author of 'Tales of Molokai'. It was she who used to say, 'I myself have seen it,' after telling a particularly hair-raising ghost story - a phrase that I borrowed for one of my titles.
Susanna Moore
#95. When I was a kid, I was always going to bed creating a story, and that was the birth of filmmaking for me. I would like going to the dream-state by telling the story to someone else in my mind. That was my imaginary friend; it was an imaginary audience listening to my story.
Denis Villeneuve
#96. Re-telling the Christian story is the essence of my vocation. That has been going on since the Evangelists in one form or another.
Anne Rice
#97. I'm really proud of all the stuff we've built with Green Lantern - from Larfleeze to the different corps. The universe has expanded and will live well past my run. It was more than just telling another story, but really giving back to the character by expanding and adding to their mythology.
Geoff Johns
#98. For me, 'risky' is revealing what really happened in my life through music. Risky is writing confessional songs and telling the true story about a person with enough details so everyone knows who that person is.
Taylor Swift
#99. story telling is not a career, it's a calling. I've been writing true and compelling news my entire professional life. My novels are packs of lies
Glen Carter
#100. 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
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