Top 100 Story Not Quotes
#1. Once you have love as a motivator in a story, your character is free to do anything. Once you say the character is in love, he can do the craziest thing that nobody would do who's not in love. Once you're in love, you have that excuse to go and do whatever you want.
Josh Hutcherson
#2. In their efforts to provide a sufficiency of water where there was not one, men have resorted to every expedient from prayer to dynamite. The story of their efforts is, on the whole, one of pathos and tragedy, of a few successes and many failures
Walter Prescott Webb
#3. This is not the proper place to begin speaking of this new passion of Ivan Fyodorovich's, which later affected his whole life: it could all serve as the plot for another story, for a different novel, which I do not even know that I shall ever undertake.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#4. Our story opens in the mind of Luther L. (L for LeRoy) Fliegler, who is lying in his bed, not thinking of anything, but just aware of sounds, conscious of his own breathing, and sensitive to his own heartbeats. Lying beside him is his wife, lying on her right side and enjoying her sleep.
John O'Hara
#5. For the fiction writer himself the whole story is the meaning, because it is an experience, not an abstraction.
Flannery O'Connor
#6. You have very short travel blogs, and I think there's a split among travel writers: the service-oriented writers will say, 'Well, the reader wants to read about his trip, not yours.' Whereas I say, the reader just wants to read a good story and to maybe learn something.
Tim Cahill
#7. A perception is not a story, and no amount of sensitivity can make a story-writer out of you if you just plain don't have a gift for telling a story.
Flannery O'Connor
#8. The grim reality is that most start-ups fail. Most new products are not successful. Yet the story of perseverance, creative genius, and hard work persists.
Eric Ries
#9. Well, how did you die, then?" the old man finally asked.
"Die?" Matthew threw back. "Are you crazy? I'm not dead. I'm just very late.
J. Tonzelli
#10. If this is a sad story, don't tell it to me tonight.'It is not sad,' she said. 'Only some things happen and are there for always even though you forget why or when.
Jean Rhys
#11. Only meaning can make a difference and we all know there's no meaning. All stories express a desire for meaning, not meaning itself. Therefore any difference knowing the story makes is a delusion.
Glen Duncan
#12. The statistics of life out there and the statistics of intelligent beings and advanced civilization is a certainty, the way I look at it. that It has not been accepted, because we've been in an anthropocentric era.
Story Musgrave
#13. The pictures do not lie, but neither do they tell the whole story. They are merely a record of time passing, the outward evidence.
Paul Auster
#14. They are young, full of ambition and dreams; they are still unable to imagine that there might be a story in the world in which they are not the main characters.
Juan Gomez Barcena
#15. I'm not really a science-fiction fan, I quite like the idea of getting away from the science-fiction side of it, for two episodes. It was lovely, it was a super story and great fun.
Sarah Sutton
#16. I'm not even that upset about the rejection any more. What bothers me most is that I haven't got to the end of my story, and I can't start over with someone else, it's too hard.
Paula Hawkins
#17. Studios, to cut through the clutter, want recognisable titles. But that does not excuse you, as a writer, from having an original story.
Roberto Orci
#18. ..love is as complex an emotion as exists. There are many reasons why love does not prosper.
.. the waters are perilous, and you would do well to know that, because unlike your novels, not every story has a happy ending.
Mary Lydon Simonsen
#19. I'm working on my life story. I'm not decided if it's going to be a musical or a movie with music in it.
Dolly Parton
#20. I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to write so that it will not only interest boys but strongly interest any man who has ever been a boy. That immensely enlarges the audience.
Mark Twain
#21. My story of success and failure is not just about music and being famous. It's about living and loving and trying to find purpose in this crazy world.
Wynonna Judd
#22. 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
#23. The story of money is very funny. Others burn what we earn. Why not give as we live, so the world will cry when we die. -RVM
R.v.m.
#24. About the time you might start to think that science fiction - the real stuff, not the species of fantasy that goes under the name - is really dead, along comes a story by Cory Doctorow.
Lois Tilton
#25. I always think of my films within the context of where aesthetics meet economics. That's the nature of making art - not being naive about what is possible and getting what you need to tell the story you want to tell.
Ira Sachs
#26. Plot joined the expedition unwooed, as a necessary companion. It was not the scout. The scout was a certain mood. I followed that mood, and let the shape of the story flow from that.
Bonnie Friedman
#27. There is something universal in the theme of a man trying to save his family in the midst of the most terrible circumstances. It is not limited to Sierra Leone. This story could apply to any number of places where ordinary people have been caught up in political events beyond their control.
Edward Zwick
#28. I'm not named after the character,' she said. 'I'm named after the entire opera.
Julie Orringer
#29. I love nonfiction the most. It's hard to find a good nonfiction story, and that's why I'm not as prolific, I guess, as a lot of people. They're hard to find. I love the nonfiction writer Ben Macintyre. I think he's terrific at the form of telling a story in a cinematic way.
Robert Kurson
#30. I just know that when I go onstage, I give everything I have, not only my feet, not only my legs, not only my body. I try to tell a story. Sometimes I am able to cry because I feel like it. Sometimes I am able to love because I feel like it.
Sylvie Guillem
#31. Without compassion, we will never know anyone or anything, not even our own story. Too much judgment, too many ideas and attitudes will stand in the way of the fundamental principle that we are similar to, connected with, and part of everything else.
Deena Metzger
#32. When readers close the covers on 'Running the Rift,' I want them to understand that it is not a genocide novel but rather a story of hope and rebirth.
Naomi Benaron
#33. Then it was you who wounded Aravis?"
"It was I."
"But what for?"
"Child," said the Voice, "I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.
C.S. Lewis
#34. From a really young age, I was reading like a writer. I was reading for the deep understanding of the literature; not simply to hear the story but to understand how the author got the story on the page.
Jacqueline Woodson
#35. For every once upon a time there must be a story to follow, because if a story doesn't, something else will, and it might not be as harmless as a story.
Philip Pullman
#36. We do not love anything more deeply than we love a story ...
Mary Oliver
#37. We like things to manifest right away, and they may not. Many times, we're just planting a seed and we don't know exactly how it is going to come to fruition. It's hard for us to realize that what we see in front of us might not be the end of the story.
Sharon Salzberg
#38. And if Hollywood has taught us anything, it's that cool props and special effects are not enough. Story comes first. Everything depends on story.
Patrick Rothfuss
#39. I do not know if the story repeats itself: I only know that people change little
Octavio Paz
#40. I never had a story for the sequels, for the last trilogy. That's not really part of the plan at this point, and I'll be at the age where to do another trilogy would take 10 years. I'd always envisioned it as six movies. When you see it in six parts you'll understand that it really ends at part six.
George Lucas
#41. Your family is real, but mine isn't? Real people with real feelings, but my family isn't real to you. You think. I'm a character. A story. Those women you talk about. Not real people to you. Stupid women. I'm real. I'm as real as you are. My family is real like your family.
Bryn Greenwood
#42. Judge tenderly, if you must. There is usually a side you have not heard, a story you know nothing about, and a battle waged that you are not having to fight.
Traci Lea LaRussa
#43. Nothing good about this but it's title. A priggish little yarn. And Hidden Riches is not a story
it's a machine. It creaks. It never made me forget for one instant that it was a story. Hence it isn't a story.
L.M. Montgomery
#44. Like JJ Abrams, creators just want to tell a story and entertain people. So why only focus in one way of telling it?Give readers another way to connect with your story. Entertainment does not need to be contained in one medium. Think about telling your story in many mediums.
Anne-Rae Vasquez
#45. What it taught me was forgiveness. It taught me that when people present themselves in a certain way, there's probably some back story or issue or reason for the way that they are. It's not you. It's them. And a lot of times, its about something that's completely out of their control
Denzel Washington
#46. Sometimes it's not just your favorite song. It's your untold story.
Minhal Mehdi
#47. I enjoy scenes in films, which do not have the pressure of the story so much ... and it flows. I've tried to go in that direction.
Imtiaz Ali
#48. I guess that's the story of life: what you most fear never happens, but what you most yearn for never happens either. This is the difference between life and fiction. I suppose it's a good trade-off. But I'm not sure.
Philip K. Dick
#49. It's important for cinema to keep on evolving: for people, and not only teenagers, to be able to go to a movie that has huge epic scope but has an intellectual and real story to tell.
Baltasar Kormakur
#50. You could play the blues like it was a lonesome thing - it was a feeling. The blues is nothing but a story ... The verses which are sung in the blues is a true story, what people are doing ... what they all went through. It's not just a song, see?
David Edwards
#51. When you tell the children tales of the Baba Yaga on a cold winter's night, you might remember to mention that whether or not the witch is wicked often depends on who is telling the story.
Deborah Blake
#52. You will not discover the limits of the soul
by traveling, even if you wander over every
conceivable path, so deep is its story.
Heraclitus
#53. Believe not each accusing tongue,
As most weak persons do;
But still believe that story wrong,
Which ought not to be true!
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
#54. You know that was much more of a kind of cameo, I love the movie, I love the story, I love Johnny as a fun little role but it was more of a cameo, not anywhere near as developed as this role.
Oliver Platt
#55. Our best moral stories don't tell us what is right or wrong in every situation, but they show us what one character did in one situation at one time. Readers, viewers, and listeners are supposed to extrapolate the moral meaning from the story. We're not supposed to have it handed to us.
Jonathan D. Fitzgerald
#56. Whenever an actor was going to die, I tried to help them understand not to take it personally. It wasn't about them. It's the story.
Wendell Pierce
#57. Most people, in fact, will not take the trouble in finding out the truth, but are much more inclined to accept the first story they hear.
Thucydides
#58. Telling a true story about personal experience is not just a matter of being oneself, or even or finding oneself. It is also a matter of choosing oneself.
Harriet Lerner
#59. Right now I just want to play good roles, and if the role happens to be a gay man, that's not of any import other than, 'Is it a good story? Does it say something that's interesting?'
Chris Pine
#60. The story being told in 'Star Wars' is a classic one. Every few hundred years, the story is retold because we have a tendency to do the same things over and over again. Power corrupts, and when you're in charge, you start doing things that you think are right, but they're actually not.
George Lucas
#61. I had an idea for a story about a young woman who was living with people who were different, not just superficially different - such as hair colour, or eye colour, or skin colour - but different in some significant way.
Jean M. Auel
#62. I'm not buried in that plot, Karoline. Some woman claiming to be me from the future is."
"Why do they call it a plot, anyway?"
"Because this is how every story ends.
Brian K. Vaughan
#63. Even the not saying can balloon into something bigger than words themselves.
Jennifer E. Smith
#64. The Odyssey is, indeed, one of the greatest of all stories, it is the original romance of the West; but the Iliad, though a magnificent poem, is not much of a story.
George Saintsbury
#65. Epic love story has only love between two people but do not have 'they lived happily ever after
Santosh Avvannavar
#66. It's not every day you get to do what you love and have a major story behind it.
OMI
#67. To love her was to taste sweet surrender. For had she not entered his life, he would have sought the wonders of both Heaven and Earth. But she surpassed them all and, by her pleasing nature, stayed him.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#68. People want biography. People want memoir. They want you to tell them that the story you're telling them is true. The thing I'm telling you is true, but it did not always happen to me.
Dorothy Allison
#69. While primarily a photographer, I do not see or think photographically; hence the story of Indian life will not be told in microscopic detail, but rather will be presented as a broad and luminous picture.
Edward S. Curtis
#70. When we learn to read the story of Jesus and see it as the story of the love of God, doing for us what we could not do for ourselves
that insight produces, again and again, a sense of astonished gratitude which is very near the heart of authentic Christian experience.
N. T. Wright
#71. Real change comes from finding and embracing and connecting and amplifying those that are inclined to like you and believe in you. Ideas spread from person to person, not so much from you to them. So find your biggest fans and give them a story to tell.
Seth Godin
#72. The book is not the important part. The book is the delivery system. The important part is the story and the talent.
Stephen King
#73. A love story is not the same as a romance novel. A romance novel is the story of two people falling in love against their will. This is a story of two people who leave each other against their will. It starts to end the minute they meet.
Tiffany Reisz
#74. I'm not sure if there's one right place I'm supposed to be, he said, but I know a couple of wrong places I'd give a second try in a heartbeat.
Brian Andreas
#75. It's important to find characters that share sympathy with a young audience, not just in the story but their role in the world.
Tim Crouch
#76. I don't think meaning exists without form, and certainly form does not exist without meaning. Meaning and story come first. Story is the most important part of fiction. Without it, what's the point? If all you care about is form, become a critic.
Percival Everett
#77. Sometimes I try to concentrate on the story I would like to write, and I realize that what interests me is something else entirely, or, rather, not anything precise but everything that does not fit in what I ought to write.
Italo Calvino
#78. Put me down."
Of course, the man couldn't hear her. She barely heard the scratchy whisper.
"I said - "
"I heard you, Mrs. McBride, but I'm not putting you down.
MK McClintock
#79. He said he wants variety. The irony is that I wanted variety too. But I wanted variety in a solid, stable committed relationship where I would wake up each morning asking "What are we going to do today?" not asking "Who are you going to do today?
Aimee Lane
#81. A story is not a thing. A story is an act. It only exists in the brief moment of its telling. The question you must ask is what a story has the power to do. The truth of something you do is very different from the truth of something you know.
Matthew J. Kirby
#82. It is a rare American who does not have some story about how music has made our lives richer and more interesting, how it has changed our moods, brought out the best in our character and even sometimes helped us earn a living.
Lamar Alexander
#83. My people do, I do not. Gods are a myth, a comforting story for children." "Such
Anthony Ryan
#84. True, it would not be a new venture for him. But need it be? Could one possibly accuse him of nostalgia or idleness, of wasting his time simply because he had read the story two or three times before?
Amor Towles
#85. I've loved many women ... I'm not going to lie to you, but it never works ... vanity always gets in the way.
Cassandra Giovanni
#86. I feel like it's important to be flexible, particularly when I'm coming in late in the game and I'm connective tissue in the story. I'm not at the very center. It's important for me to have a certain kind of flexibility and try to help people do what they need to do.
Willem Dafoe
#87. I did not know if the story was factually true or not, but it was emotionally true [ ... ].
Richard Wright
#88. Because the meaning of a story does not lie on its surface, visible and self-defining, does not mean that meaning does not exist. Indeed, the ambiguity of meaning, its inner private quality, may well be part of the writer's vision.
Joyce Carol Oates
#89. Well, the moral of the story, The moral of this song, Is simply that one should never be Where one does not belong. So when you see your neighbor carryin' somethin', Help him with his load, And don't go mistaking Paradise For that home across the road.
Bob Dylan
#90. For the source of the short story is usually lyrical. And all writers speak from, and speak to, emotions eternally the same in all of us: love, pity, terror do not show favorites or leave any of us out.
Eudora Welty
#91. The United States came within a whisker of invading Utah in 1858 and starting a civil war three years before the Civil War. Because the conflict ended up fizzling out, it's not the most dramatic story about the West.
David Roberts
#92. You can be moved by an animated film and not by a live action film. There could be great inspiration in and humanity in that animated story.
Geoffrey S. Fletcher
#93. 'Flash Forward' was one of the big heartbreaks of my career. It was just this very frustrating experience. If we'd been allowed to tell the story we wanted to tell, I don't know that it would've been more successful or not. There's no way to know.
David S.Goyer
#94. A tattoo is art and not a possession as love is beauty and intangible. A tattoo is a promise, not an accessory.
Danielle Valenilla
#95. Given that I don't know anything, when I am making up stories about the future, why not make it a good story instead of a scary one?
Sharon Weil
#96. Any real, beautiful thing in this world shouldn't be tamed or claimed or broken. It should be allowed to be, worked with, not against, appreciated. Don't be afraid of the wild she has left. It makes her special.
Carly Kade
#97. It's a long story," I said. "The short version is Diesel and I are pretending to get married, so we can get Kloughn to marry Valerie." "Does Morelli know about this?" "It's pretend." "I'm not even gonna ask if Ranger knows. Poor ol' Diesel here be dead if Ranger knew.
Janet Evanovich
#98. Suddenly angry, I cut off my bleak thoughts. No. I would not accept that. This was my story( ... )
Julie Kagawa
#99. You see, a story is not just a thing told to a child before sleep. A story is control.
Roshani Chokshi
#100. The script of 'Shogun' was so tight that you could not take a word out of a sentence, you could not take a sentence out of a scene, and you certainly couldn't take out a scene without putting ripples right through the back or the front of the overall story.
John Rhys-Davies
