Top 100 Story To Tell Quotes
#1. The difference between memoir and autobiography, as far as I see it, is that a memoir is there primarily to tell one particular story, whereas an autobiography tries to be a full account of a life.
Salman Rushdie
#2. And when they start talking, and they always do, you find that each of them has a story they want to tell. Everyone, no matter how old or young, has some lesson they want to teach. And I sit there and listen and learn all about life from people who have no idea how to live it.
Paul Neilan
#3. Books are a weird collaboration between author and reader: You trust me to tell a good story, and I trust you to bring it to good life in your mind.
John Green
#4. There might be a proper age to know how to tell a story, but there's no proper age to start telling them.
Xavier Dolan
#5. Tell the truth. That way you don't have to remember a story.
John Wooden
#6. When anybody starts out with a memoir, you get the impulse to tell your own story with your own voice, and you get all that out in one fell swoop sometimes.
Dave Eggers
#7. 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
#8. You'd think God would come right out and tell us what to do in the Bible, but He doesn't. He mostly tells stories, and He rarely stops the story to say what the point is. He just lets the characters and conflict hang in the air like smoke.
Donald Miller
#9. 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
#10. The happening and the telling are very different things. This doesn't mean that the story isn't true, only that I honestly don't know anymore if I really remember it or only remember how to tell it.
Karen Joy Fowler
#11. The filmmakers have a story they want to tell, and they go get the material they need for it. The film either exceeds or fails to meet up to their expectations or it's different.
Joshua Oppenheimer
#12. You are the poem I never knew how to write and this life is the story I have always wanted to tell.
Tyler Knott Gregson
#13. And I? I drink, I burn, I gather dreams.
And sometimes I tell a story. Because Promethea asks me for a bowl of words before she goes to sleep.
Helene Cixous
#14. 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
#15. Everybody's got one killer story. It doesn't take talent to tell that story, it just takes experience.
Kevin Smith
#16. Once upon
a dream
in a blanket
of night sky
you asked me
to tell you a story
which began with
us holding hands.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
#17. I'll tell you what I miss most. What I would love to do, more than anything, is just anthologies. With an anthology you can tell any story and be in every division of television. We don't have any anthologies anymore, do we?
Aaron Spelling
#18. The story I tell is so incomplete, five kids in the house and no food to eat.
Too $hort
#19. 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
#20. You know, I grew up on romantic comedies, and it's hard to find a new way to tell that story.
Rashida Jones
#21. 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
#22. When I write, I'm looking to turn you on and tell a good story. No more, no less. No lofty goals here.
Kirsten McCurran
#23. 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
#24. 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
#25. We cannot bear for our most mysterious experiences to remain unexplained. I've therefore learned ... that every story has worth, since a person takes the time to tell it. The key is to listen.
Josh Gates
#26. There is a story I always tell my students ... when I came for the 1st time to the US. I didn't speak English (Only Spanish) & I saw on every door the word "exit" which in Spanish means Success = Exito. And then I said :"No wonder Americans are winners ,every door they open leads to success
Pablo
#27. 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
#28. 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
#29. If you're a writer, write. You just keep writing. And if you're a filmmaker, you keep doing what you can to keep telling your stories; you don't stay on the one. Keep moving forward and doing what you can to tell whatever story you can tell, be it via writing, be it via filming it.
Dana Brunetti
#30. There's no protecting anyone," Fix said, and reached over from his wheelchair to put his hand on hers. "Keeping people safe is a story we tell ourselves.
Ann Patchett
#31. This was how to help a family who has just lost their child. Wash the clothes, make soup. Don't ask them what they need, bring them what they need. Keep them warm. Listen to them rant, and cry, and tell their story over and over.
Ann Hood
#32. 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
#33. Keep in mind that the only person to write for is yourself.Tell the story you most desperately want to read.
Susan Isaacs
#34. If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug around a camera.
Lewis Hine
#35. Character is always my driving force. And to tell a good story and to provide an entertaining read.
Monica Ali
#36. Don't go yet. Please. Tell me a story, one about us. Tell what it meant. How on earth did it happen? The story, Pat - tell it to me.
Pat Conroy
#37. Footage of him and Bonnie Rae into an old black and white photo of Bonnie and Clyde, she began to tell their story, as if it were breaking news and
Amy Harmon
#38. 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
#39. You can use martial arts to tell a different story. Ang Lee used martial arts in 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' to talk about love.
Jet Li
#40. If your life is a blank page, that only means you have room to write your story. You have the power to tell that story the way you want to.
Thea Harrison
#41. 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
#42. 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
#43. Your life should be a story you are excited to tell.
Adam Braun
#44. I began to learn about the camera and the actors. That gave me a lot of the skills. At the same time, advertising gives you a lot of vices, for example, an obsession for a superficial look, but at the same time, it gives you the capacity to synthesize the story - tell a story in one minute.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#45. I tend to write songs that are about something pretty specific. A lot of them tell some kind of little made-up story.
Adam Schlesinger
#46. You and you alone are the only person that can live the life that writes the story that you were meant to tell. And the world needs your story because the world needs your voice.
Kerry Washington
#47. Certain people can keep a word tune, so to speak, and certain people cannot. And, above all, certain people can tell a story, and other people can't. They don't hear that point where something else has to come.
James Salter
#48. 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
#49. The biggest problem is that people want to tell the whole story, and they write letters that are way longer than anything I could possibly run.
Emily Yoffe
#50. I'm the least confident person in so many ways. But I believed that if somebody gave me the chance to tell a story, I would tell a story [well enough] that the person who gave me the chance would get their money back.
Joss Whedon
#51. 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
#52. That's because Narnia was a Christian allegory pretending to be a fantasy series, you asshole," said one of the other boys. "C.S. Lewis never went through any doors. He didn't know how it worked. He wanted to tell a story, and he'd probably heard about kids like us, and he made shit up.
Seanan McGuire
#54. As cliched as it sounds, if you have an original voice and an original idea, then no matter what anybody says, you have to find a way to tell that story.
Damon Lindelof
#55. As I continue to write as M. O'Keefe, I find myself following darker story lines. Plots I might have flinched away from I now rush toward. Using sex as a tool to tell women's stories is endlessly fascinating.
Molly O'Keefe
#56. 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
#57. I was working at a restaurant in L.A. when a producer came in. He said I should audition for this movie 'Cellular.' I did, and I got the part. It actually makes me sick to tell that story because it's obnoxious.
Mircea Monroe
#58. She seemed to Bond to give a quick involuntary shrug of the shoulders as she spoke, but then she leant impulsively towards him. 'I have some news for you from Mathis. He was longing to tell you himself. It's about the bomb. It's a fantastic story.
Ian Fleming
#59. I always wanted to tell the story of how Pearl Jam is the story of lightning striking twice. As well as being the flipside of the classic rock tale where great promise ends in tragedy. This is where tragedy begins great promise.
Cameron Crowe
#60. I would say what was always on her[Harper Lee] mind was the stories she had to tell, and the story was pretty obvious in "To Kill A Mockingbird," maybe a bit - little bit less obvious and more obscure in "Go Set A Watchman."
Wayne Flynt
#61. 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
#62. 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
#63. When kids don't learn about their own heritage in school, they just don't care about school ... But you won't see it in the history books unless we get the power to write our own history and tell our story ourselves.
Miles Davis
#64. If there's no one else to tell another side - the only story that can be told is the story that becomes true. (p. 173)
Heidi W. Durrow
#65. Actors want to work. Give them characters they want to play, or a story they want to tell, and hopefully the budget will follow.
Lorene Scafaria
#66. If we can find someone who has earned the right to hear our story, we need to tell it. Shame loses power when it is spoken. In this way, we need to cultivate our story to let go of shame, and we need to develop shame resilience in order to cultivate our story.
Brene Brown
#67. I think what I'm after, a lot of the time, is just honesty. What accounts for the fact that the stories we tell ourselves - the story we carry around and think of most often - are the dark ones? Maybe we have to wander around in the darkness to understand it?
Peter Orner
#68. I tell ya! The road to success is an endless battle for you and me.
Steven Jackson
#69. My mother used to tell this corny story about how the doctor smacked me on the behind when I was born and I thought it was applause, and I have been looking for it ever since.
Kathy Bates
#70. '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
#71. You can't help but be creative, we all are unique beings and have a unique story to tell from different walks of life.
Bebe
#72. There are a million ideas in a world of stories. Humans are storytelling animals. Everything's a story, everyone's got stories, we're perceiving stories, we're interested in stories. So to me, the big nut to crack is to how to tell a story, what's the right way to tell a particular story.
Richard Linklater
#73. The writing can be its own reward, as you discover more things that you can do. It counts a lot, though, when a story connects with a reader and they take the time to tell me about it.
Nick Earls
#74. The chief thing is desire. You've really got to want to do it, you've really got to want to tell that story. And you have to be able to set goals for yourself to get it done.
F. Paul Wilson
#75. My mother always said, 'The best way to ruin a story is to tell the other side.'
Gordon Smith
#76. When Cecily comes to sit beside me, we rest our heads together and I tell her a final story about the twins. The one whose grief drove him to set the country ablaze. And the one who found a way to love her captor.
Lauren DeStefano
#77. I've done so many movies with first-time directors, and honestly I just go with gut instinct. People that usually can tell me a good story, and talk to me about why the movie is the movie they want to make. I just go with my gut.
Neal H. Moritz
#78. You may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat. Losing after great striving is the story of man, who was born to sorrow, whose sweetest songs tell of saddest thought, and who, if he is a hero, does nothing in life as becomingly as leaving it.
Roger Kahn
#79. Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#80. Everybody's got a different way of telling a story - and has different stories to tell.
Keith Richards
#81. It's never too late to tell a good story, to create a new myth that rouses us from our intoxicated slumber, that lifts us above the din of confusion and arms us against the weapons of mass distraction.
Derek Rydall
#82. What the artist attempts to do is to try and tell a story. Attempting to give physical expression to a story that's internal.
Gregory Crewdson
#83. All directors are storytellers, so the motivation was to tell the story I wanted to tell. That's what I love.
Spike Lee
#84. That song is a story that shows how easily you could get slipped into being labeled as the bad guy, even though what you really trying to do is tell the bad guy to leave you alone.
Slick Rick
#85. I can't impress enough upon people that if you tell an honest story that people relate to and people believe and invest in, you can do anything.
Paul Feig
#86. I like writers who seem to write because they have to. You get the feeling of this burning desire to tell a story. I find it in Peter Carey, Nicola Barker, Ali Smith and David Foster Wallace.
Patrick Ness
#87. If an idiot were to tell you the same story every day for a year, you would end by believing it.
Horace Mann
#88. 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
#89. I think it's much more natural as a writer to want to tell one story rather than lots of small stories that are half an hour long.
Alice Lowe
#90. Everybody loves a good story, but good storytelling doesn't come easy to everybody. It's a skill that takes a lifetime to master. So study the great stories and then go find some of your own. Your stories will get better the more you tell them.
Austin Kleon
#91. 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
#92. Comics are just another medium to express yourself. It's not cinema; it's not literature; it's just something else. It has a specific requirement, which is that images are used to tell the story. There are lots of crappy movies, with guns and action and Arnold Schwarzenegger or whatever.
Marjane Satrapi
#93. Of course on air I use occasional hyperbole to tell a story.
Adam Carolla
#94. I don't write about the same thing every time, everyday, different things are happening out there and if you take the time to look around, you can see that, then you can put it all together and tell the story.
Desmond Dekker
#95. The funny thing is, whenever I'm working on something, I kind of forget there's a lot of people watching. It makes it easier to be in the moment and to tell a story as well as possible.
Michiel Huisman
#96. It's the only way I really know how to tell the story is to be able to kind of live through the characters. So when I find something that resonates with me, it's usually because it cuts to something very real inside of me; something that I've gone through or experienced.
Rob Reiner
#97. It's important that we share our experiences with other people. Your story will heal you and your story will heal somebody else. When you tell your story, you free yourself and give other people permission to acknowledge their own story
Iyanla Vanzant
#98. You set out to tell a good story. You don't do it because there is a deep message involved because the movie is almost always bad when you do that.
John Lee Hancock
#99. You see so many movies ... the younger people who are coming from MTV or who are coming from commercials and there's no sense of film grammar. There's no real sense of how to tell a story visually. It's just cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, you know, which is pretty easy.
Peter Bogdanovich
#100. 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
