Story What Quotes

#1. 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

#2. 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

#3. The second time is the one we remember, where memory begins. Putting the moments in order is only half the story. What matters is the weight of the moments as they accumulate.

Stacey D'Erasmo

#4. We always have to ask ourselves whether the level of risk is worth the story. What is bravery, and what is bravado?

Marie Colvin

#5. We try to be driven by what's a good story, what's truthful, and the drama of what happens next.

Laura Innes

#6. Sit down awhile; And let us once again assail your ears, That are so fortified against our story What we have two nights seen.

William Shakespeare

#7. I can only tell my story, what you believe is up to you.

Yann Martel

#8. By Aladdin's lamplit scrotum, man! Everything is a story. What is there but stories? Stories are the only truth.

Christopher Moore

#9. I've always known when I start a story what the last line is. It's always been the case, since the first story I ever wrote. I don't know how it's going to get there, but I seem to need the destination. I need to know where I end up. It never changes, ever.

Amy Hempel

#10. So there are countless reasons to remain on this Godforsaken planet that was long considered the only world, if for no other reason than to learn the end of our story: what the author of our lives has not yet taken the trouble to finish.

Filippo Bologna

#11. Everything is 'just a story'. Tragedy, comedy, end of the world, what ever it's just a story. What matters is making sure it's heard.

Mira Grant

#12. To go around the world, to talk to almost anybody you want to talk to, to have enough time on the air, so that you could really tell a full story. What a voyage of discovery it was.

Mike Wallace

#13. Honey, I don't understand that story. What does it mean?"
"It means stick with the dog you know, Auntie Jean", Max told her. "Stick with the dog you know.

Emmy Laybourne

#14. When the emergency brappers went of they did what any dedicated, well-trained and quick-minded Service personnel would do; they paniced.

From the short story What Makes Us Human.

Stephen R. Donaldson

#15. An idea has no worth at all without believable characters to implement it; a plot without characters is like a tennis court without players. Daffy Duck is to a Buck Rogers story what John McEnroe was to tennis. Personality. That is the key, the drum, the fife. Forget the plot.

Chuck Jones

#16. I am the keeper of the beast, though all men harbor a beast in the depths of their heart
callous, calamitous creatures, driven by deviant demands and derisive diligence.
From the short story What Rough Beast

Michael Hibbard

#17. I've always been a bit puzzled about that story. What's so hard about pulling a sword out of a stone? The real work's already been done. You ought to make yourself useful and find the man who put the sword in the stone in the first place, eh? There

Terry Pratchett

#18. I never know, when I start writing a story, what's going to happen, or how it will all get sorted out.

Jacqueline Woodson

#19. The merchant's success depends on his or her ability to tell a story. What people see or hear or smell or do when they enter a space guides their feelings, enticing them to celebrate whatever the seller has to offer.

Howard Schultz

#20. The fact that I was a believer, a Christian, everybody immediately thought this guy's a minister, he's so nice and, oh by the way, he can play a little bit. The other thing for me is being undersized. What a great story, what an overachiever, kind of like Rudy.

Mike Singletary

#21. Wal-Mart is an amazing success story. What I particularly admire very much about the late Sam Walton was his policy of valuing his employees. Giving value to employees is very rare in the retail industry. I also admire the strategies Walton used to build up his discount store concept.

Tadashi Yanai

#22. There are many reasons I love novels with multiple narratives. In novels where the events are filtered through the consciousness of a single 'reliable' narrator, I often wonder, is this the whole story? What could be missing here?

Susan Barker

#23. Who knows what dirty story, what even better dirty story, it may even be one we have not heard before, told at some colossal pitch of pure smut, beats at this moment in vain against our eardrums.

Samuel Beckett

#24. First and foremost, The Quiet Invasion is a first contact story. What would we do if we actually found evidence of alien life out there? It's also about politics.

Sarah Zettel

#25. For every character, I think about who they are, their story, what they are, and who they were before their game started. What was their life like? Where did they grow up? What were their parents like?

Tim Schafer

#26. I've always loved short stories. Even before I was a writer, I was reading short stories - there were certain writers where I just felt like they could do in a short story what so many writers needed a whole novel to do, and that was really inspiring to me.

Molly Antopol

#27. Tell me a story then ... keep me occupied."
"A story? ... What makes you think I can tell a story?"
"Insight," said the king, "Go on.

Megan Whalen Turner

#28. What bothered Ruth was that she needed to be with Rooie again -- just to see, as in a story, what would happen next. That meant Rooie was in charge.

John Irving

#29. What the press never does say is who the leaker is and why he wants the story leaked. Yet, more often than not, this is the more important story: What policy wins if the one being disclosed loses?

Daniel Patrick Moynihan

#30. Nobody ever wrote a story for me. I told in every story what was really inside my gut, and it came out that way. My stories began to get noticed because the average reader could associate with them.

Jack Kirby

#31. Perhaps that same concept applied to people as well. Did we love them more when we knew their full story? How they came to be who and what they were? Or was the mystery what kept us coming back for more, slowly enticing us, knowing that once the truth was out, the appeal would be lost?

Amber Lynn Natusch

#32. There was a precarious balance during those crucial months between composition and decomposition - what the world gained and what a great city lost. Even then, some part of Detroit was dying, and that is where the story begins.

David Maraniss

#33. People are a lot more open than even they think they are. And I feel like I carry a heavy story about where I come from and those roots, but also what I like as a thinker.

Lizz Wright

#34. Reading a Lydia Davis story collection is like reaching into what you think is a bag of potato chips and pulling out something else entirely: a gherkin, a pepper corn, a truffle, a piece of beef jerky.

Kate Christensen

#35. Can I ask what you're reading?" ... She turned the book so the cover faced me. Wuthering Heights. "Have you read it?" She said. I nodded. I could feel the pulsating beat of my heart behind my eyes. "It's a sad story." "Sad stories make good books," She said. "They do.

Khaled Hosseini

#36. The beauty of being an Author is, It's your story and you can write what ever you want.

Toni House

#37. I wanted to do London Boulevard because I saw the potential of a story about two people who need each other desperately, who love at first sight, as one does, and above all a story in which no one is what they appear to be.

William Monahan

#38. What we gain in the world, we lose in the world, forgotten in death. We must rather fancy what we brought into the world, for therein lives our story, our legend.

Palle Oswald

#39. I'm a sci-fi fan, and I guess you have to let go of some of that at some point, and realize that as long as you're focused on telling a story that you care about, at the end of the day, that's what really matters, even to hard-core sci-fi fans.

Rian Johnson

#40. What counts in a good story is the person inside. Keep it simple.

Paulo Coelho

#41. A lot of people have this strategy where if they have a hard question they wait to ask it to the end of the interview because they think the person is going to walk out. But what they have to realize is, is that if the person walks out, they have a pretty successful story.

Chuck Klosterman

#42. 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

#43. When writing a book what is more important? Grammar and spelling or telling a great story? I know which I would choose.

Samuel Colbran

#44. I think that's the lesson of this story: you never know what is going to happen.

Mindy Kaling

#45. The hardest part of growing old is remembering what it was like when you were young. Alvin in The Straight Story (movie)

Dan Carruthers

#46. The idea was always going to be that each year is a stand-alone story, which did make it easier on some level. It also requires the network to have the creative imagination to say, 'This is also 'Fargo,' you know what I mean?

Noah Hawley

#47. The devadasis have a multilayered story, a story in which poverty, deprivation and injustice against women is central - but what has happened to them is absolutely an outcome of imperialism and the impact of British rule in India.

Beeban Kidron

#48. 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

#49. It's like reading a good book. The kind where you don't want to skip pages to see what happens at the end. Each moment is a story in itself.

Renee Carlino

#50. Crime fiction makes money. It may be harder for writers to get published, but crime is doing better than most of what we like to call CanLit. It's elementary, plot-driven, character-rich story-telling at its best.

Linwood Barclay

#51. The first profile piece on myself came about after my Rabbi sent information to the Jewish Chronicle on what I was up to. The story was then picked up by one of the nationals and things grew from there.

Benjamin Cohen

#52. The Story Core Every compelling story has the following five elements: 1) A character 2) The character wants something 3) But something prevents him from getting what he wants easily 4) So he struggles against that force 5) And either succeeds or fails

Libbie Hawker

#53. 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

#54. It's rare that I actually have a story in my head. I have events or 'what's the next move?' Like, Maggie, 'where's she going to go in this story, where's she going to end up?' Then the story has to fill in the in-between, and that comes as I'm starting it.

Jaime Hernandez

#55. 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

#56. Part of what I want to do is sort of reclaim my story - it belongs to me and to my children, who have to live with whoever their mother is.

Elizabeth Edwards

#57. 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.

#58. It makes sense that that's part of the story and everything, but that's part of any story of any record - where was it record and how long and what were the people doing. I think people want to know where these events are made. That's why I like the word "record."

Justin Vernon

#59. 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

#60. Well, the big story
Hillary Clinton will be running for president in 2008. You know why I think she's running? I think she finally wants to see what it's like to sleep in the president's bed.

Jay Leno

#61. Never tell your reader what your story is about. Reading is a participatory sport. People do it because they are intelligent and enjoy figuring things out for themselves.
(advicetowriters)

George V. Higgins

#62. I told my mom I was going to do a movie about a son who hears a story about his mom and takes her on a cross-country road trip, and I wanted to actually take the trip with my mom to see what it would be like to drive cross-country with your mom.

Dan Fogelman

#63. Telling the story, acknowledging what has happened and how you feel, is often a necessary part of forgiveness.

Sharon Salzberg

#64. I encourage anyone who has gone through hardships to look back through their life's chapters and see what can be turned into a book. For you never know what heartache God, one day, can turn into a redemptive story.

Jolina Petersheim

#65. When you're afraid because you don't know what comes next, I will be there to love you through it. So, I guess today, I'm asking you to let me.

Courtney Giardina

#66. As a writer, you must know what promise your story or novel makes. Your reader will know.

Nancy Kress

#67. Yet if strict criticism should till frown on our method, let candor and good humor forgive what is done to the best of our judgment, for the sake of perspicuity in the story and the delight and entertainment of our candid reader.

Sarah Fielding

#68. 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

#69. Once upon a time, there lived a boy, and he had to risk everything to keep what he loved. But really the story was: Once upon a time, there lived a boy, and his fear ate him alive.

Maggie Stiefvater

#70. 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

#71. the English explorer Richard Burton told the story of an Englishman finding his new wife unconscious on the marital bed, having chloroformed herself. She had pinned a note to her nightdress which read: 'Mama says you're to do what you like.

Sam Miller

#72. As our characters in our 'X-FORCE' began to push at the boundaries of what 'X-FORCE' was, it made perfect story sense for the team to change their name.

Peter Milligan

#73. We take it for granted we know the whole story - We judge a book by its cover and read what we want between selected lines.

Axl Rose

#74. Your dad's story is over. In six months or a year, this will be done for him. He won't be dealing with the consequences of what you choose to do now. You will. So you make this decision based on what you need.

Jason Schmidt

#75. It was like hiking into a Hemingway story; everything was sepia-toned and bristling with subtext.

Leslie What

#76. 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

#77. What the hell did people have to keep them occupied on a damp and windy day in January apart from sitting indoors and lapping up the story of somebody who had suffered even more than they were doing.

Hakan Nesser

#78. 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

#79. I think each time you start a story or novel or whatever, you are absolutely at the bottom of the ladder all over again. It doesn't matter what you've done before.

Jhumpa Lahiri

#80. 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

#81. My favorite novels allow me to imagine the characters afterward and what happened, and that I've witnessed a really great story, where the world goes on.

J.H. Wyman

#82. 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

#83. My first U.S. Open I think was just very special for me because that was sort of the beginning of what was a 'Cinderella' story for me.

Chris Evert

#84. Stories
individual stories, family stories, national stories
are what stitch together the disparate elements of human existence into a coherent whole. We are story animals.

Yann Martel

#85. Energy will go into what you love, and what you love will grow. Go for a walk and watch it bloom.

A.D. Posey

#86. 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

#87. What difference does it make if the Gospel is mostly a lie? It's an engrossing story and the words of its hero are excellent words to live by, even today.

Tom Robbins

#88. I know what you want. You want a story that won't surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won't make you see higher or further or differently. You want a flat story. An immobile story. You want dry, yeastless factuality.

Yann Martel

#89. 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

#90. 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

#91. Don't assume that what we currently think is out there is the full story. Go after the dark matter, in whatever field you choose to explore.

Nathan Wolfe

#92. Think of life as a story. Each one must come to an end, for it to have form and meaning. What gives life to the stories are the bodies at the end of them.

Rajesh Parameswaran

#93. Writers do well to carefully attend to those moments of inspiration, because chances are that they're writing from a very deep place. The subsequent search that ensues to continually attend to that voice that you hear is what is going to give the story drive.

Adam Ross

#94. I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.

Tim O'Brien

#95. It's not every day you get to do what you love and have a major story behind it.

OMI

#96. What the short story needs above all is for one of the big publishers to get an equivalent series up and running and to support it and promote it.

Nicholas Royle

#97. What I like best is a good story with a moral.

Oscar Micheaux

#98. 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

#99. His eyes burned mine. "You just fight for what you want Katherine. The question is, how much do you want me?" Am I worth the fight? The question was implied and his eyes were begging me for assurance.

Carolina Soto

#100. 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