Tell A Quotes

#1. I think over the course of 14 films, I'm returning to a place that I know to tell a story ... the same way Spielberg returned to fantasy, Lucas returned to the 'Star Wars' saga, or John Ford returned to the western.

Gus Van Sant

#2. The essence of marketing today is to tell a story to people who want to hear it, in a way that resonates with them so they are likely to either respond or connect to you, or tell their friends.

Seth Godin

#3. I love things that are old and beautiful and tell a story, even if it's a sad one.

Michelle Williams

#4. Once you tell a lie, the truth is your enemy; and every truth connected to that truth, and every ally of truth in general; all of these you must oppose, to protect the lie. Whether you're lying to others, or to yourself.

Eliezer Yudkowsky

#5. You can tell a lot about someone's personality if you know his star sign -Jesus, born on 25 December, fed the five thousand, walked on water -typical Capricorn.

Harry Hill

#6. [My father] didn't make much money, and I tell a lot of people, you know, I was a vegetarian before people knew what a vegetarian was. That's all I ate was vegetables.

Hank Aaron

#7. The one thing you shouldn't do is try to tell a cab driver how to get somewhere.

Jimmy Fallon

#8. Regardless of your religious beliefs, you should never tell a mourning mother that it was "God's plan." For some people, that can be worse than saying nothing at all. For a non-believer, the words that are meant to console a religious person can do quite the opposite.

David G. McAfee

#9. When I tell a patient that I think I should do their operation under local anaesthetic they usually look a little shocked. In fact the brain cannot itself feel pain since pain is a phenomenon produced within the brain.

Henry Marsh

#10. I think it was David Hume who put it slightly vulgarly, this was again about the virgin birth I think. Which is more likely ... that the whole natural order is suspended or that a Jewish minx should tell a lie?

Christopher Hitchens

#11. Maybe that's just what happens; you start out wanting to change the world through language, and end up thinking it's enough to tell a few jokes.

David Nicholls

#12. Love cannot exists as a duty; to tell a child that it ought to love its parents and its brother and sisters is utterly useless, if not worse.

Bertrand Russell

#13. Pretty' doesn't mean 'good,' you know, Geneva. Real life isn't like fairy tales. 'Pretty' simply means that by accident you've got things arranged on your outside in an extra-pleasing manner. It doesn't tell a thing about your inside.

Natalie Babbitt

#14. If you tell a lie, always rehearse it. If it don't sound good to you, it won't sound good to anybody.

Satchel Paige

#15. I really haven't had that exciting of a life. There are a lot of things I wish I would have done, instead of just sitting around and complaining about having a boring life. So I pretty much like to make it up. I'd rather tell a story about somebody else.

Kurt Cobain

#16. My dad knows how to tell a story. He'd make me laugh by doing all the different voices.

Lily Collins

#17. To just tell a story from beginning, middle and end doesn't motivate me that much.

Michael Mann

#18. As far as I can tell, a young adult novel is a regular novel that people actually read.

Stephen Colbert

#19. I'm just looking at whatever moment I'm at, trying to tell a story that at that time feels like it needs to be told, like I want to see it and how I'm feeling in my life.

Daryl Wein

#20. To tell a group of adolescents who already know how to speak and write that that is the purpose of grammar is like telling someone that they need to read a history of toilets through the ages in order to pee and poop.

Muriel Barbery

#21. I've tried, in 'Bloodmoney,' to tell a story that gets at the crazy relationship between the ISI and the CIA, these absolutely fascinating, often mutually destructive two scorpions in a bottle kind of relationship that they have.

David Ignatius

#22. If you tell a teammate you're ready to play as tough as you're able to, you'd better go out there and do it.

Larry Bird

#23. You could tell a horse everything, and it wouldn't judge you or condemn you or think you stupid. A horse had no opinion at all about the way you looked.

Adele Geras

#24. Musicals and horror films can be very non-verbal and very pure cinema with movement. The camera is justified in being a character. It can really move and tell a story, and literally direct you to look here or there.

Alfonso Gomez-Rejon

#25. The extraordinary mystique of hers made you think she lived on rose petals and listened to nothing but Mozart, but it wasn't true. She was quite funny and ribald. She could tell a dirty joke. She played charades with a great sense of fun and vulgarity, and she could be quite bitchy.

Andre Previn

#26. See my finger wet, see my finger dry, see my finger cut my throat if I tell a lie," said the girl, in a singsong tone, and with accompanying dramatic gestures of fearful histrionic fervour.

Carolyn Wells

#27. I only can write a book every two years, you know. And I write very fast, but I'm not always writing every day. I needed a contact with different things, like nature, for example. I cannot be in front of a computer trying to tell a story.

Paulo Coelho

#28. I wanted to write with emotional honesty and tell a story people could connect with. And I wanted people to know how the foster system in America fails children; and how, at 18, they fall through the cracks. Then we can all work together and give support.

Vanessa Diffenbaugh

#29. A gift for others should be the absolute best thing you can produce. It should meet a real need, proclaim a truth, capture an emotion, or tell a story that is unique to you and makes the world better.

Ed Cyzewski

#30. I don't worry about the last shot or the next shot. I concentrate. Every shot gets a clean slate. And when a shot is over, I wipe it out absolutely. Tell a joke or something. If you worry about how you looked, how well you did, you'll go insane.

Michael Caine

#31. The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story ... Writing is seduction. Good talk is part of seduction.

Stephen King

#32. You can tell a paragraph is slipping out of control when there's a runaway use of the word 'hence.

Alain De Botton

#33. One thing that's really pulled me in to helping artists create their album is that I get to help them tell a story. It's about the way you frame that story and finding the best way to tell that story.

Emily Lazar

#34. It's hard to feel smart when you're always forgetting things, but Mama Shannon says that's how you can tell a smart person. They're too busy thinking about Big Ideas to worry about little details like tying their shoes or remembering their homework" -Fella

Sarah Dooley

#35. Base words are uttered only by the base And can for such at once be understood; But noble platitudes - ah, there's a case Where the most careful scrutiny is needed To tell a voice that's genuinely good From one that's base but merely has succeeded.

W. H. Auden

#36. I say that I can't make anything up. I think of myself as a collage artist. I'm cutting and pasting memories of my life. And I say, I have to live a life in order to tell a life. I would prefer to tell it because telling you're always in control, you're like God.

Spalding Gray

#37. If one cannot tell a difference between fantasy and reality, it is either that one or a society around mentally ill

Uri Norwich

#38. It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual.

Thomas Jefferson

#39. Tell a lie loud enough and long enough and people will believe it.

Adolf Hitler

#40. ou can tell a lot about a person based on the pages he or she journals on

David Levithan

#41. Never tell a young person that anything cannot be done. God may have been waiting centuries for someone ignorant enough of the impossible to do that very thing.

G. M. Trevelyan

#42. I'm a woman, and anytime you tell a woman that she looks nice, it's not going to upset her.

Angelina Jolie

#43. We are not meant to spend the rest of our lives underground. We need to go home and tell a strange story that no one will believe.

Courtney M. Privett

#44. Khloe has the youngest hands. You can tell a woman's age by her hands, and she taught me that. She has way younger hands than I do because she's addicted to wearing sunscreen on them. I'm not consistent with it, but maybe that will be my new year's resolution.

Kylie Jenner

#45. My father who in this case was an obsessive life-long storyteller, and by a very peculiar trick of my father's. My father would tell a very, very long story, and the punch line would be in Yiddish.

Stephen Greenblatt

#46. You're trying to dramatize events to tell a story most effectively. That doesn't mean the events aren't true, it just means you're making them as dramatic as you possibly can.

Mark Boal

#47. I'm just trying to tell a good story and make thought-provoking, entertaining films. I just try and draw upon the great culture we have as a people, from music, novels, the streets.

Spike Lee

#48. In all likelihood, Sonja had more academic journal subscriptions than friends. She could explain advanced calculus to her fifth-form algebra teacher but couldn't tell a joke to a boy at lunch.

Anthony Marra

#49. I enjoyed doing the gag covers better than the story ones because they were usually simpler. A cover based on an incident in the plot took a great deal of staging to tell a little story that was still part of the book. And it had to make sense on its own.

Carl Barks

#50. Why should there be only one sort of photography? I want to create images with elements of my choosing, narrative or evocative ... I give myself a literary frame, I tell a story.

Sarah Moon

#51. If you decide to tell a kid that looks don't matter, she can prove you wrong every day. Because they see it everywhere. That is age-old, going back to the Greeks, but now we're bombarded nonstop.

Catherine Hardwicke

#52. Opinion. Love meant being brave, otherwise you had already lost your own argument: the man who couldn't tell a woman he loved her was, by definition, not worthy of her.

Nick Hornby

#53. You can tell a lot from a person's nails. When a life starts to unravel, they're among the first to go.

Ian McEwan

#54. There are fewer established rules in the way you tell a story for commercials than in features. It's a great little short story you get to play with.

Alfonso Cuaron

#55. You can tell a man's character by what he turns up when offered a job - his nose or his sleeves.

Suzanne Woods Fisher

#56. I don't look at women as groupies. To me, a groupie is a stalker. If you're a fan, then you're a fan. But I can look at a woman and become a fan of hers instantly. I'll tell a woman, "Look, I don't want your phone number. Just give me your autograph. Can I take a picture with you?"

Tyrese Gibson

#57. I wake up so full of life and feeling so alive and so full of joy when I get to go to a set and tell a story. I just - I couldn't imagine not having that, and what a gift it's been in my life.

Hilary Swank

#58. One must never tell a child what it is they should display acting.

Asghar Farhadi

#59. Music is a lens through which to see who we are. Every phrase of every piece of music is trying to tell a story.

Charles Hazlewood

#60. The white man knows many things," the other whispered back, "but he doesn't know how to tell a good lie.

Okey Ndibe

#61. A lot of guys go in immediately for status, as opposed to comfort and allowing their home to tell a story about them.

Nate Berkus

#62. He knows that it's impossible to tell a wolf
from a man if
he keeps his chin up
and his teeth clean.

Toby Barlow

#63. Your first obligation as a writer is to tell the truth and to tell a good story.

Lena Waithe

#64. Audiences have become so much more sophisticated, and they're looking for different eyes and different ways to tell a story. And 'Scandal' certainly gives us the freedom to take those chances.

Tom Verica

#65. If you tell a lie, tell a big one.

Joseph Goebbels

#66. You know, I remember watching Morgan Freeman when he did the two Alex Cross movies, and he's so confident that he's going to knock the scene dead. And I'm really confident that I can tell a good story now, so I just don't worry about things.

James Patterson

#67. 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

#68. You tell a lot of lies, Ms. Berenson," he said. Berenson said nothing. Neagley said, "She's Human Resources. It's what they do.

Lee Child

#69. If you can't tell a spoon from a ladle, then you're fat!

Demetri Martin

#70. The main thing to tell a person when you explain how to become righteous is to announce to him for free grace of God, concealing nothing, saying none other than what God says in the Gospel. Build a fence around Mount Sinai, but not around Golgotha ,because at Golgotha all God's wrath was appeased.

C.F.W. Walther

#71. ...You can always tell a Party Girl by her foot tattoo...

Inejiro Koizumi

#72. Today the challenge is not visuals, but to be able to tell a riveting emotional story, something that can reach deep down inside the audience's heart and twist it like a toy to make them laugh, cry or jump out of their seats to root for the hero.

Gabriel Campisi

#73. Never tell a mother how she has to raise her children and give no advice over their schooling, health or nutrition if you are not asked to.

Rossana Condoleo

#74. You know the difference between a real science and a pseudoscience? A real science recognizes and accepts its own history without feeling attacked. When you tell a psychiatrist his mental institution came from a lazar house, he becomes infuriated.

Michel Foucault

#75. Stand up for your rights and be brave, and don't be intimidated. Read your Bible. That's really given me strength, and it will give you strength. Pray, and use God's name, Jehovah. And never tell a lie, ever.

Margaret Keane

#76. What would it matter if, for the sake of the Christian Church, one were to tell a big lie?

Martin Luther

#77. The challenge of life, I have found, is to build a resume that doesn't simply tell a story about what you want to be, but it's a story about who you want to be.

Oprah Winfrey

#78. My goal always is to tell a universal story, meaning it's about a person who has an idea, a vision, a dream, an ambition to make the world somewhat less chaotic.

Irving Stone

#79. As a comedy writer, I'm always praying for the day I can tell a self-aware/break-the-fourth-wall style of joke.

Nicholas Stoller

#80. I hope for quick, fluent copy and memorable pictures. The words would not 'describe' the pictures; the pictures would not 'illustrate' the words. Together, they would carry a stamp and tell a story.

Muriel Rukeyser

#81. Sometimes journalists ask me, "What's the message?" There is no message. I think that fiction should not be trying to give messages. Just tell a story.

Isabel Allende

#82. A smile stretches across his [Pigpen] face. "Naw, but we had a chaplain over in Afghanistan. Cool son of a bitch. And he'd do this. Out of nowhere tell a story that would put it in perspective.

Katie McGarry

#83. I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way (s)he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

Maya Angelou

#84. To me, writing is fun. It doesn't matter what you're writing, as long as you can tell a story.

Stan Lee

#85. It's great fun if you get a good piece of writing and you can pretend to be someone else, tell a story that needs to be told, make some kind of connection. I've always fancied myself as a leading man, but I really doubt whether anyone else sees me that way.

Colin Hay

#86. Hells, Nori-girl, if the Ell called me on it in council, I'd have to swear by the second moon that you couldn't tell a man from a mudsucker.

Tara K. Harper

#87. It's a rare memoir that can tell a story that seems brand new, but Nina Here Nor There does it. This one-of-a-kind narrator undertakes a quest that is unmistakably timely. But in its yearning for awareness and connection, this book feels timeless.

K.M. Soehnlein

#88. You didn't tell a lie, you just left a big hole in the truth.

Helen Thomas

#89. That was the beginning of modern acting for me. You don't have to tell a camera everything. It gets bored if you do and wants to look elsewhere.

Stephen Rea

#90. So telling a lie becomes a sin if you tell it to take advantage of a person, but if you tell a lie to do a good thing for him that is not a sin. Even God tells lies very often; you can see this throughout history.

Sun Myung Moon

#91. He remembered lesson #76.5 from Man Decorum 101: Never tell a smart, pissed-off female what to do. Ask her. Nicely. Preferably with roses in hand.

Stephanie Rowe

#92. My message is to forget about dichotomies. The 'Brain Opera' is an opera, even if it does not tell a story in the usual way. It is a psychological journey with voice - so I do consider it an opera.

Tod Machover

#93. You start out wanting to change the world through language, and end up thinking it's enough to tell a few good jokes.

David Nicholls

#94. Although they might not admit it, I think girls are very aware of the impact that they're having. But they never feel it themselves, and it's impossible to explain. It's like trying to tell a blind person what yellow is.

Alex Kapranos

#95. As a rule, anyone who can tell a good story can write one, so there really need be no mistake about his qualification; such a man will be careful not to be wearisome, and to keep his point, or his catastrophe, well in hand.

James Payn

#96. I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.

Michel De Montaigne

#97. Look at the mother of Washington! She raised a boy that could not tell a lie
could not tell a lie! But he never had any chance. It might have been different if he had belonged to the Washington Newspaper Correspondents' Club

Mark Twain

#98. At nineteen they can card you in the bars and tell you to get the fuck out, put your sorry act (and sorrier ass) back on the street, but they can't card you when you sit down to paint a picture, write a poem, or tell a story.

Stephen King

#99. Never tell a man all about yourself, it's bound to lead to trouble.

Sophie Kinsella

#100. If you tell a guy you don't like being tickled and he tickles you anyway, that's a red flag.

Anna Kendrick