What Is A Story Quotes

#1. And what is a story but the wanting for something difficult and the willingness to work for it?

Donald Miller

#2. The justice of it seems to children correct and right - I mean, we laugh at it! We underestimate children's ability to know what is a story and what isn't.

Philip Pullman

#3. 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

#4. 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

#5. 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

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

Paulo Coelho

#7. 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

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

Samuel Colbran

#9. 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

#10. 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

#11. 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

#12. 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

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

Sharon Salzberg

#14. 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

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. 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

#18. 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

#19. 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

#20. 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

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

Oscar Micheaux

#22. 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

#23. Be the hero of your children's story. Never let them believe for a minute that honor, courage and doing what is right is only reserved for other fathers and mothers.

Shannon L. Alder

#24. 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

#25. What I'm interested in doing in a story is bringing certain different languages, people, events together and then letting the reader make what he wants of it.

Grace Paley

#26. 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

#27. It's encouraging to watch what people will do to contribute to a love story. It's as though we universally recognize the union of souls is worth sacrificing for.

Donald Miller

#28. Trying to find the story within the story was hard. Filmmaking is such a reductive process in a strange way and you keep whittling away to what is essential.

Mark Ruffalo

#29. 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

#30. Whenever you listen to a piece of music, what you are actually doing is hearing the latest sentence in a very long story you've been listening to - all the pieces of music you've ever heard.

Brian Eno

#31. 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

#32. In my case, if I start out by thinking about the plot, things don't go well. Small points, such as my impression of what is likely to occur, do come to mind, but I let the rest of the story take its own course. I don't want to spend as long as two years writing a story whose plot I already know.

Haruki Murakami

#33. What is truly arresting about our kind is better captured in the story of the Tower of Babel, in which humanity, speaking a single language, came so close to reaching heaven that God himself felt threatened.

Steven Pinker

#34. What draws us into a story and keeps us there is the firing of our dopamine neurons, signaling that intriguing information is on the way.

Lisa Cron

#35. I have a great little camera, and I had a theory that if the story is interesting, it doesn't matter what medium you shoot it on. You just have to make a good film.

Tamra Davis

#36. 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

#37. What I am trying to achieve is a voice sitting by a fireplace telling you a story on a winter's evening.

Truman Capote

#38. 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

#39. 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

#40. Matthew Wiener on 'Mad Men' writes the entire series before they start shooting, and if you have that, then what you can do with character and story is not at all unlike what you can do in a novel.

Salman Rushdie

#41. Good journalism is crucial. Good journalism isn't easy so I think it's less about what story and more about the layers and context that need to be explored in the story. That's one of the reasons why I'm excited to be a part of CNN. This is the kind of place that you can do that.

George Stroumboulopoulos

#42. I've had a very unusual background in science - not the usual route of planning on being a scientist from age 3. I think my story shows that success is more about personal motivation and determination than it is about where you were born or what your economic status was.

Craig Venter

#43. Women think they can act like evil monsters from hell and be loved like a princess. It's as if the dragon and the witch was in them and not in the world.

Robin Sacredfire

#44. All my life I thought that the story was over when the hero and heroine were safely engaged
after all, what's good enough for Jane Austen ought to be good enough for anyone. But it's a lie. The story is about to begin, and every day will be a new piece of the plot.

Mary Ann Shaffer

#45. The Song is a gritty, realistic, and powerful film. The acting and production quality are excellent, and the story is captivating. Although not for children, the story is a good reminder to adults of what really matters!

Alex Kendrick

#46. For a short-story writer, a story is the combination of what the writer supposed the story would likely be about - plus what actually turned up in the course of writing.

Carol Bly

#47. What I usually do is tell funny stories from the road, many of which are, of course, unprintable. But I don't actually have a joke. I don't tell jokes much. I tell little stories.

Howard Dean

#48. The script will point you in certain directions and I go the opposite if I can. I try do do one thing and tell a different story with my eyes. I believe what's more interesting is always what's not being said.

Robert Carlyle

#49. Writing a novel mimics what we bring to our journey of life. God is the great editor who purges the faulty, the awkward, and all the bits that are just plain wrong, so the optimal story can finally emerge.

Denise M. Baran-Unland

#50. What I love about 'The Walking Dead' is it's a human story, which is to me what makes the comic book so good, but once you jump from the pages of the book to the screen, the gore and the zombies have to look great.

Scott Ian

#51. Research is so vital to a great story. Know what you're writing about!

Beem Weeks

#52. In the only love story he ever attempted, "Kiss Me Again," he had written, "There is no way a beautiful woman can live up to what she looks like for any appreciable length of time." The moral at the end of that story is this: "Men are jerks. Women are psychotic.

Kurt Vonnegut

#53. To tell one comprehensive story of how it has happened that what is is, one which shall hold true, come what may, now-after - a story that whatever comes shall perfectly continue or confirm: such is the ideal motive of religions.

Laura Riding

#54. It is gorgeously shot, and Andrew believes that the old school way of making films in the best way. Meaning: you have a story, and you stick to the story. You don't change and alter the story because of people who've invested in it and what to put product in a shot.

Michael Berryman

#55. ... instead of trying to grapple with the implications of the story of empire, the British seem to have decided just to ignore it... the most corrosive part of this amnesia is a sense that because the nation is not what it was, it can never be anything again.

Jeremy Paxman

#56. "Oscillate Wildly" is in many ways a story of first love and how it challenges our hero's guarded sense of what's possible.

Travis Mathews

#57. I write for the kid in me ... Often when I'm working on a story, I'll find myself laughing at something my characters have done, or even being surprised at where they've taken the story. It's as if they have a life all their own. What I do is create them and then let them go on to entertain me ...

Elvira Woodruff

#58. In a 1931 speech, Butler recounted a story about Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, how he had run over a child with his car, and said, as he moved on, "It was only one life. What is one life in the affairs of the State.

Smedley D. Butler

#59. The Journal is not essentially a confession, a story about oneself. It is a Memorial. What does the writer have to remember? Himself, who he is when he is not writing, when he is living his daily life, when he is alive and real, and not dying and without truth.

Maurice Blanchot

#60. Game mechanics are the core of what a game truly is. They are the interactions and relationships that remain when all of the aesthetics, technology, and story are stripped away.

Jesse Schell

#61. Of all the principles I'd learn about story, the idea that a character is what he does remains the hardest to actually live.

Donald Miller

#62. My story is endless. I put in a teletype roll, you know, you know what they are, you have them in newspapers, and run it through there and fix the margins and just go, go - just go, go, go.

Jack Kerouac

#63. Ordering is difficult. It's like arranging pieces of music in a concert: What do you put first? What do you put after the intermission? I want the reader to be sort of surprised, to come to each story freshly.

Lydia Davis

#64. Writing has certain advantages; film is another way to tell a story. An experienced filmmaker will take what she needs from the book and leave out other things. With adaptations, you never get the texture of the writing: it's a different mode.

Jhumpa Lahiri

#65. This is what award-winning author and international journalist TIMERI MURARI had to say:

Dear Anant

I managed to read 'Skewed Fantasy' a charming story on Chitra and her problems with NRIs and her dreams.

Best wishes
Timeri

Anant Acharya

#66. Life is so simple: We walk; we sit; we lie horizontal. That's about it. Everything else is a story about what's going on while we're doing it.

Byron Katie

#67. The thing is that my father's story helps to communicate what was at stake with my mother, and my mother and father had so much a partnership that his story is integral to her story, as her story is to his - really, her story can't be told without his story.

Rory Kennedy

#68. But have you ever heard a story in which the evil person triumphs at the end?"
The boy thought for a while before replying.
"No," he said, "but before they lose, they harm the good people. That is what I am afraid of.

Nadeem Aslam

#69. Prayer is a spontaneous feeling. Remember this story when you pray. Let your prayer be a spontaneous phenomenon. If even your prayer cannot be spontaneous, then what will be? If even with God you have to be ready-made, then where will you be authentic and true and natural? Say

Osho

#70. The story of the memoir is a story of me creating certain narratives so that I could live with my own experience and with the uneasy relationship between what I was doing and what I believed in - or what I saw as an uneasy relationship between those two things.

Melissa Febos

#71. When you have a memorable story about who you are and what your mission is, your success no longer depends on how experienced you are or how many degrees you have or who you know. A good story transcends boundaries, breaks barriers, and opens doors.

Blake Mycoskie

#72. What I look for is identifying what the utility of a character is to the telling of the story overall. If I can identify that from reading the script, then I've got a clear idea of whether or not I think the character is worth playing.

Harrison Ford

#73. My hope is that you will see this book for what it is...a conversation about the core questions that call us into humanity. Who am I? What am I? Who created me? What is my purpose? This is the story about the journey through the mysteries that make up the depths of life.

Julia J. Gibbs

#74. I am very conscious of what I say and do when I go out because the media is quick to make that a story.

Justin Guarini

#75. One of the things I do is try to get a positive message out there in the local schools and tell my story. I also do a lot of faith-based speaking, sharing my story and testimony, to help show what God has done in my life and what he can do in others' lives.

Lex Luger

#76. Of the hundreds of points to enter and exit that are offered to me, I have to choose the one that I feel is the least wrong, the least fake. It is fake, it is a moment that I choose to erupt the story, but I make it as smooth as I can. What enables me to do it is the skill of filmmaking.

Abbas Kiarostami

#77. I'm always looking for what's something that Bradley Whitford's character can say that is completely outrageous and completely wrong, but in a double-reverse way is actually totally right. I don't really like where there's a story and you lay a few jokes on top of it.

Matt Nix

#78. Could there be a cowgirl in my future? You know, I never know what character is going to come and tap me on the shoulder and say, 'Hey, tell my story.' So maybe the next one will have boots.

Susan Isaacs

#79. By accepting what the external structures have told us we need to do, we have given the power of our realities and ourselves to others. It is time to tell a new story for women, and that can only start with women.

Zainab Salbi

#80. Everyone has a story inside them. Some are bedtimes stories, some thrill and others scare and horrify their readers. Find out what your story is and share it with the world.

C.K. Webb

#81. What an author shapes into a coherent argument, or weaves into a story, is always much more interesting than the thought process behind it.

Rob Parnell

#82. Everything we come across becomes a part of us. It doesn't matter how small or insignificant it is ... or how devastating. One story here, one story there, that's what I see when I look back at my life. An accumulation of everything I went through.

Bhaskaryya Deka

#83. Self-trust is so important. When you launch on a story, make your neck loose, feel free, good-natured. And be lazy. Feel that you are going to throw it away. Try writing utterly unplanned stories and see what comes out.

Brenda Ueland

#84. Stories are not like the real world; they aren't held back by what we know is false or true. What's important is how a story makes you feel inside.

Tahir Shah

#85. When you read a short story, you come out a little more aware and a little more in love with the world around you. What I want is to have the reader come out just 6 percent more awake to the world.

George Saunders

#86. It's a different story because guess what, the kid is only 28 years old, 28. He's not his dad, not his grandpa. He's 28 years old.

Dennis Rodman

#87. What you don't want is to repeat a formula over and over or impose a formula to a movie that ... when you impose yourself and you impose a formula and you're not open to explore and to find what is right for the movie, I think you're doing a disservice to the story and what you're trying to express.

Emmanuel Lubezki

#88. 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

#89. There is always a story behind what you like. Like what you like and be happy with what you like but don't ever forget to mind the real lessons from the story behind what you like.

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

#90. What makes 'The Wire' a beautiful story is how true to life it is. In other shows, you have a good guy and a bad guy. In 'The Wire,' bad guys are trying to be good, good guys are doing bad. You have real life. The people who do bad get bad things done to them.

Tristan Wilds

#91. Parents don't take a baby's temperature to decide whether the room is too warm; likewise, for global warming, we need a story that spurs us to do what is necessary.

George Akerlof

#92. We always fall in love with a story, not a name or a body but what is inscribed in the man.

Susana Fortes

#93. We grew up watching Woody Allen and Albert Brooks movies, and we see this neurotic, annoying, unlikeable male at the center of a story, and people root for him anyway. I think that's really what we have been craving as women is the hero who doesn't look perfect and doesn't act perfectly.

Jill Soloway

#94. Over the years, with all the experience, I've become more mature about the subjects I pick. I have a better understanding of what works at the box office. Once the story is finalised, I surrender to the director and follow him. After that, my performances speak for themselves.

Mahesh Babu

#95. Let your story breathe and be what it really is.

A.D. Posey

#96. For me, that emotional payoff is what it's all about. I want you to laugh or cry when you read a story ... or do both at the same time. I want your heart, in other words. If you want to learn something, go to school.

Stephen King

#97. With a film, things constantly have to go up in the story, and you're constantly putting pressure on the main character. It allows to go really deep into what its relationship is.

Jennifer Lee

#98. You're crazy, Zaphod," he was saying, "Magrathea is a myth, a fairy story, it's what parents tell their kids about at night if they want them to grow up to become economists,

Douglas Adams

#99. My story is a sad and lonely one, and beautiful and lively and joyful. It's not perfect; it is what it is.
This is a story.
But it is not a fairytale.

Eugenia Argerami

#100. When a day passes, it is no longer there. What remains of it? Nothing more than a story. If stories weren't told or books weren't written, man would live like the beasts, only for the day. The whole world, all human life, is one long story.

Isaac Bashevis Singer