Storytelling Quotes

I was raised by and have raised people who regard telling one story when two would do as a sign someone is not really trying.

I would say I was challenging the system quite. But I like to think that if the choices I make are slightly unexpected or challenging to people, then that is good. We are definitely three fairly like-minded people in terms of what we value in scripts and in storytelling.

Storytelling comes naturally to humans, but since we live in an unnatural world, we sometimes need a little help doing what we'd naturally do.

From the beginning of time, we've told stories, Shamans and Medicine People, and not to be pompous about it, but I feel like that is the lineage I take down and where I come from. There is magic to storytelling.

I want to do a stripped-down album. That style is actually where my heart is - storytelling and just letting the voice and the lyrics talk for themselves. I still want to write the perfect song and sing it in the most honest, undressed way. But I feel like I have to gather more experiences and more layers in my voice. I have to live more to be able to tell this tale. So I'm saving my folk record. I have a feeling nobody will understand it.

One of the things about being on Twitter, for me, is mostly about just being on the pulse of what people are interested in, what people are doing and what people are looking for. I look at entertainment projects and storytelling and I really try to think about what people want.

People create the illusion of acting natural, which is what I think most documentarians do in part because of the direct cinema orthodoxies that came into play really in the '60s. That moment of performance is a tremendous opportunity to make visible something hitherto invisible, which is how people want to be seen. How do they see themselves? What are the scripts, fantasies, genres by which they imagine themselves? How is storytelling part of what we are as human beings? We wouldn't kill each other en masse if it weren't for storytelling. We wouldn't be able to live with ourselves.

I like to apply storytelling methods and techniques to try to frame the story in an interesting way, but you can never control what's happening.

The earliest voice listened to by the nations in their infancy was the voice of the storyteller.

Man gave us laws, and God gave us time, It's the art of storytelling and I'm only telling mine.

Everybody has a wicked side, whether they are six or sixty, and yet so often storytelling draws a sharp line between good and evil.

The power of storytelling is exactly this: to bridge the gaps where everything else has crumbled.

I like narrative storytelling as being part of a tradition, a folk tradition.

I grew up in Oklahoma and Missouri, and I just loved film. My folks would take us to the drive-in on summer nights, and we'd sit on the hood of the car. I just had this profound love for storytelling.

Someday, I'd like to sit down with a small group of people, in a relaxed environment, and make a film that feels more independent. That way we can be a little more free in terms of storytelling and subject.

Star Trek' is the McDonald's of science fiction; it's fast food storytelling. Every problem is like every other problem. They all get solved in an hour. Nobody ever gets hurt, and nobody needs to care. You give up an hour of your time, and you don't really have to get involved. It's all plastic.

Don't despair for story's future or turn curmudgeonly over the rise of video games or reality TV. The way we experience story will evolve, but as storytelling animals, we will no more give it up than start walking on all fours.

People have been saying the novel is dead for as far back as I can remember. The novel will never die, but it will keep changing and evolving and taking different shapes. Storytelling, which is the basis of the novel, has always existed and always will.

Horror is great storytelling with scary elements on top of it, but if you don't have great storytelling, you can have all the scares in the world, but the movie won't work.

I am a big fan of music in terms of storytelling device.

In its 400 years of existence, storytellers never evolved the book as a storytelling device.

I always loved silent movies. I was not a specialist, but I loved them. And when I started directing, I became really fascinated by the format - how it works, the device of the silent movie. It's not the same form of expression as a talkie. The lack of sounds makes you participate in the storytelling

I think comedy allows people to accept the more difficult parts of history. And history, if it's presented wrong, is just very depressing, particularly the history of slavery. If slavery is presented properly, it's a great story. But I think that within the commercial world of storytelling in which I live, there haven't been many strong works that discuss slavery in ways that are palatable and funny and interesting to the reader.

Songwriters I've always been drawn to are people who deal with something of depth in the lyric writing. ...I've always been influenced by the folk song, the storytelling tradition in folk music. And so for years I wrote mostly story songs. I still do that, but as I've gone on, it's gotten a little more personal. I used to write mostly in the third person. I write a little more in the first person now.

I’ve always believed that as an author, I do 50% of the work of storytelling, and the reader does the other 50%. There’s no way I can control the story you tell yourself from my book. Your own experiences, preferences, prejudices, mood at the moment, current events in your life, needs and wants influence how you read my every word.

It was all I had, all I've ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. Memory.

Nowadays I'm really cranky about comics. Because most of them are just really, really poorly written soft-core. And I miss good old storytelling. And you know what else I miss? Super powers. Why is it now that everybody's like "I can reverse the polarity of your ions!" Like in one big flash everybody's Doctor Strange. I like the guys that can stick to walls and change into sand and stuff. I don't understand anything anymore. And all the girls are wearing nothing, and they all look like they have implants. Well, I sound like a very old man, and a cranky one, but it's true.

I've never been a fan of whimsical or confusing storytelling.

The biggest compliment? I would say, "You helped me." I think in terms of life, not just with acting. But certainly with storytelling, being able to hold up a mirror and allow someone to relate to a story and see something in themselves to the extent that you're in service to another human being - I don't know why else we're here. To know that I helped someone would be the biggest compliment I could ever receive.

Sometime reality is too complex. Stories give it form.

Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction.

I get some flak for and some resistance from colleagues for because I'm interested in storytelling. I mean what I like about songwriting is songs used to tell a story.

While the storytelling in games is getting so much better, you look at something like Grand Theft Auto V, which I thought was really beautifully written, it doesn't really need a movie because it is a movie. So I think you need a unique game - you either need an incredibly talented writer and director to come in and put together an amazing vision, or you need a game like Metal Gear, which is very cinematic, has a huge amount of history behind it, but whose cinematic experience is very different from what you'd get in a theater.

My childhood was surrounded by books and writing. From a very early age I was fascinated by storytelling, by the printed word, by language, by ideas. So I would seek them out.

I myself wouldn't want to read a magazine that focuses solely on a small part of the literary field or of the popular culture - better to smash the borders and look for interesting and important stuff from many different forms of storytelling.

When I pick up the guitar, it's a melody, and that's what drives the lyrics. It's bits and pieces of truth, but it is storytelling.

Although I'm up for working in any genre, I do love the passion and dynamic storytelling that horror stories can provide. Dealing with big questions and possibilities of all sorts of stories with life and death consequences is enthralling and exhilarating to me.

I'm interested in storytelling. I love being an artist now and connecting through art.

There's a wealth of literature out there which, hopefully, will be, you know, exploded in the future, and I personally find it very rewarding to be involved with classic storytelling, and sort of legendary characters.

What keeps faith cheerful is the extreme persistence of gentleness and humor. Gentleness is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling, making love, fishing, tending animals and sweet corn and flowers, through sports, music, and books, raising kids-all the places where the gravy soaks in and grace shines through. Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people. Lacking any other purpose in life, it would be good enough to live for their sake.

Every bit as visceral and hypnotic as its award-winning predecessor, On the Ropes is a tour-de-force of fluid, yet detailed storytelling.

Graphic novels might really speak to one child who's struggling with the other kinds of reading and might help them discover that storytelling is joyful and personal and illuminating. They might find your way in auditorily by listening to audio books in the car instead of playing Game Boys or watching DVDs.

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.

Storytelling is an act of cruelty. We are cruel to our characters because to be kind is to invite boredom, and boredom in storytelling is synonymous with big doomy death-shaped death. So: be cruel to your protagonist. Rob him of something. Something important. Something he needs. A weapon. An asset. A piece of knowledge. A loved one. A DELICIOUS PIE. Take it away! Force him to operate without it. Conflict reinvigorates stale stories. New conflict, or old conflict that has evolved and grown teeth.

I think there's a great storytelling tradition in the restaurant business that tends to attract people with an oral tradition of bulls - ting and bollocking. Creative people, people for whom the 9-to-5 world is not attractive or impossible. It seems that way. There are a lot of stories in the business, and a lot of characters - and it seems to attract its share of artists and writers and people who hope to do something creative in their lives.

If you do really good storytelling, things that people also might anticipate and that they might have seen before - there's a reason we go back to stories that we love - so, even if there is a familiarity, if you can do it a different way and hopefully do it well enough, you actually feel the satisfaction of that anticipation given back to you.

While I don't like violent programs per se, I do like good storytelling, which made me a fan of shows like Breaking Bad and American Horror Story.

My major allegiance has been to storytelling, not to history.

The Hawley Book of the Dead had me completely spellbound from beginning to end. A storytelling virtuosa, Chrysler Szarlan has woven a wondrous, scintillating web of suspense, love, history, and magic that will keep you eagerly turning the pages late into the night. Even readers not normally drawn to the supernatural will be swept away by this book; it has everything a great adventure should have-and so much more.

Tightly-plotted, well-researched and beautifully drawn, this book is a real delight. Garen Ewing's mix of engaging characters, exciting old-school adventure, attractive ligne claire artwork and fluid storytelling makes The Rainbow Orchid easily one of the best graphic novels of the year.