Stories
Quotes - The secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets
“There
is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
―
Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
“I
wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't
rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is
about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of
it, without knowing what's going to happen next.
Delicious
Ambiguity.”
―
Gilda Radner
“Don't
ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”
― J.
D. Salinger
“Stories
of imagination tend to upset those without one.”
―
Terry Pratchett
“It's
like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All
the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that
story.”
―
Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
“After
nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in
the world.”
―
Philip Pullman
“If
you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other
people.”
―
Virginia Woolf
“It's
like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”
―
Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
“Stories
can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.”
―
Ben Okri
“Stories
you read when you're the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who
wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you'll forget precisely what
happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places
in your mind that you rarely ever visit.”
―
Neil Gaiman, M Is for Magic
“That's
what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't
sufficient for the truth.”
―
Tim O'Brien
“But
there's a story behind everything. How a picture got on a wall. How a scar got
on your face. Sometimes the stories are simple, and sometimes they are hard and
heartbreaking. But behind all your stories is always your mother's story,
because hers is where yours begin.”
―
Mitch Albom, For One More Day
“Some
of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.”
―
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
“There's
always room for a story that can transport people to another place.”
―
J.K. Rowling
“We
were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces
at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom.
We
lived in the gaps between the stories.”
―
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
“Perhaps
some day I'll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make
stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow.”
―
Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
“When
we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four
walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the
story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its
own.”
―
John Berger, Keeping a Rendezvous: Essays
“Someone
needs to tell those tales. When the battles are fought and won and lost, when
the pirates find their treasures and the dragons eat their foes for breakfast
with a nice cup of Lapsang souchong, someone needs to tell their bits of
overlapping narrative. There's magic in that. It's in the listener, and for
each and every ear it will be different, and it will affect them in ways they
can never predict. From the mundane to the profound. You may tell a tale that
takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose.
That tale will move them and drive them and who knows what they might do
because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift. Your sister
may be able to see the future, but you yourself can shape it, boy. Do not
forget that... there are many kinds of magic, after all.”
―
Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus
“There
are books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read
sometimes for the story... don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read
sometimes for the words--the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers who
won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good
words, treasure that book.”
―
Stephen King
“Stories
are important, the monster said. They can be more important than anything. If
they carry the truth.”
―
Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls
“We're
all stories, in the end.”
―
Steven Moffat
“...the
secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are
the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere
and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings.
They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house
you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you
listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you
will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who
lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again.
That
is their mystery and their magic.”
―
Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
