Stories
Quotes - Stop entertaining two faced people
“...the
proliferation of luminous fungi or iridescent crystals in deep caves where the
torchlessly improvident hero needs to see is one of the most obvious intrusions
of narrative causality into the physical universe.”
―
Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent
“...each
one's different. They have similar elements, though. All stories do, no matter
what form they take. Something was, and then something changed. Change is what
story is, after all.”
―
Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea
“Any
story could be a comedy or a tragedy, depending on where you ended it. That was
the magic. How the same story could be told an infinite number of ways.”
―
Emma Straub, This Time Tomorrow
“The
books were legends and tales, stories from all over the Realm. These she had
devoured voraciously – so voraciously, in fact, that she started to become
fatigued by them. It was possible to have too much of a good thing, she
reflected.
“They’re
all the same,” she complained to Fleet one night. “The soldier rescues the
maiden and they fall in love. The fool outwits the wicked king. There are
always three brothers or sisters, and it’s always the youngest who succeeds
after the first two fail. Always be kind to beggars, for they always have a
secret; never trust a unicorn. If you answer somebody’s riddle they always
either kill themselves or have to do what you say. They’re all the same, and
they’re all ridiculous! That isn’t what life is like!”
Fleet
had nodded sagely and puffed on his hookah. “Well, of course that’s not what
life is like. Except the bit about unicorns – they’ll eat your guts as soon as
look at you. those things in there” – he tapped the book she was carrying –
“they’re simple stories. Real life is a story, too, only much more complicated.
It’s still got a beginning, a middle, and an end. Everyone follows the same
rules, you know. . . It’s just that there are more of them. Everyone has
chapters and cliffhangers. Everyone has their journey to make. Some go far and
wide and come back empty-handed; some don’t go anywhere and their journey makes
them richest of all. Some tales have a moral and some don’t make any sense.
Some will make you laugh, others make you cry. The world is a library, young
Poison, and you’ll never get to read the same book twice.”
―
Chris Wooding, Poison
“The
moral of this story is that no matter how much we try, no matter how much we
want it ... some stories just don't have a happy ending.”
―
Jodi Picoult
“Stop
entertaining two faced people. You know the ones who have split personalities
and untrustworthy habits. Nine times out of ten if they telling you stuff about
another person, they're going to tell your business to other people. If they
say, "You know I heard........." More than likely it's in their
character to share false information. Beware of your box, circle, square!
Whatever you want to call it.”
―
Amaka Imani Nkosazana, Sweet Destiny
“And
I? I drink, I burn, I gather dreams.
And
sometimes I tell a story. Because Promethea asks me for a bowl of words before
she goes to sleep.”
―
Hélène Cixous, The Book of Promethea
“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, Beatrice and Virgil
“Lies
are just stories, and stories are all that matter. We all tell stories. Some
are more truthful than others, maybe, but in the end the only thing that counts
is what you can make people believe.”
―
Lauren Oliver, Delirium Stories: Hana, Annabel, Raven, and Alex
“It's
inhuman to take your books away before you know the end.”
―
Katherine Rundell, The Wolf Wilder
“Stories
are a communal currency of humanity.”
―
Tahir Shah, In Arabian Nights: A Caravan of Moroccan Dreams
“So
many people can now write competent stories that the short story is in danger
of dying of competence.”
―
Flannery O'Connor
“A
tale may have exactly three beginnings: one for the audience, one for the
artist, and one for the poor bastard who has to live in it.”
―
Catherynne M. Valente, Radiance
“Writing's
funny, it's like walking down a hall in the dark looking for the light switch,
and suddenly you find it, flip it on, and then you discover the hallway you
passed through is papered with the novel you've written.”
―
Jonathan Safran Foer
“For
all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written
plain as day in the faces of the people around him.”
―
Emma Donoghue, Slammerkin
“Finally,
I’d say to anyone who wants to tell these tales, don’t be afraid to be
superstitious. If you have a lucky pen, use it. If you speak with more force
and wit when wearing one red sock and one blue one, dress like that. When I’m
at work I’m highly superstitious. My own superstition has to do with the voice
in which the story comes out. I believe that every story is attended by its own
sprite, whose voice we embody when we tell the tale, and that we tell it more
successfully if we approach the sprite with a certain degree of respect and
courtesy. These sprites are both old and young, male and female, sentimental
and cynical, sceptical and credulous, and so on, and what’s more, they’re
completely amoral: like the air-spirits who helped Strong Hans escape from the
cave, the story-sprites are willing to serve whoever has the ring, whoever is
telling the tale. To the accusation that this is nonsense, that all you need to
tell a story is a human imagination, I reply, ‘Of course, and this is the way
my imagination works.”
―
Philip Pullman, Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version
“To
animals they were just the weather, just part of everything.
But
humans arose and gave them names, just as people filled the starry sky with
heroes and monsters, because this turned them into stories.
And
humans loved stories, because once you'd turned things into stories, you could
change the stories.”
―
Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith
“We
forget old stories, but those stories remain the same.”
―
Dejan Stojanovic, The Sun Watches the Sun
“Anything
is possible on a train: a great meal, a binge, a visit from card players, an
intrigue, a good night's sleep, and strangers' monologues framed like Russian
short stories.”
―
Paul Theroux, The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia
“The
fantastic and the imaginative aren't escapism . . . Good stories introduce the
marvelous. The whole story, paradoxically, strengthens our relish for real
life. This excursion sends us back with renewed pleasure to the actual world.
It provides meaning. . . It takes us out of ourselves and lets us view reality
from new angles. It expands our awareness of the world.”
―
Patti Callahan, Once Upon a Wardrobe
“I
prefer a story to a prayer.”
―
Hannah Kent, Burial Rites
“I
wanted to know what our family's stories were.
I
wanted to know the things Mom wouldn't think to tell me. Things she knew but
never said out loud, because they were a part of her.
I
wanted to know what made the Bahrami family special.”
―
Adib Khorram, Darius the Great Is Not Okay
