Best 965 quotes in «storytelling quotes» category

Descriptions of dreams have a dubious place in storytelling. For these are dreams which have been imagined--'dreamed up', to be slotted in. A story can be made up. How can a dream be made up? By not rising of its own free will from the unconscious it sets a note of falsity, merely illustrating something 'dream-like', which may be why dream descriptions within stories seen curiously meaningless. To avoid glazing over, best then to turn the page quickly.

Devdas loved Paro and Chandramukhi with an amazing passion. But he loved his loneliness with an amazing obsession.

Did you know that writing stories down kills them? Of course it does, words aren't meant to be stiff, unchanging things.

Disenchantment is the blessing of becoming yourself.

Do I have the permission to succeed at this? Who am I to tell my stories? “Who are you to not tell them?” a writer friend said to me. This writer friend — author of novels, memoirs, a short story collection — tells me that it is ownership, the acceptance of the fact that our stories make us who we are, that is the most complicated and treacherous part of what we do. When that ownership is withheld, we cannot succeed. When other forces say, no, that story is not yours, they have not only killed it and its place in your soul; they have killed you.

Do not become too pretty with yourself. And by that I mean, do not be afraid to get down in the dirt and tell stories that need to be told, using the appropriate language needed to convey the tale. Use the world around you, the people in it, the situations, the timeless problems and delimmas and yearnings. The further you get from this, with ornate and flowery language, with homogenized and predictable storytelling, the further away you push the audience. For the reason the reader has come to you, the writer, is to see themselves. In Romance, in Westerns, in Science Fiction, in Horror. They want to be able to put themselves in your story, to live it, see it, breathe it. Even if they are unfamiliar with the world you've created or are frightened by it, or it makes them uncomfortable, the reader wants the thrill of a rollercoaster ride. So give the audience its money's worth. I've said this before and I'll say it again. Tell me a good story and I will listen.

Do not become too pretty with yourself. And by that I mean, do not be afraid to get down in the dirt and tell stories that need to be told, using the appropriate language needed to convey the tale. Use the world around you, the people in it, the situations, the timeless problems and delimmas and yearnings. The further you get from this, with ornate and flowery language, with homogenized and predictable storytelling, the further away you push the audience. For the reason the reader has come to you, the writer, is to see themselves. In Romance, in Westerns, in Science Fiction, in Horror. They want to be able to put themselves in your story, to live it, see it, breathe it. Even if they are unfamiliar with the world you've created or are frightened by it, or it makes them uncomfortable, the reader wants the thrill of a rollercoaster ride. So give the audience its monies worth. I've said this before and I'll say it again. Tell me a good story and I will listen.

Don’t confuse the darkness that’s leaving with the light that’s coming in.

Don't be scared of scars. They just tell stories that are hard to hear.

Don’t break the rules when you haven’t fully figured them out yet.

Don’t interrupt when your characters take a flight of their own.

Don’t just raise the bar… Raise the roof.

Don’t let the world tell you who you are. You get up and you tell the world who you are.

Don’t let the poison of the past spoil a fruitful future.

Don’t look. See. Don’t think. Feel. Don’t hear. Listen. Pay attention Miracles really do happen every day

Don’t satisfy your thirst by drinking stories from others. Write your own story to feel more thirst.

Don't starve an instinct with a lie on, Never hit or deceive a wounded lion. He heals faster than you can imagine And hurts even more when in famine.

Don’t think that writing your character as an untainted paragon of virtue will make them likeable—actually the opposite is true. People are attracted to each other’s rough edges. Your readers will relate more with your hero if they show issues that taint their character.

Don't think about the writing process too much. Just do one thing: tell the motherfucking story.

Don’t we all look up at the same stars?

Don’t wish the world demanded less of you. Rise up and exceed its standards.

Emotional position is part of it, but as an individual you are not your emotions, neither are you your intellect. These are things that you have . They're not things that you are . Therefore you have to start to become aware of the different requirements that human beings have, the different areas that they like to be satisfied in. Which means becoming aware of yourself. I mean, as a writer you're gonna have to understand pretty much the whole universe. But the best place to start is by understanding the inner universe. The entire universe – for one thing – only exists in your perceptions. That's all you're gonna see of it. To all practical intents and purposes this is purely some kind of lightshow that's being put on in the kind of neurons in our brain. The whole of reality. So. To understand the universe there's worse advice than that which was carved above the shrine of the Delphi oracle. Where it just said: “Know thyself”. Understand yourself. Know thyself is a magical goal, but like I say to me there is very little difference between magic and creative art in any sense – the laws of one apply perfectly well to the other.

Energy will go into what you love, and what you love will grow. Go for a walk and watch it bloom.

Epiphanies awaken the soul.

Doesn't the telling of something always become a story?

Don’t just hit a home run. Knock it out of the park.

Don’t just see brilliance… Feel it.

Doubt: How can I know? Truth: How can you not?

Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is the very essence of dreams...

Do you want the truth or fiction?

Dreams are good at playing with your memory. They love leaving no trace behind and hate to show up once again in the morning.

-Dream up something wild and improbable. Something beautiful and full of monsters. -Beautiful and full of monsters? -All the best stories are.

Each of us has a story - a unique, valuable, integral part of the whole story of God. Your story is important. It matters.

Et s'ils ne sont pas morts, eh bien ! c'est qu'ils vivent encore. Voilà.

Even I was increasingly unclear about where I'd been, and which time I'd been in: so I had to explain myself to myself! It was for myself that I needed a justification ... but these would no longer have been stories describing the life of The People I lived among ... they were no longer legal stories. They were stories of the refuse, the refusal of this People! They were cast-aside stories, found only in the troubling places outside town.

Even though this princess loved the oak and the castle and her mother, the queen, she tired of the beautiful swamp, of her surroundings. You see, as she grew she came to realize that if she looked too closely, she could recognize evil things in the swamp as well as all the extraordinary things she loved. There were hurtful, malicious things, things that grew quickly, quick enough to ensnare her and smother her if she wasn't careful, maybe even quick enough to steal her life away.

Every day is a journey.

Every day sings its own song.

Every day’s to-do list. 1.) Listen 2.) Trust 3.) Do

Every morning brings us news of the globe, and yet we are poor in noteworthy stories. This is because no event comes to us without being already shot through with explanation. In other words, by now almost nothing that happens benefits storytelling; almost everything benefits information. Actually, it is half the art of storytelling to keep a story free from explanation as one reproduces it. . . . The most extraordinary things, marvelous things, are related with the greatest accuracy, but the psychological connection of the event is not forced on the reader. It is left up to him to interpret things the way he understands them, and thus the narrative achieves an amplitude that information lacks.

Everyone and everything needed to be raised to its highest level – the teacher must become a mage, the husband a knight errant, the labor a hero in a sacred drama – intensified, rarefied, baptized in the turbulent waters of restlessness, curiosity, and ardor.

Every object holds a story.

Everyone has a story inside them. It's your truth. Write your truth!

Everyone is a raconteur without realizing it. We speak to our friends, we speak to our doctors and therapists about the nothing-meaning nonsense that goes on in our lives, but the difference in telling a story and complaining about the ills of one’s life is in the delivery. We can talk about how someone slighted you at work, or we can talk about how that person looked when they promptly fell down the stairs a moment after disdaining you. There, you see, is the difference: people will often notice the main but not the nuance; they will notice the face of the person yelling at them and the pitch of their shouts, but will not notice the comfort that the ululations of agony and twisted limbs lying on the bottom stile can promise.

Every painting tells a story.

Everyone will say I'm insane, but I don't care, Rose. Is it insane to marry the girl I love? A girl with golden brown hair, with gifts of beauty and goodness and storytelling?

Every ounce of his soul tells him this will make a good story to tell his friends—an anecdote in the biography, an incident in the life. But part of the sorrow he feels—and it is that—comes from the distance he sees between himself and the storytelling, the hole that has ripped open between the here and the there.

every story, even your own, is either happy or sad depending on where you stop telling it

Every story is a ride to some place and time other than here and now. Buried in an armchair, reclined on a couch, prostrate on your bed, or glued to your desk, you can go places and travel through time.

Every story needs to be worth telling.