Best 6566 quotes in «stories quotes» category

The mountains themselves call us into greater stories.

The myth of Oedipus . . . arouses powerful intellectual and emotional reactions in the adult-so much so, that it may provide a cathartic experience, as Aristotle taught all tragedy does. [A reader] may wonder why he is so deeply moved; and in responding to what he observes as his emotional reaction, ruminating about the mythical events and what these mean to him, a person may come to clarify his thoughts and feelings. With this, certain inner tensions which are the consequence of events long past may be relieved; previously unconscious material can then enter one's awareness and become accessible for conscious working through. This can happen if the observer is deeply moved emotionally by the myth, and at the sametime strongly motivated intellectually to understand it.

- The myths are dead. The gods are dead. The ghosts and ghouls and phantoms are dead. There is only the State, and the People. - No, Monsieur Robespierre. There is much more than that.

The next best thing to christmas is...... a story worth reading.

Then you are a poet?' she asked, fingering the flyer in her pocket. 'No not at all,' he waved his hand. 'I am merely a character in a poem.

The only thing a closed book is good for is a table that wobbles. Be an open book.

The past doesn't exist. It's just a story we tell ourselves. And stories change each time you tell them.

The past itself is not a narrative. In its entirety, it is as chaotic, uncoordinated, and complex as life. History is about making sense of that mess, finding or creating patterns and meanings and stories from the maelstrom.

The patterns we perceive are determined by the stories we want to believe.

The path you create for yourself is the mark you leave behind when you’re gone from this world. All beauty and angst is stopped by the grave. But your words, your laughter, your faith, and spirit, refuse to die with you. They remain in the hearts and minds of those you touched.

The real protagonist of the story, however, is the magic ring, because it is the movements of the ring that determine those of the characters and because it is the ring that establishes the relationships between them. Around the magic object there forms a kind of force field that is in fact the territory of the story itself. We might say that the magic object is an outward and visible sign that reveals the connection between people or between events. . . We might even say that in a narrative any object is always magic.

There are just as many stories to be told in the dark spots as there are in the bright ones.

There are only two moments when everything is possible in this life," said Petrus, "when one drinks, and when one makes up stories.

There are subtle truths buried in every make-believe. You never know where you might find one.

There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children’s book. In adult literary fiction, stories are there on sufferance. Other things are felt to be more important: technique, style, literary knowingness… The present-day would-be George Eliots take up their stories as if with a pair of tongs. They’re embarrassed by them. If they could write novels without stories in them, they would. Sometimes they do. We need stories so much that we’re even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won’t supply them. We all need stories, but children are more frank about it.

There are three points about stories: if told, they like to be heard; if heard, they like to be taken in; and if taken in, they like to be told.

There is a master way with words which is not learned but is instead developed: a deaf man develops exceptional vision, a blind man exceptional hearing, a silent man, when given a piece of paper...

The reckoning is how we walk into our story; the rumble is where we own it. The goal of the rumble is to get honest about the stories we're making up about our struggles, to revisit, challenge, and reality-check these narratives.

There has never been a better study than researching real stories. You cannot educate yourself better than by making creative critiques about where someone is going.

There is a love that binds us all It's in our blood, it's who we are and it's nested in the branches of this tree and it's rooted in the Earth where we keep all of our stories

There is, I believe now, a force in stories, words in motion, that either drives them forward past things into feelings or doesn't. Sometimes the words fly over the fence and all the way out to the feelings.

There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas come quite literally out of nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: to previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn't too find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.

There is no better gift than giving one a chance to smile through, his or her book

There is no life struggle to transformational success without the shedding of tears...listen closely to the experience stories of those who bear testimonials of touring through adversity...you can hear their silent cries, despite a desert-dry eye, even if those tears are falling within...

There is, of course, always the personal satisfaction of writing down one's experiences so they may be saved, caught and pinned under glass, hoarded against the winter of forgetfulness. Time has been cheated a little, at least in one's own life, and a personal, trivial immortality of an old self assured. And there is another personal satisfaction: that of the people who like to recount their adventures, the diary-keepers, the story-tellers, the letter-writers, a strange race of people who feel half cheated of an experience unless it is retold. It does not really exist until it is put into words. As though a little doubting or dull, they could not see it until it is repeated. For, paradoxically enough, the more unreal an experience becomes - translated from real action into unreal words, dead symbols for life itself - the more vivid it grows. Not only does it seem more vivid, but its essential core becomes clearer. One says excitedly to an audience, 'Do you see - I can't tell you how strange it was - we all of us felt...' although actually, at the time of incident, one was not conscious of such a feeling, and only became so in the retelling. It is as inexplicable as looking all afternoon at a gray stone of a beach, and not realizing, until one tries to put it on canvas, that is in reality bright blue.

There's my life, why not, it is one, if you like, if you must, I don't say no, this evening. There has to be one, it seems, once there is speech, no need of a story, a story is not compulsory, just a life, that's the mistake I made, one of the mistakes, to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough.

There’s a chasm between writing about yourself and writing about your personal life. A lot of young writers want to turn their lives into stories, into films, books, because they feel their lives are somehow significant. But really, it’s not their personal lives that matter, but their own, hard-fought-for ideas. Not just anybody’s ideas, but the ideas that they have paid for with their suffering and their sacrifices and their love of their fellow humans.

There's a growing trade in fakes, you know. Does that concern you? He paused, but he didn't seem surprised not to get an answer. I've never seen one - well, as far as I know - but I'm curious. Could one really tell the difference? Novels, they call them. They must be much cheaper to produce. You can copy them, you see. use the same story over and over, and as long as you're careful how you sell them, you can get away with it. It makes one wonder who would write them. People who enjoy imagining misery, I suppose. People who have no scruples about dishonesty. People who can spend days writing a long sad lie without going insane.

There's more to stories than it seems at first looking," she said. "Two sides to most stories. Folks better be thinking about that for once.

There's no such thing as complete when it comes to stories. Stories are infinite. They are as infinite as worlds.

There was always more to people’s stories.

There wasn't a place I could think of that was more magical than a building bursting with books and stories and words...

There is wisdom out there that can’t be relayed in musings or sage advice. Like the complexity of life itself, it simply won’t condense. It can only be shown in its entirety. It takes a story.

There's a Palestine that dwells inside all of us, a Palestine that needs to be rescued: a free Palestine where all people regardless of color, religion, or race coexist; a Palestine where the meaning of the word "occupation" is only restricted to what the dictionary says rather than those plenty of meanings and connotations of death, destruction, pain, suffering, deprivation, isolation and restrictions that Israel has injected the word with.

There's magic in stories, magic in hope, and magic in coming together. I have learnt from people's stories, been inspired by their hope, and been strengthened by their coming together.

There's nothing ‛just’ about stories. Stories are the most real.

The riches of adversity; we were made thinkers and writers.

The role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a single problem into another form. ... It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell.

The road to home is when we find our hearts filled with the stories of our people.

These stories become what we know, what we understand, and what we are, or, perhaps we should say, what we have become, or can perhaps be.

The shadow of a character is defined by its maker...while a heroine is personified by its actions and relatability. So writers can create a world with a heroine that has impact and finish with everessence lights at the dims of its shadows

These stories were very old, as old as people, and they had survived because they were very powerful indeed. They were the tales that echoed in the head long after the books that contained them were cast aside. They were both an escape from reality and an alternative reality themselves. They were so old, and so strange, that they had found a kind of existence independent of the pages they occupied. The world of the old tales existed parallel to ours, but sometimes the walls separating the two became so thing and brittle that the two worlds started to blend into each other. That was when the trouble started. That was when the bad things came. That was when the Crooked Man began to appear to David.

These days, we've got booksellers in cities, in deserts, and in the middle of a rain forest; we've got travelling bookshops, and bookshops underground. We've got bookshops in barns, in caravans and in converted Victorian railway stations. We've even got booksellers selling books in the middle of a war. Are bookshops still relevant? They certainly are. All bookshops are full of stories, and stories want to be heard.

These stories, I realized, were lost. Nobody was going to know that part of the city but as a place where a bomb went off. The bomb was going to become the story of this city. That's how we lose the city - that's how our knowledge of what the world is is taken away from us - when what we know is blasted into rubble and what is created in its place bears no resemblance to what there was and we are left strangers in a place we knew, in a place we ought to have known.

These words and these stories can save a life. Who knows – maybe even your own.

The stories I tell myself about myself are contexts for what I believe is possible. These stories affect not only my attitudes about myself and others, but affect my behavior in what could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The stories I read gives strength to my spirit.

The stories we tell ourselves have great power.

The stories books tell transcend those of the characters inked upon their pages. A book discloses far more about the person who reads it.

The stories we pretend do not exist, are the stories that will haunt us till the end.