1,265 Quotes About Storytelling

The more history I learn, the more the world fills up with stories.

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

But I am a storyteller, and that involves language, for me the English language, that wonderfully rich, complex, and ofttimes confusing tongue. When language is limited, I am thereby diminished, too.

This is what storytelling gets you. You make things up that aren't real, and then get upset when they don't turn out as expected.

All tales, then, are at some level a journey into the woods to find the missing part of us, to retrieve it and make ourselves whole. Storytelling is as simple - and complex - as that. That's the pattern. That's how we tell stories.

As usual, I shall tell my story badly; and you, as usual, will think me extravagant.

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.

When you see a filmmaker getting too fancy... you can bet he's worried either about his story or his ability to tell it.

Many cultures accept the faulty nature of memory. They know even the photograph only gets it halfway right. They believe there is only one way to bring the dead back to life, story.