1,265 Quotes About Storytelling

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...

How the story will end, no one knows? We can only envisage.

Your perception is not my reality.

Nothing opens up the mind and the heart like books do, and so they have the power to change the whole world. That's why the are burning books, Ava. To stop us thinking, and feeling, and imagining...

Sometimes reality strays so far from what’s rational that we can only explain it through fantasy.

When we're in the story, when we're part of it, we can't know the outcome. It's only later that we think we can see what the story was. But do we ever really know? And does anybody else, perhaps, coming along a little later, does anybody else really care? ... History is written by the survivors, but what is that history? That's the point I was trying to make just now. We don't know what the story is when we're in it, and even after we tell it we're not sure. Because the story doesn't end.

This is our story to tell. You’d think for all the reading I do, I would have thought about this before, but I haven’t. I’ve never once thought about the interpretative, the story telling aspect of life, of my life. I always felt like I was in a story, yes, but not like I was the author of it, or like I had any say in its telling whatsoever.

A book that you read once becomes a part of you. The physical entity on the shelf becomes a symbol of how it has lived in your mind, given itself to you and merged with your story like an ex-lover, as part of your experience for the rest of your life. The book may go on to have other adventures, to caress the imagination of other readers, but what it means to you remains yours alone.

It's important to remember that we all change each other's minds all the time. Any good story is a mind-altering substance.