1,265 Quotes About Storytelling

Luz's manner of speaking made it clear that she had no idea what she might say next. It wasn't that she made things up, strictly speaking--only that facts were merely a point of departure for her.

[I]f you set out to mention everything you would never be done, and that's what counts, to be done, to have done. Oh, I know, even when you mention only a few of the things there are you do not get done either, I know, I know. But it's a change of muck. And if all muck is the same muck that doesn't matter, it's good to have a change of muck, to move from one heap to another, from time to time, fluttering you might say, like a butterfly, as if you were ephemeral.

All right. Then I'll begin... It's the tale of a man who drank the demon's liquor and gained immortality. That miserable man's lonely, lonely yarn. The stage is Prohibition-era New York. It's the story of the peculiar destiny surrounding the death sudden appearance of the liquor of immortality and of the spiral of people who found themselves drawn into it...

Stories,' the green-eyed Sigrid said, unperturbed, 'are like prayers. It does not matter when you begin, or when you end, only that you bend a knee and say the words.

Stories are not like the real world; they aren't held back by what we know is false or true. What's important is how a story makes you feel inside.

Stories live in your blood and bones, follow the seasons and light candles on the darkest night-every storyteller knows she or he is also a teacher..

It is the nature of stories to leave out far more than they include.

A well-spun tale can transport listeners away from their humdrum lives and return them with an enlarged sense of the world.

My father never told us how the stories worked. He didn't reveal the layers, the nuggets of information, the fragments of truth and fantasy. He didn't need to -- because, given the right conditions, the stories activated, sowing themselves.