Quotes about Stories

Listen to the stories.  You want to help the world?  Read the poetry of the people we're bombing.  Write poetry for them.  Sing songs for them, and for us.  And listen to everybody.

You cannot control how diverse any room is, or any institution, or any policy.  But you can control how diverse you are, and who you love and who you listen to.

So tonight, don't go hang out with your mirrors (whether that's physical or ideological).  Go find somebody you disagree with, and go hang out.

In a perfect world, Barney Frank and Jesse Helms are best friends.

What woman worth her femininity has ever told all of her story?  As the gods do, we reveal ourselves - if we reveal ourselves at all - to whom we choose and in our own good time.

No story is devoid of meaning ... If you know how to look for it.

"'Do you know,' Peter asked, 'why swallows build in the eaves of houses? It is to listen to the stories.'"

All of the elements of the comic way tend to spread to others, insinuating joy where it was previously absent. Conversation has a way of leaping among persons, as it does at parties and celebratory gatherings. Storytelling always begets storytelling. It is difficult to watch others at play without wanting to join them. This is not only a human phenomenon, for researchers have consistently noted that animals at play are often imitated by other animals. So wherever it is possible to initiate a playful activity, it will have a good chance of replicating itself through other parts of the system.

The recounting of a life is a cheat...even our own stories are obscenely distorted...

"Stories are medicine.
They have such power; they do not require that we do, be, act anything -
we need only listen"

[The Bible is] an oral history.  It was passed down word of mouth, father to son, from Adam to Seth, from Seth to Enos, from Enos to Cainan, for forty generations, a growing changing story… until Moses finally gets it down on lambskin.  But lambskins wear out, and need to be recopied.  Copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of an oral history passed down through forty generations.  From Hebrew it's translated into Arabic, from Arabic to Latin, from Latin to Greek, from Greek to Russian, from Russian to German, from German to an old form of English that you could not read .... You can't put a grocery list through that many translations, copies, and retellings, and not expect to have some big changes in the dinner menu when the kids make it back from Kroger.  And yet people are killing each other over this written word.  Here's a tip: if you're killing someone in the name of God, you're missing the message.

Facts don’t persuade, feelings do. And stories are the best way to get at those feelings.

You only have to read the lines of scribbly black and everything shines.