Quotes about Stories

When women get together, they tell stories. This is how it has always been. Telling stories is our way of saying who we are, where we have come from, what we know, and where we might be headed.

We have nonbelievers, atheists, intellects, cynicists... all kinds of what-have-yous in here tonight, but all of them want to see that fella in the tights end up with that swan girl, so she'll be able to get out of that lake.  Only with the love of one who has never loved before can the spell be broken.  Why?  Who the hell cares why?  Do you think your woman with the feathers is going to ask why?  No.  She's just going to say thank you because then she can move on and wear nice dresses and go for walks instead of having to peck at soggy bread in a stinky lake every day for the rest of her life.

This is not a love story, but love is in it.  That is, love is just outside it, looking for a way to break in.

The telling of stories, like singing and praying, would seem to be an almost ceremonial act, an ancient and necessary mode of speech that tends the earthly rootedness of human language. For narrated events always happen somewhere. And for an oral culture, that location is never merely incidental to those occurrences. The events belong, as it were, to the place, and to tell the story of those events is to let the place itself speak through the telling.

What is truer than truth?  The story.

The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.

The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is composed of stories, not of atoms.  The physicist Werner Heisenberg declared that the universe is made of music, not of matter.
And we believe that if you habitually expose yourself to toxic stories and music, you could wind up living in the wrong universe, where it's impossible to become the gorgeous genius you were born to be.
That's why we implore you to nourish yourself with delicious, nutritious tales and tunes that inspire you to exercise your willpower for your highest good.

We're not going to waste our valuable space or your precious energy by giving equal time to stories of tragedy, failure, and tumult.  They get far more that their fair share of attention everywhere else.  Future historians might even conclude that our age suffered from a collective obsessive-compulsive disorder: the pathological need to repetitively seek out reasons for how bad life is.

Words are clamor-filled shells. There's many a story in the miniature of a single word!

Tell me the story...
It was a woman.
You always say that.
There's always a woman somewhere, child; a princess, a witch, a stepmother, a mermaid, a fairy godmother, or one as wicked as she is beautiful, or as beautiful as she is good.
Is that the complete list?
Then there is the woman you love.
Who's she?
That's another story.

Tell me a story...
What kind of story, child?
A story with a happy ending.
There's no such thing in all the world.
As a happy ending?
As an ending.

There's no story that's the start of itself, any more than a child comes into the world without parents.

A beginning, a middle and an end is the proper way to tell a story. But I have difficulty with that method.

It was a long story, and like most of the stories in the world, never finished. There was an ending - there always is - but the story went on past the ending - it always does.

When I am grappling with ideas which are radical enough to upset grown-ups, then I am likely to put these ideas into a story which will be marketed for children, because children understand what their parents have rejected and forgotten.

Don't be satisfied with stories, how things
have gone with others. Unfold
your own myth, without complicated explanation,
so everyone will understand the passage,
WE HAVE OPENED YOU.

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.