Quotes about Storytelling

Tell me the story...
What story, child?
The story of Babel Dark's secret.
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.

T ell 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.

'Why can't you just tell.me the story without starting with another story?'
'Because 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.

Each morning, the second they see each other,
they open easily, telling stories and dreams and secrets,
empty of ay fear or suspicious holding back.

To watch and listen to those two
is to understand how, as it's written,
sometimes when two beings come together,
Christ becomes visible...

There's no blocking the speechflow-river-running-
all-carrying momentum that true intimacy is.

No matter how true I believe what I am writing to be, if the reader cannot also participate in that truth, then I have failed.

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.

Question: What is an example of company that created a brand by conducting a dialogue with customers?

Answer: You don’t know many either, do you Guy? Ahh, we agree! I think that while markets are conversations, marketing is a story. Starbucks creates conversations among customers, so does Apple. The NYSE makes a fortune permitting people to interact with each other. But great marketing is storytelling, and if you’ve been to a Broadway show lately, you’ll notice that audience participation is discouraged. That doesn’t mean that great playwrights don’t listen! They do. They, like great marketers, listen relentlessly. They engage in offline conversations constantly. They poll and they do censuses and most important, they have true conversations with small groups of real people. But THEN, they tell a story.

She could write the scene three times over, from three points of view...none of these three was bad, nor were they particularly good.  She need not judge...She need only show seperate minds, as alive as her own, struggling with the idea that other minds were equally alive. It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp that other people are as real as you. And only in a story could you enter these different minds and show that they had equal value.  That was the only moral a story need have.

The power of storytelling is exactly this: to bridge the gaps where everything else has crumbled.

I think that while markets are conversations, marketing is a story. Starbucks creates conversations among customers, so does Apple. The NYSE makes a fortune permitting people to interact with each other. But great marketing is storytelling, and if you’ve been to a Broadway show lately, you’ll notice that audience participation is discouraged. That doesn’t mean that great playwrights don’t listen! They do. They, like great marketers, listen relentlessly. They engage in offline conversations constantly. They poll and they do censuses and most important, they have true conversations with small groups of real people. But THEN, they tell a story.

When relating a story at work, think of ways to make what you have to say interesting and compelling.

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.

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

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