Quotes about Storytelling

Here's what I really love: I love a funny story that I can tag a serious line on the end of.

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short." [ Letter to Harrison Blake ; November 16, 1857]

A folktale without a moral is merely a whimsy.

It's a lot more interesting to learn and discover real-life principles when they are revealed in the form of a story.

I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. and anyone who does not remember betrays them again.

Obviously, you're trying to peel through 20 centuries of theology, speculations, church doctrine and storytelling. I'm trying to get back to the absolute basic story of who was Jesus, what did he say, what was he teaching, and what did he do.

How we think about the world and - perhaps even more importantly - how we narrate it have a massive significance, therefore, a thing that happens and is not told ceases to exist and perishes.

I would like to believe this is a story I'm telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.

You can wipe your feet on me, twist my motives around all you like, you can dump millstones on my head and drown me in the river, but you can't get me out of the story. I'm the plot, babe, and don't ever forget it.

Storytelling is not a luxury to humanity; it's almost as necessary as bread. We cannot imagine ourselves without it, because the self is a story.

The ability to concoct plausible lies is a talent not to be underestimated

Toni Morrison said, The function of freedom is to free someone else, and if you are no longer wracked or in bondage to a person or a way of life, tell your story. Risk freeing someone else. Not everyone will be glad that you did. Members of your family and other critics may wish you had kept your secrets. Oh, well, what are you going to do?