It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.
—Italo Calvino (1923–85) Italian Novelist, Essayist, Journalist
In the tale, in the telling, we are all one blood. Take the tale in your teeth, then, and bite till the blood runs, hoping it’s not poison; and we will all come to the end together, and even to the beginning: living, as we do, in the middle.
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b.1929) American Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer
Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German Literary and Marxist Critic
When a man fell into his anecdotage it was a sign for him to retire from the world.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
If you don’t know the trees you may be lost in the forest, but if you don’t know the stories you may be lost in life.
—Anonymous
To have frequent recourse to narrative betrays great want of imagination.
—Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) English Statesman, Man of Letters
We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say—and to feel—“Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.”
—John Steinbeck (1902–68) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Journalist
Life is too short for a long story.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762) English Aristocrat, Poet, Novelist, Writer
I cannot tell how the truth may be;
I say the tale as ’twas said to me.
—Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish Novelist, Poet, Playwright, Lawyer
The history of a soldier’s wound beguiles the pain of it.
—Laurence Sterne (1713–68) Irish Anglican Novelist, Clergyman
Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at parties, and suddenly we realize that those two very difficult years of our lives have become lumped together into a few episodes that have lodged in our memory in a standardized form, and are always told in a standardized way, in the same words. But in fact that lump of memories has nothing whatsoever to do with our experience of those two years in the army and what it has made of us.
—Vaclav Havel (1936–2011) Czech Dramatist, Statesman
You have to understand, my dears, that the shortest distance between truth and a human being is a story.
—Anthony de Mello (1931–87) Indian-born American Theologian
Their story, yours, mine—it’s what we all carry with us on this trip we take, and we owe it to each other to respect our stories and learn from them.
—William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American Poet, Novelist, Cultural Historian
Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you. – Hemingway, Ernest
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.
—Hannah Arendt (1906–75) German-American Philosopher, Political Theorist
We construct a narrative for ourselves, and that’s the thread that we follow from one day to the next. People who disintegrate as personalities are the ones who lose that thread.
—Paul Auster (b.1947) American Novelist, Poet, Film Director
A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled. – Chandler, Raymond
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) American Novelist
With a tale, for sooth, he comet unto you; with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner.
—Philip Sidney (1554–86) English Soldier Poet, Courtier
The book which the reader now holds in his hands, from one end to the other, as a whole and in its details, whatever gaps, exceptions, or weaknesses it may contain, treats of the advance from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from falsity to truth, from darkness to daylight, from blind appetite to conscience, from decay to life, from bestiality to duty, from Hell to Heaven, from limbo to God. Matter itself is the starting-point, and the point of arrival is the soul. Hydra at the beginning, an angel at the end.
—Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist
To be a person is to have a story to tell.
—Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) (1885–1962) Danish Novelist, Short-story Writer
Under the Earth I go,
On the oak leaf I stand.
I ride on the filly
That was never foaled,
And I carry the dead in my hand.
—Anonymous
The universe is made of stories, not atoms.
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–80) American Poet, Writer
Faith! he must make his stories shorter or change his comrades once a quarter.
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Irish Satirist
‘Thou shalt not’ is soon forgotten, but ‘Once upon a time’ lasts forever.
—Philip Pullman (b.1946) English Children’s Author
The story – from Rumplestiltskin to War and Peace – is one of the basic tools invented by the human mind, for the purpose of gaining understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b.1929) American Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer
Of course that is not the whole story, but that is the way with stories; we make them what we will. It’s a way of explaining the universe while leaving the universe unexplained, it’s a way of keeping it all alive, not boxing it into time.
—Jeanette Winterson (b.1959) English Novelist, Journalist
Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, the power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.
—Salman Rushdie (b.1947) Indian-born British Novelist
Nobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities of a marvelous tale.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–64) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
There are no stories without meaning. And I am one of those men who can find it even when others fail to see it. Afterwards the story becomes the book of the living, like a blaring trumpet that raises from the tomb those who have been dust for centuries….
—Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian Novelist
I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope, which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.
—Theodor Seuss Geisel (‘Dr. Seuss’) (1904–91) American Children’s Writer, Cartoonist, Animator
Leave a Reply