‘Thou shalt not’ is soon forgotten, but ‘Once upon a time’ lasts forever.
—Philip Pullman (b.1946) English Children’s Author
Life is too short for a long story.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762) English Aristocrat, Poet, Novelist, 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
People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don’t have a middle or an end any more. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning.
—Steven Spielberg (b.1946) American Film Director, Screenwriter, Film Producer, Businessperson
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
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
The universe is made of stories, not atoms.
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–80) American Poet, Writer
I will open my mouth in a parable
I will utter dark sayings of old.
Things that we have heard and known,
that our fathers told us.
We will not hide them from their children,
but tell it to the coming generations.
—The Holy Bible Scripture in the Christian Faith
It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.
—Italo Calvino (1923–85) Italian Novelist, Essayist, Journalist
Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.
—Hannah Arendt (1906–75) German-American Philosopher, Political Theorist
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
The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German Literary and Marxist Critic
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
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
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
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
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
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
To have frequent recourse to narrative betrays great want of imagination.
—Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) English Statesman, Man of Letters
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
Faith! he must make his stories shorter or change his comrades once a quarter.
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Irish Satirist
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
We ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue.
—Plato (428 BCE–347 BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Educator
There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.
—Willa Cather (1873–1947) American Novelist, Writer
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
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 Books Writer, Writer, Cartoonist, Animator
Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story—a story that is basically without meaning or pattern. – Hoffer, Eric
—Eric Hoffer (1902–83) American Philosopher, Author
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
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
Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
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