Back Story Quotes & Sayings

Still, the logical part of her realized that the hazel-eyed, dark-scruff iteration of This Guy who sat
across from her right then hadn't actually done anything wrong to her. Because of that, she smiled in
an effort to be polite. "That's nice of you to ask. But, unfortunately, I'm going to have to say no."
"Great." He nodded, as if expecting this very answer. Then his brow furrowed, and he cocked his
head. "Wait - what?"
Sidney bit her lip to hold back a laugh. Ah ... when she told this story later to Trish, the perplexed
look on this guy's face would be the highlight. — Julie James

I don't think my book is any more shocking than if I went out right now and brought back your local newspaper and found a story that happened around here yesterday or the day before that's just as shocking as anything in my book. — Donald Ray Pollock

So I picked the book up and did my usual 123 test. I don't bother reading the blurb on the back, or the first page - the writer's obviously going to be trying their hardest there, aren't they? It's how they're getting on by page 123 that's the real test. If they're crap at writing or bored with their story then you can bet they won't be making any effort at all by that point. — Siobhan Curham

I think back on our story, the things we could've done differently. — Karen Kingsbury

You have to be the prude or the slut, and if you pick one, other people hate you for it, and you can't trust anyone anymore, because they're all after the same thing, and you see that you can never go back to how was before ... — Ned Vizzini

I have only known two men's souls in my life, one the devil, the other the the bird's wings which picked me up and carried me back to the freedom of being. — Wendy Gibbins

Text me back: a love story. — Melissa Broder

Sometimes in a relationship, we can be so caught up in our feelings for the other person that we squeeze God into the background. It becomes a confusing, emotional mess and we wonder why God isn't giving us more direction, when all the while He is there waiting to be allowed back into first place in our hearts. Only when He is truly in first place are we ready for a God-written love story. — Leslie Ludy

One of the things I'm always reminded of when I'm back on stage is how much you have to be aware of and in control of. There is no tight shot. There is no 'we're only shoulders-up this time.' No, from the top of your head to your pinky toe, you're telegraphing part of the story the entire time you're up there. — Jim Parsons

Orien," Birle protested again.
"You can stay if you must." Orien's cheeks were hollow with hunger and he had little strength for anger. "But I wish you'd come. I don't know how long it would be before I could come back for you."
So she followed him, since he would return for her. — Cynthia Voigt

Evan Connell said once that he knew he was finished with a short story when he found himself going through it and taking out commas and then going through the story again and putting the commas back in the same places. I like that way of working on something. I respect that kind of care for what is being done. That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones, with the punctuation in the right places so that they an best say what they are meant to say. If the words are heavy with the writer's own unbridled emotions, or if they are imprecise and inaccurate for some other reason
if the worlds are in any way blurred
the reader's eyes will slide right over them and nothing will be achieved. Henry James called this sort of hapless writing 'weak specification'. — Raymond Carver

He constructed a shell to hide his aloneness, and it hardened on his back. I know of no sadder story. — Peter Guralnick

My girlfriend has the greatest story as to why she isn't religious anymore. When she was a kid, like 12 years old, her parents nailed a 25 pound crucifix to the wall right above her bed. About two weeks later, in the middle of the night, the crucifix falls off the wall and leaves a two inch gash in the back of her dad's head. — Anthony Jeselnik

Why do we cry when somebody die, we can't bring him, back we just lose time crying and feeling miserable and after few days we just find that we can't bring him!

(Note: I have Written a story about my dog which died, in the series of The Life Of One KId) — Deyth Banger

My lover is dead.
And they think I killed him.
I'm running rogue.
Hell bent on both revenge and redemption. Whatever it takes, I'm going to finish a job that began nine months ago. An unauthorized assignment that turned horribly, devastatingly wrong. My miscalculation.
My fault.
My heart left shattered into incomplete pieces which will never wholly fit back together again.
But first I have to outsmart my former organization and the hired killer they've sent after me; a ghost from my past who knows my every move, who's been inside my head, my heart, my dreams and memories: Jaxson.
I'm the traitor, Kylie. The rogue mercenary, Jaxon's newest assignment. And this is our love story. — Michele Mannon

Do you still look at each other like you once did, back at the beginning of the story when everything was a question you were too afraid to find the answer to? — Alethea Kontis

For decades I've had an intense interest in the history and mythology of the Silk Road, I think in part because an aspect of me loves the resonance of long distance travel as a theme or anchor, if you will, for narrative. The ways that cultures rise and fade across centuries, the ways cultures connect and conflict, absorb and reject, transform or remain static: As a writer this is thematic content that never gets old for me. A million million stories rise out of the endless back and forth of cultural contact in all its best and worst aspects, and everything in between. Weave that within a story of adventure or empire or a journey into unknown spaces and I'm in writer and reader hog heaven. — Kate Elliott

If there is a book that the script came from you have to read it, you have to see what you can get out of it: mood, back story and things that may not even be in the film. They kick off your imagination and broaden the character, I think. — Miranda Otto

In a thousand ways, you live by the sword and you die by the sword. When you allow other people to determine your best choices; when you allow yourself to be carried along by what other people think your life should be, could be, must be; when you hand them the pen and tell them to write your story, you don't get the pen back. Not easily anyway. I — Shauna Niequist

I always tell my students to seek out other writers as models, and though it took me years to heed my own advice, it really was life-altering when I found writers who wrote long stories, full of back story and side plots and sub-histories. — Molly Antopol

Roebling rejoined the Army of the Potomac in February 1863 back at Fredericksburg, where he was quartered late one night in an old stone jail, from which he would emerge the following morning with a story that would be told in the family for years and years to come. The place had little or no light, it seems, and Roebling, all alone, groping his way about, discovered an old chest that aroused his curiosity. He lifted the lid and reaching inside, his hand touched a stone-cold face. The lid came back down with a bang. Deciding to investigate no further, he cleared a place on the floor, stretched out, and went to sleep. At daybreak he opened the chest to see what sort of corpse had been keeping him company through the night and found instead a stone statue of George Washington's mother that had been stored away for safekeeping. — David McCullough

I used to tell the story about as a young man in high school one of the professors came in and put a broad white sheet on the board with a dot in the right hand corner and said, "Boys, what do you see?" And we all shouted, a black dot. He stood back and said, "not a single one of you saw the broad white sheet, you all saw the black dot." He went on to tell us to focus on the broader picture, don't focus on the negative. — Kofi Annan

The book is called 'Thanks for Nothing' and it's really the story of how I got into comedy and traces back every strand in my life that is relevant to that story. It's kind of an autobiography but isn't, as it stops about 25 years ago. It goes right up to the first time I do stand up. — Jack Dee

I love people. Everybody. I love them, I think, as a stamp collector loves his collection. Every story, every incident, every bit of conversation is raw material for me. My love's not impersonal yet not wholly subjective either. I would like to be everyone, a cripple, a dying man, a whore, and then come back to write about my thoughts, my emotions, as that person. But I am not omniscient. I have to live my life, and it is the only one I'll ever have. And you cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time ... — Sylvia Plath

Be Willing to Pay the Price If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem wonderful at all. MICHELANGELO Renaissance sculptor and painter who spent 4 years lying on his back painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel Behind every great achievement is a story of education, training, practice, discipline, and sacrifice. You have to be willing to pay the price. Maybe that price is pursuing one single activity while putting everything else in your life on hold. Maybe it's investing all of your own personal wealth or savings. Maybe it's the willingness to walk away from the safety of your current situation. But though many things are typically required to reach a successful outcome, the willingness to do what's required adds that extra dimension to the mix that helps you persevere in the face of overwhelming challenges, setbacks, pain, and even personal — Jack Canfield

She pulled me into a hug and I squeezed her so tight we lost our breaths.
"I love you, Soph." She pulled back from me, her eyes wide and searching. "I'll see you really soon."
"I know," I said, forcing my smile. "And I love you too."
She tapped my nose and dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
"We're the real love story here, you know that, don't you?"
I wiped a tear from my cheek. "I know that, Mil. I've always known that. — Catherine Doyle

Audry Hepburn on the cover of The Nun's Story was staring up at me from my unmade bed. Her hair was hidden by her snow-white wimple; her big eyes looked frightened.
"What are you looking at?" I said. "Fuck you." It was the first time I'd ever said the word. I felt a brief shiver of power.
Then I sat back on the bed and sobbed. Dolores Price: Lady of Sorrow. — Wally Lamb

The Fire

When a human is asked about a particular fire,
she comes close:
then it is too hot,
so she turns her face -

and that's when the forest of her bearable life appears,
always on the other side of the fire. The fire
she's been asked to tell the story of,
she has to turn from it, so the story you hear
is that of pines and twitching leaves
and how her body is like neither -

all the while there is a fire
at her back
which she feels in fine detail,
as if the flame were a dremel
and her back its etching glass.

You will not know all about the fire
simply because you asked.
When she speaks of the forest
this is what she is teaching you,

you who thought you were her master. — Katie Ford

Yes, I made it through one of the most terrible experiences that can happen to a human being, but most of all, my story is about hope. I might have been chained, starved, and beaten, yet that monster couldn't totally crush my spirit. Over and over I chose to get back up and keep going. Now I'm going to tell you how I did it. — Michelle Knight

One way and another, all three synoptic gospels are clear: in telling the story of Jesus they are consciously telling the story of how Israel's God came back to his people, in judgment and mercy. — N. T. Wright

His eyes trace the droplets branching down my chest.
They stop at my waistband.
"Brandon. Cutie."
"Yeah."
"You're still wearing your boxers."
"I am."
"Is there something you need to tell me?"
"No."
"Are you actually a Ken doll?"
"Nope."
"Is your dad a secret superhero and you have a bionic penis and you make up this big religious-paranoia back story because it shoots laser beams and has the strength of a bulldozer?"
"Yes."
"I knew it. — J.C. Lillis

The vital point to remember is that the swine who just sent your pearl of a story back with nothing but a coffee-stain and a printed rejection slip can be wrong. You cannot take it for granted that he is wrong, but you have an all-important margin of hope that might be enough to keep you going. — Brian Stableford

Comics are not theatre - there's a very important difference in that the reader controls the page. You can linger on a page of comics as long as you want. You can read and go forward and then move back; you can reread, in one sitting or at your leisure. You can take as much time as you want to take in that story. — Kelly Sue DeConnick

I do have screenplays I've written that never saw the light of day, but I don't usually go back to them. When I've told a story, I want to tell another story. — Joss Whedon

I started a novel back in high school. It wasn't very good. It was the opposite of good. The writing itself wasn't too bad, and the characters were interesting. But the story was a mess, and it was full of fantasy cliches. Dwarf with an axe. Barbarian warrior. I don't ever think I'd bother finishing that. It's just not worth my time. — Patrick Rothfuss

It's always the same story: It's not 'violence' until somebody hits you back. Till then, you don't notice your guys hitting the other tribe. That's just normal background noise. It takes blood, buckets of it, to get a person's attention. And not just anybody's blood--it's gotta be your own, or that of a close relative. Otherwise it's just spots on the sidewalk. — Gary Brecher

P - Jamie!" I called.
He waded back toward me. "I'm starting to think my name is Pajamie."
"Your name should be Pajerky. You said it wasn't deep."
"Pajerky?" He gave me a skeptical look. "That's Pathetic."
"We'll see how smug you are once I'm on dry land. — Diana Peterfreund

See," he began, leaning back into the booth, "I was at this car dealership today, and I saw this girl. It was an across-a-crowded-room kind of thing. A real moment, you know?" I rolled my eyes. Chloe said, "And this would be Remy?" "Right. Remy," he said, repeating my name with a smile. Then, as if we were happy honeymooners recounting our story for strangers he added, "Do you want to tell the next part?" "No," I said flatly. — Sarah Dessen

When she sat down to write, she didn't have to wade back into the story slowly, waiting to get used to the temperature. — Rainbow Rowell

Everything we come across becomes a part of us. It doesn't matter how small or insignificant it is ... or how devastating. One story here, one story there, that's what I see when I look back at my life. An accumulation of everything I went through. — Bhaskaryya Deka

They sat on the back porch and looked at the stars while Zombie told the story of a queen named Cassiopeia who lived forever on a throne in the sky.
"But her throne's tilted down," Sam said, looking at the constellation. "Won't she fall out?"
Zombie cleared his throat. "She won't fall. Her throne is turned that way so she can keep watch over her realm."
"What's a realm?"
Zombie pressed his hand against Sam's chest.
"This is." Zombie's hand to Sam's heart. "Here. — Rick Yancey

I wasn't perfect, and I made mistakes; but I learned from them and became a better person for it. I always followed my heart. And most of all, I loved - with every ounce of my being. I guess you could say the greatest love story ever written isn't confined to the pages of a book. It's in our lives; and we're the ones who write it. So that's what life's all about, isn't it? Why we're here. It has nothing to do with dollars. In fact, it's totally free. Life's greatest gift. And the best part is, the best part, this gift we give to others ... we get it back. It's what makes the journey so worthwhile ... it's LOVE. — Sebastian Cole

Imagining that you are going to come back to me is my favorite way to spend the day: a love story. I — Melissa Broder

Brave young women complete heroic acts everyday, with no one bearing witness. This was a chance to even the ledger, to share one small story the made the difference between starvation and survival for the families whose lives it changed. I wanted to pull the curtain back for readers on a place foreigners know more for its rocket attacks and roadside bombs than its countless quiet feats of courage. And to introduce them to the young women like Kamila Sidiqi who will go on. No matter what. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Danny had no idea what the thing was. All he knew was that he lived more or less in a constant state of expecting something any day, any hour, that would change everything, knock the world upside down and put Danny's whole life into perspective as a story of complete success, because every twist and turn and snag and fuckup would always have been leading up to this. Unexpected stuff could hit him like the thing at first: a girl he'd forgotten giving his number to suddenly calling up out of the blue, a friend with some genius plan for making money, better yet a person he'd never heard of who wanted to talk. Danny got an actual physical head rush from messages like these, but as soon as he called back and found out the details, the calls would turn out to just be about more projects, possibilities, schemes that boiled down to everything staying exactly like it was. — Jennifer Egan

What I've started I must finish. I've gone too far to turn back. Regardless of what may happen, I have to go forward. — Michael Ende

It's a Cinderella story, only at midnight she turns back into a fugitive. — Chuck Palahniuk

Old Prague was a story-book city caked in grime: ancient, soot-blackened. History lived in every detail: in the deerstalker rooftops and the blue-sparking trams. He wandered the streets in disbelief, photographing everything, images from Kafka crowding into his head. With the turn of every corner it came back to him: the special frisson you get behind enemy lines. — Philip Sington

I have always been interested in mythology and history. The more I read, the more I realized that there have always been people at the edges of history that we know very little about. I wanted to use them in a story and bring them back into the public's consciousness. Similarly with mythology: everyone knows some of the Greek or Roman legends, and maybe some of the Egyptian or Norse stories too, but what about the other great mythologies: the Celtic, Chinese, Native American? — Michael Scott

Do you think, Daniel," she said to him, rolling over onto her back so that she was able to look out of the window while she spoke, "that we might have reached the end of our story? — Maggie O'Farrell

I think the tricky balance, the most important thing more than the horror is to have a compelling story, compelling drama, a show about great characters that you care about and you want to come back every week to see what they're up to. — Oren Peli

But don't you think there some stories that are more alive than that? When you put certain books back on the shelf, don't you feel as if the people inside are going on with their lives after the story is over?" Lucy felt that way about most of the books she loved. — Kristin Kladstrup

The story that you tell yourself is exactly what holds you back from being successful. — Jordan Belfort

The short story can be hot and sweet or hot and fierce. You get it in one sitting or you don't get it. It's like a shore break. It happens quickly, and is right there in front of you, menacing you. First you're looking at the shore break, and then if you don't back up, it's on you. The novel is the long, low wave that you ride south from the Arctic Circle. It's powerful, but its power accumulates over a very long time as it rolls towards the reef. — Stephanie Vaughn

The deepwood is vanished in these islands
much, indeed, had vanished before history began
but we are still haunted by the idea of it. The deepwood flourishes in our architecture, art and above all in our literature. Unnumbered quests and voyages have taken place through and over the deepwood, and fairy tales and dream-plays have been staged in its glades and copses. Woods have been a place of inbetweenness, somewhere one might slip from one world to another, or one time to a former: in Kipling's story 'Puck of Pook's Hill,' it is by right of 'Oak and Ash and Thorn' that the children are granted their ability to voyage back into English history. — Robert Macfarlane

Although the disappearance of the true wildwood [in the British Isles] occurred in the Neolithic period, before humanity began to record its own history, creation myths in almost all cultures look fabulously back to a forested earth. In the ancient Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh, the quest-story which begins world literature, Gilgamesh sets out on his journey from Uruk to the Cedar Mountains, where he has been charged to slay the Huwawa, the guardian of the forest. The Roman empire also defined itself against the forests in which its capital city was first established, and out of which its founders, the wolf-suckled twins, emerged. It was the Roman Empire which would proceed to destroy the dense forests of the ancient world. — Robert Macfarlane

For the first time in my whole damn life I can look into a girls eyes and find her looking right back at me. Not passed me. Not around me. Into me. — Marilyn Grey

He was clearly in love with Amber too, and this time it wasn't the usual water off the back of the duck. Instead, the duck, wounded by a hunter and bewildered because half its head had been shot way, and was still tottering about on its webby feet by the side of the pond. From the one side it looked like a duck usually looks. From the other, it was a different story. — Ali Smith

Unless we are all mad, there is at the back of the most bewildering business a story: and if we are all mad, there is no such thing as madness. If I set a house on fire, it is quite true that I may illuminate many other people's weaknesses as well as my own. It may be that the master of the house was burned because he was drunk; it may be that the mistress of the house was burned because she was stingy, and perished arguing about the expense of the fire-escape. It is, nevertheless, broadly true that they both were burned because I set fire to their house. — G.K. Chesterton

And still, even when he'd told her how he felt about her, and that he wanted their fake relationship to be real, she'd held herself back out of fear that their friends-to-lovers story was too good to be anything but fiction. — Bella Andre

There is a story they tell of two dogs. Both at separate times walk into the same room. One comes out wagging his tail while the other comes out growling. A woman watching this goes into the room to see what could possibly make one dog so happy and the other so mad. To her surprise she finds a room filled with mirrors. The happy dog found a thousand happy dogs looking back at him while the angry dog saw only angry dogs growling back at him. What you see in the world around you is a reflection of who you are. — Anonymous

Strangely, the subsequent AIDS works that have become iconic in our culture rarely mention the movement, or the engaged community of lovers, but both formations were inseparable from the crisis itself. Now, looking back, I fear that the story of the isolated helpless homosexual was one far more palatable to the corporations who control the reward system in the arts.The more truthful story of the American mass - abandoning families, criminal governments, indifferent neighbors - is too uncomfortable and inconvenient to recall. The story of how gay people who were despised, had no rights, and carried the burden of a terrible disease came together to force the country to change against its will, is apparently too implicating to tell. Fake tales of individual heterosexuals heroically overcoming their prejudices to rescue helpless dying men with AIDS was a lot more appealing to the powers that be, but not at all true. — Sarah Schulman

Her house being small. They ain't rich folk, that I know. Rich folk don't try so hard. I'm used to working for young couples, but I spec this is the smallest house I ever worked in. It's just the one story. Her and Mister Leefolt's room in the back be a fair size, but Baby Girl's room be tiny. The dining room and the regular living room kind a join up. Only two bathrooms, which is a relief cause I worked in houses where they was five or — Kathryn Stockett

I'm completely ecstatic when a woman has own back story and brings something to the table and has a real strong kind of independence. — Dane Cook

But there are forces that don't let you turn back and undo things, because to do so would be to deny what is already in motion, to unwrite and erase passages, to shorten the arc of a story you don't own. — Salvador Plascencia

You come to this place, mid-life. You don't know how you got here, but suddenly you're staring fifty in the face. When you turn and look back down the years, you glimpse the ghosts of other lives you might have led; all houses are haunted. The wraiths and phantoms creep under your carpets and between the warp and weft of fabric, they lurk in wardrobes and lie flat under drawer-liners. You think of the children you might have had but didn't. When the midwife says, 'It's a boy,' where does the girl go? When you think you're pregnant, and you're not, what happens to the child that has already formed in your mind? You keep it filed in a drawer of your consciousness, like a short story that never worked after the opening lines. — Hilary Mantel

The story of Rod Stewart, the story of Carlos Santana is so inspiring to young musicians because it shows in this trendy business how long a career can last. It shows how you can soar back, regardless of age. — Clive Davis

Most hiring managers interview a lot of people. So many that they generally have to go back to their notes to remember candidates - the exception being candidates with a strong hook. Sometimes these hooks are how people dress or their personality, but the best hook is a strong story that's work-related. — Travis Bradberry

Death, like fiction, is brutal in its symmetry. Take this story and strip it down -all the way back- until you are left with two points. Two dots on a vast, blank canvas, separeted by a sea of white. Here, we have come to the first point, where the batj is drawn and the hand is reachinh for the razor blade. I will meet you at the next, by the axle of a screaming wheel, the revolution of a clock, the closing of an orbit. — Lang Leav

I have long been one of those tedious people who rails against the coronation of 'student-athletes.' I have heard the argument that big-time athletics bring in loads of money to universities. I don't believe the money goes anywhere other than back into the sports teams, but that's another story. — Susan Orlean

let them behold him scourged, hunted, trampled on, and they will come back with another story in their mouths. Let them know the heart of the poor slave - learn his secret thoughts - thoughts he dare not utter in the hearing of the white man; — Solomon Northup

When I begin a story at my desk, the window to my back, the path is not there. As I start to walk, I make the path. — Paula Fox

What do you suppose 'Jack and the Beanstalk' is about?" she asked. Conner contemplated a moment and slyly grinned. "Bad beans can cause more than indigestion," he answered, laughing hysterically to himself. Alex pursed her lips to hide a smile. "What do you think the lesson of 'Little Red Riding Hood' is?" she asked him. "Do you think she should have just mailed her grandmother the gift basket?" "Now you're thinking!" he said. "Although, I've always felt sorry for Little Red Riding Hood. It's obvious her parents didn't like her very much." "Why do you say that?" Alex asked, wondering how he could have possibly construed that from the story. "Who sends their young daughter into a dark and wolf-occupied forest carrying freshly baked food and wearing a bright jacket?" Conner asked. "They were practically asking for a wolf to eat her! She must have annoyed the heck out of them!" Alex held back laughter with all her might but, to Conner's delight, she let a quiet chuckle slip. "I — Chris Colfer

If there is anything certain in life, it is this. Time doesn't always heal. Not really. I know they say it does, but that is not true. What time does is to trick you into believing that you have healed, that the hurt of a great loss has lessened. But a single word, a note of a song, a fragrance, a knife point of dawn light across an empty room, any one of these things will take you back to that one moment you have never truly forgotten. These small things are the agents of memory. They are the sharp needle points piercing the living fabric of your life.

Life, my children, isn't linear where the heart is concerned. It is filled with invisible threads that reach out from your past and into your future. These threads connect every second we have lived and breathed. As your own lives move forward and as the decades pass, the more of these threads are cast. Your task is to weave them into a tapestry, one that tells the story of the time we shared. — Stephen Lee

Grace is thoughtful. It considers a back-story, an upbringing, the entire person, and not just a tiny single slice of their life. — J.S. Park

I am trying now to be entirely honest. I did actually comfort in the thought that the Devil had, on Strawless Common, defeated God. I much preferred that thought to the thought that God hadn't cared, hadn't helped Robin. I thought all the way back to the story of Eden. God, all-loving, all-wise, had surely wanted people to be happy and healthy and good; it was the Devil who spoiled it all ... and since so many people were miserable and sickly and bad the Devil must indeed by very powerful. The lifeless, voiceless thing, lately a singing boy, which they had cut down and put under a sack in the barn to await an unhallowed cross-road grave seemed to me to prove the power of the Devil.
Lady Alice Rowhedge — Norah Lofts

I'm disappointed in myself. In my life. All my life, everything I tried, I only got halfway there. You try to take advantage of the time you have. That's what they tell you to do. But when you're old, you look back and you see all you did, with all that time, is waste it. All you have is a story of things you never started or couldn't finish. Things you fought with all your heart to build that didn't last or fought with all your heart to get rid of and they're all still around. I'm ashamed of myself. — Michael Chabon

I need to give you one last bit of advice in the off chance this rather extraordinary and enviable situation in which you find yourself is actually true- that somehow you've fallen deep down into a Cordova story. I stared back at him. Be the good guy, he said. How do I know I'm the good guy? He pointed at me, nodding. A very wise question. You don't. Most bad guys think they're good. But there are a few signifiers. You'll be miserable. You'll be hated. You'll fumble around in the dark, alone and confused. You'll have little insight as to the true nature of things, not until the very last minute, and only if you have the stamina and the madness to go to the very, very end. But most importantly- and critically- you will act without regard for yourself. You'll be motivated by something that has nothing to do with the ego. You'll do it for justice. For grace. For love. Those large rather heroic qualities only the good have the strength to carry on their shoulders. And you'll listen. — Marisha Pessl

As I look back on my fondness for the outdoors, and specifically the elements in nature that I find visually stimulating, I am surprised at how often the theme of dead trees arise. I guess it's that each one seems to have a story of its own, representing many years of living through everything that nature could throw at them. — Cory Trepanier

The best endings resonate because they echo a word, phrase, or image from earlier in the story, and the reader is prompted to think back to that reference and speculate on a deeper meaning. — James Plath

A few said they'd be horses. Most said they'd be some sort of cat. My friend said she'd like to come back as a porcupine. I don't like crowds, she said. — Brian Andreas

We like to believe that we live in a grand age of creative individualism. We look back at the midcentury era in which the Berkeley researchers conducted their creativity studies, and feel superior. Unlike the starched-shirted conformists of the 1950s, we hang posters of Einstein on our walls, his tongue stuck out iconoclastically. We consume indie music and films, and generate our own online content. We "think different" (even if we got the idea from Apple Computer's famous ad campaign). But the way we organize many of our most important institutions - our schools and our workplaces - tells a very different story. — Susan Cain

I'm the least confident person in so many ways. But I believed that if somebody gave me the chance to tell a story, I would tell a story [well enough] that the person who gave me the chance would get their money back. — Joss Whedon

Kvothe looked at Bast for a long moment. "Oh Bast," he said softly to his student. His smile was gentle and sad. "I know what sort of story I'm telling. This is no comedy."
"This is the end of the story, Bast. We all know that." Kvothe's voice was matter-of-fact, as casual as if he were describing yesterday's weather. "I have led an interesting life, and this reminiscence has a certain sweetness to it. But ... "
Kvothe drew a deep breath and let it out gently. " ... but this is not a dashing romance. This is no fable where folk come back from the dead. It's not a rousing epic meant to stir the blood. No.
We all know what kind of story this is. — Patrick Rothfuss

Honest autoethnographic exploration generates a lot of fears and self-doubt and emotional pain. Just when you think you can't stand the pain anymore that's when the real work begins. Then there is the vulnerability of revealing yourself, not being able to take back what you 've written or having any control over how readers interpret your story. — Carolyn Ellis

We decided to read our emails out loud to the group in order to share the warmth and optimism the messages contained. One of the most heartwarming was from the father of Petty Officer Rodney "RaRa" Young of Katy, Texas. His dad got right to the point: "You'd better come home because you promised to help me put up a fence, and I could really use that help." Everyone laughed because the words took us back to the normal world and out of the anxious monotony of our detention. — Shane Osborn

I've gone to China, bought a manufacturing company and moved it to America. Now China wants to buy back some of that new technology from me. That's a great story for America. — Terry McAuliffe

In my opinion, visual effects are great when it compliments a good story, and action is great when it compliments a good story, but just to have them for the sake of having them, it gets a little boring, especially if you're talking a TV series. At least with a movie that's an hour and a half to two hours, you see it and you're impressed, and then you're out. With a series, if it's only that, week after week after week, there's nothing there to bring you back. You have to get invested in the characters and care about them and want to follow them. — Drew Roy

First off, I love Woody Allen. His early movies, like 'Hannah and Her Sisters,' are incredible. I also love anything by Billy Wilder, Ron Howard and John Hughes. I really grew up on the Hughes films, which are the ones I go back and watch all the time, just to see how they were put together. — Tim Story

You have to try. You have to take your chances. Go and attempt and see what happens. And even if you fail - especially if you fail - come back with your experience and your hard-won knowledge and a story you can tell. And then later you can say, without regret or hesitation ... 'Once, I dared to dare greatly — Morgan Matson

Wanting him to come back before anyone notices part of the world has not moved since he left. — Brian Andreas

If I had to wish for something, just one thing, it would be that Hannah would never see Tate the way I did. Never see Tate's beautiful, lush hair turn brittle, her skin sallow, her teeth ruined by anything she could get her hands on that would make her forget. That Hannah would never count how many men there were, or how vile humans can be to one another. That she would never see the moments in my life that were full of neglect, and fear, and revulsion, moments I can never go back to because I know they will slow me down for the rest of my life if I let myself remember them for one moment. Tate, who had kept Hannah alive that night, reading her the story of Jem Finch and Mrs. Dubose. And suddenly I know I have to go. But this time without being chased by the Brigadier, without experiencing the kindness of a postman from Yass, and without taking along a Cadet who will change the way I breath for the rest of my life. — Melina Marchetta

What it taught me was forgiveness. It taught me that when people present themselves in a certain way, there's probably some back story or issue or reason for the way that they are. It's not you. It's them. And a lot of times, its about something that's completely out of their control — Denzel Washington

All these people, all these things came into my life, and they're all blessings from God. And now that I look back, I realize that these are His fingerprints all over my story. — Jeremy Lin

When Israelis were indirectly involved in the massacre of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut in 1982, the story was front-page news for weeks. When Lebanese Shiites were directly involved in killing Palestinians in the very same camps from 1985 to 1988, it was almost always back-page news - if it was reported at all. This — Thomas L. Friedman

Stories need stupid decisions that, at the time, seem absolutely rational and necessary. Without stupid decisions, the world isn't thrown out of balance, and so there's no need for a 'rest of the story' to balance it back. — Stephen Graham Jones

There are stories told to him only at this time of year. Fantastic, magical stories, the old Hollier in the woods finding only three red berries, which peel back in the night to reveal gifts of frankincense, gold and myrrh, Christmas in hot deserts, dust-blown countries, the necklace of tears, and the story of the robin. — Sarah Hall

You know that man's story already. He's just starting to believe what Day's been saying to him for years, but he's scared as fuck. If you hurt him in any way, Day will hurt you." Johnson stopped grinning and looked back at God. "I thought Day hated him?" "Day is complex, Johnson. He's crazy about Ronowski, that's why he rides the man so hard." "I get that," Johnson responded. "All right. I don't mind doing the slow thing. We'll start with wings and a game tonight." Johnson shrugged and started inching toward his car. "Next week, maybe dinner and a movie." "Sounds good, bro." God waved and climbed in his truck. Now that he was done playing Chuck Woolery and there were no more love connections to be made. He was going home to his sweetheart. — A.E. Via

Maybe this was what Aunt Peg meant all along - returning was a weird thing. You can never visit the same place twice. Each time, it's a different story. By the very act of coming back, you wipe our what came before. — Maureen Johnson

I did everything wrong," he said. "I misunderstood everything. Moon Child gave me so much, and all I did with it was harm, harm to myself and harm to Fantastica."
Dame Eyola gave him a long look.
No," she said. "I don't believe so. You went the way of wishes, and that is never straight. You went the long way around, but that was your way. And do you know why? Because you are one of those who can't go back until they have found the fountain from which springs the Water of Life. And that's the most secret place in Fantastica. There's no simple way of getting there."
After a short silence she added: "But every way that leads there is the right one. — Michael Ende