Hands Tell A Story Quotes & Sayings

Still grows the vivacious lilac a generation after the door and lintel and the sill are gone, unfolding its sweet-scented flowers each spring, to be plucked by the musing traveller; planted and tended once by children's hands, in front-yard plots - now standing by wallsides in retired pastures, and giving place to new-rising forests; - the last of that stirp, sole survivor of that family. Little did the dusky children think that the puny slip with its two eyes only, which they stuck in the ground in the shadow of the house and daily watered, would root itself so, and outlive them, and house itself in the rear that shaded it, and grown man's garden and orchard, and tell their story faintly to the lone wanderer a half-century after they had grown up and died - blossoming as fair, and smelling as sweet, as in that first spring. I mark its still tender, civil, cheerful lilac colors. — Henry David Thoreau

Let's treat each other well, making more space for every sort of ragamuffin. We needn't mistake unity with uniformity; we can have the first without the second. The breadth of God's family is mercifully wide. Grace has no discernment, apparently. Jesus created a motley crew, plucking us from every context and inaugurating a piecemeal clan that has only ever functioned with mercy. We should be grabbing hands, throwing our heads back, and laughing that God saved us all, because surely this is the messiest family ever and He loves us anyway. Our shared redemption should keep us grateful and kind, because what other response even makes sense? May the world see a thankful, committed family who loves their God, adores their Savior, and can't get enough of one another. This is a story that saves, a story that heals, and the right story to tell. — Jen Hatmaker

Grow with discipline. Balance intuition with rigor. Innovate around the core. Don't embrace the status quo. Find new ways to see. Never expect a silver bullet. Get your hands dirty. Listen with empathy and overcommunicate with transparency. Tell your story, refusing to let others define you. Use authentic experiences to inspire. Stick to your values, they are your foundation. Hold people accountable, but give them the tools to succeed. Make the tough choices; it's how you execute that counts. Be decisive in times of crisis. Be nimble. Find truth in trials and lessons in mistakes. Be responsible for what you see, hear, and do. Believe. — Howard Schultz

The privilege of money, as Edgar's parents saw it, was that you could get yourself into the great wild beauty - the thousand-meter-deep sea, the wide open West, an island inhabited mostly by dangerous animals, and feel alive and real - and then come over the crest of the hill and have someone meet you with a silver tray containing fresh fruit, aged scotch, a cold towel for your hands, and show you to a seat with a perfect view from which to tell the story of your adventure. — Ramona Ausubel

Tell me, Laurel, what
do you know of erosion?"
Laurel couldn't imagine what this had to do with anything, but she answered anyway. "Like when water or
wind wears away the ground?"
"That's right. Given enough time, wind and rain will carry the tallest mountain into the sea. But," he said,
raising a finger, "a hillside covered in grass will resist erosion, and a riverbank may be held in place by
bushes and trees. They spread their roots," he said, extending his hands with his story, "and grab hold. And
though the river will pull at the soil, if the roots are strong enough, they will prevail. If they cannot, they
will eventually be carried away too. — Aprilynne Pike

Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights: the accumulations of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like Braille. I like to keep my body rolled up away from prying eyes, never unfold too much, or tell the whole story. I didn't know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book. — Jeanette Winterson

Tell me how you wish me to deal with these enemies of yours, for they are no able to camp, and I will deliver them in your hands in whatever manner you wish.' Modern accounts invariably include the story of how dal Verme sent Hawkwood a fox in a cage, to say that he had the clever Englishman trapped. -Jacopo dal Verme to Giangaleazzo Visconti — William Caferro

Are you going to play music for me?" "No. You wouldn't appreciate it." "Then why are you here?" "I like visiting people in prison. I can say whatever I want to them, and they can't do anything about it." He looked up at Kaladin, then rested his hands on his instrument, smiling. "I've come for a story." "What story?" "The one you're going to tell me." "Bah," Kaladin said, lying back down on his bench. — Brandon Sanderson

No, listen. I've got it now. You meet a girl: shy, unassuming. If you tell her she's beautiful, she'll think you're sweet, but she won't believe you. She knows that beauty lies in your beholding." Bast gave a grudging shrug. "And sometimes that's enough."
His eyes brightened. "But there's a better way. You show her she is beautiful. You make mirrors of your eyes, prayers of your hands against her body. It is hard, very hard, but when she truly believes you ... " Bast gestured excitedly. "Suddenly the story she tells herself in her own head changes. She transforms. She isn't seen as beautiful. She is beautiful, seen. — Patrick Rothfuss

Some people read palms to tell your future, but I read hands to tell your past. Each scar makes a story worth telling. Each callused palm, each cracked knuckle is a missed punch or years in a factory. — Sarah Kay

I'm no longer with these assassins, in this bed of terror, but in my distant refuge, my hands twined together, my head bowed, weak, breathless, calm, free, and older than I'll ever have been, if my calculations are correct. I'll tell my story in the past none the less, as though it were a myth, or an old fable, for this evening I need another age in which I became what I was. — Samuel Beckett

I get up in front of a bunch of kids and say 'Hey, I'm gonna tell you a new story. Who wants to be in a new story?' Well some kid always sticks up their hand and that gives me a name, but it doesn't give me a story. I just say whatever comes to my mind and usually it's not that good. Every once in a while, however, I say something that turns into a really good story. — Robert Munsch

I know damn well that if there had been a way to get to success without traveling through disaster someone would have already done it and thus rendered the experiments unnecessary, but there's still no journal where I can tell the story of how my science is done with both the heart and the hands. Eventually — Hope Jahren

Jeff opened blue eyes, grinned at me. "If you're feeling left out ... " I almost threw out an instinctive no, but I decided to throw him a bone. "Oh, Jeff. It'd be too good - you and me. Too powerful, too much emotion, too much heat. We'd come together and boom" - I clapped my hands together - "like a moth to a flame, there'd be nothing left." His eyes glazed over. "Combustion?" "Totally." He was quiet for a moment, his index finger tracing a pattern on the knee of his jeans. Then he nodded. "Too powerful. It'd destroy us both." I nodded solemnly. "Probably so." But I leaned over, pressed my lips to his forehead. "We'll always have Chicago." "Chicago," he dreamily repeated. "Yeah. Definitely." He cleared his throat, seemed to regain a little composure. "When I tell this story later, you kissed me on the mouth. With tongue. And you were handsy." I chuckled. "Fair enough. — Chloe Neill

I've been talking to myself a lot lately. I don't know what that's about, but my mother was the same way. She hated to make small talk with other people, but get her into a conversation with herself and she was quite the raconteur. She would tell herself a joke and clap her hands together as she let out a laugh; she would murmur to the plants as she watered them, and offer encouragement to the food as she cooked it. Sometimes I would walk into a room and surprise her as she was regaling herself with some delightful story, and I remember how the sound would dry up in her mouth. She stood there, frozen in the headlights of my teenage scorn. — Dan Chaon

I don't have to tell you what this land used to look like," he said. "And you don't have to tell me that I am the one who ruined it. Which I did, with my own hands, and ruined forever. You're old enough to remember when the grass between here and Canada was balls high to a Belgian, and yes it is possible that in a thousand years it will go back to what it once was, though it seems unlikely. But that is the story of the human race. Soil to sand, fertile to barren, fruit to thorns. It is all we know how to do. — Philipp Meyer

If you always start with the worst hand, you never have a bad-beat story to tell. — Chuck Thompson

I love you."
I stared stupidly at him. Was he joking again, reciting another line from my story? I didn't remember writing this.
He leaned in and kissed me. I didn't respond for a few seconds. My mind lagged behind what my body was feeling.
"Say it," he whispered against my lips. "I know this is hard for you. Tell me."
"I love you." Hearing my own words, I gasped at the rush of emotion.
He put his hands on either side of my jaw and took my mouth with his. — Jennifer Echols

My boyfriend asked me to tell a story without my hands, and I couldn't talk. — Tracy Spiridakos

I will tie the glass and stone with string, hang the shards above my bed, so that they will flash in the dark and tell the story of Katrina, the mother that swept into the Gulf and slaughtered. Her chariot was a storm so great and black the Greeks would say it was harnessed to dragons. She was the murderous mother who cut us to the bone but left us alive, left us naked and bewildered as wrinkled newborn babies, as blind puppies, as sun-starved newly hatched baby snakes. She left us a dark Gulf and salt burned land. She left us to learn to crawl. She left us to salvage. Katrina is the mother we will remember until the next mother with large, merciless hands, committed to blood, comes. — Jesmyn Ward

Read whatever book you lay your hands on if you can, for every writer has a story to tell — Bangambiki Habyarimana

Being producer you're still going to have to sell somebody who's going to give you the money on the idea and everything like that. But it does give you a little bit more control if you're thinking in that creative process; it gives you more control to tell the story you want to tell rather than sort of just reading a script that somebody else wrote and says, "Yes, please, you can hire me for this job." So it's a little bit more hands-on, a little bit more closer to the heart. — Mekhi Phifer

There is a story in the book Night Shift, called 'The Mangler,' about a laundry machine that takes on a sort of malignant life. I worked in a laundry for about a year and a half after I got out of college. It was the only job I could find to support my wife and our first child. There was a fellow there that had no hands or forearms. He simply had hooks. This is one of the things that they don't tell you about when you become management. You have to wear a tie. It was this fellow's tie that did him in. — Stephen King

So often with beginning writers, the story that they want to start with is the most important story of their life - my molestation, my this, my horrible drug addiction - they want to tell that most important story, and they don't have the skills to tell it yet, so it ends up becoming a comedy. A powerful story told poorly becomes funny, it just makes people laugh behind their hands. — Chuck Palahniuk

Let me tell you a little story. There was once a boy who wasn't even old enough to shave. Beaten. Naked. He was sent out into the great desert with only a small dagger for protection. I have killed cobras with my bare hands and I have lived through conditions so horrendous, not even hell itself scares me. If any of you think for one minute that I have any soul left to prevent me from killing you, you're sadly mistaken. If you think for one minute, any of you are capable of killing me, then I say try it. But make sure you've had a good confession beforehand, because I assure you it will be the very last mistake you make in this lifetime. (Sin) — Kinley MacGregor

Lately I have been feeling hulihudu. And everything around me seemed to be heimongmong. These were words I had never thought about in English terms. I suppose the closest in meaning would be "confused" and "dark fog."
But really, the words mean much more than that. Maybe they can't be easily translated because they refer to a sensation that only Chinese people have, as if you were falling headfirst through Old Mr. Chou's [Mr. Sandman's] door, then trying to find your way back. But you're so scared you can't open your eyes, so you get on your hands and knees and grope in the dark, listening for voices to tell you which way to go.
I had been talking to too may people ... to each person I told a different story. Yet each version was true, I was certain of it, at least at the moment I told it. — Amy Tan

One of the hardest things I've had to learn as a writer is that while virtually any story can be a good book if done correctly, not every story should. It's possible to have an amazing idea and still lack the interest necessary to polish it to publication level shine. I can not tell you the number of books I've plotted, written 30k words in, and then abandoned because I simply could not stand to look at them another second. Every single one of these ideas looked great on paper, and maybe in another author's hands they could have been golden, but in the end I just didn't care enough to push through. — Rachel Aaron

What's funny is that people think, "Well there has to be something more than wrestling, because wrestling has such an absurd quality to it." But if you tell a love story, people don't ask what else is in there. They say, "Oh, it's just a love story." All stories have many levels, but these ones show their hand and say, "You might want to look a little deeper." — John Darnielle

Once upon
a dream
in a blanket
of night sky
you asked me
to tell you a story
which began with
us holding hands. — Joseph Gordon-Levitt

An actor puts himself in the hands of a director. And the director's first responsibility, obviously, is to tell the story, but the smallest thing that's not true reads on the screen. So if a director sees that an actor is not believable, he needs to help him become believable. — Tobin Bell