Stories Your Choice Quotes & Sayings

The principles of storytelling are immutable, explaining why we see shards of ourselves in other people's stories. All enduring stories predicate its themes upon humankind's ability to exercise free will. Without a character's ability to make choices of how to act, there can be no story. In absence of free will, there is no humanity. Only after God evicted them from the Garden of Eden, could Adam and Eve experience what it means to be human. — Kilroy J. Oldster

For me, being a writer was never a choice. I was born one. All through my childhood I wrote short stories and stuffed them in drawers. I wrote on everything. I didn't do my homework so I could write. — Laura Hillenbrand

Each of us has a sophisticated system that throws away most of our experiences, keeps only a few choice samples, mixes them up with bits from movies we've seen, novels we've read, speeches we've heard, and daydreams we've savoured, and out of all that jumble it weaves a seemingly coherent story about who I am, where I came from and where I am going. This story tells me what to love, whom to hate and what to do with myself. This story may even cause me to sacrifice my life, if that's what the plot requires. We all have our genre. Some people live a tragedy, others inhabit a never-ending religious drama, some approach life as if it were an action film, and not a few act as if in a comedy. But in the end, they are all just stories. What, — Yuval Noah Harari

As someone who is displaced - I left London almost fifteen years ago to make Connecticut my home - I am drawn to stories about people who don't belong, whether physically or emotionally, and who find their families of choice in their friends. — Jane Green

I believe we have a choice in this world about how to tell sad stories , on the one hand , we can sugercoat it. Nothing is too messed up that can't be fixed with a Peter Gabriel song, I like this version as much as the next girl does. It's just not the truth — John Green

History teaches us that people who make the brave choices are heroes. We study history to know the stories of those who stood face-to-face with real villains and won. We study history so that when it's time for us to make the hard choice, we'll know that we can do it, too.
But then it hit him. History wasn't just about understanding the past. It was about understanding the future, his future. It was about having the tools to shape the future. And all he had to know was that when it came time for him to make choices, he would make the heroic choice, just as the greatest people throughout history had done. No matter what changed in the past, his future hadn't yet been written. He had to shape it, bit by bit.
- Dak — Jennifer A. Nielsen

It seems like I always wrote, I just didn't think of it as a career choice. I just liked to tell stories ... to myself, to pen pals (I had a lot of them, all over the world). Of course this was in the days before computers were everywhere, and anyone could access the Web. You had to make an effort keeping up a correspondence, and the arrival of the mail once a day was a big deal. I think if modern technology had been around when I was a kid, I would never have left my bedroom except to take the dogs out for their run three times a day. — Charles De Lint

When we combine very real workplace inequalities with these romantic opt-out stories, the idea that "having it all" is a laughable goal becomes enshrined as immutable truth. And when we portray opting out as a simple matter of "choice," we ignore the systematic problems that make combining work and motherhood so difficult. — Emily Matchar

You want the greatest trick for writing a novel? Here it is: imagine urgently whispering your story into one person's ear - and only one. This one visualization will clarify every word choice you make. — Julianna Baggott

CNN is pretty consistently on the left, if you look at their choice of stories, what they play up. It's not what they say. It's what they highlight. — Rupert Murdoch

Its your decision, Simon Lewis," said Magnus. "Remain in the existence you have, go to college, study music, get married. Live your life. Or
you can have an uncertain life of shadows and dangers. You can have the joy of reading the stories of incredible happenings, or you can be part of the story."
"The choice is up to you — Cassandra Clare

Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines. It is not to lead our neighbor into a corner where there are no alternatives left, but to open a wide spectrum of options for choice and commitment. It is not an educated intimidation with good books, good stories, and good works, but the liberation of fearful hearts so that words can find roots and bear ample fruit ... .The paradox of hospitality is that it wants to create emptiness, not a fearful emptiness, but a friendly emptiness where strangers can enter and discover themselves as created free ... .not a subtle invitation to adopt the life style of the host, but the gift of a chance for the guest to find his own. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

For animals, the confinement of the body is the confinement of the whole being, but a person can choose freedom even when he has no physical autonomy. In order to do so, he must know what choice is, and he must believe that he deserves it. By sharing stories, we keep choice alive in the imagination and in language. We give each other the strength to perform choice in the mind even when we cannot perform it with the body. — Sheena Iyengar

Empowered Women 101: You are either creating drama or creating memories together. The choice is yours. — Shannon L. Alder

Bad decisions did lead to great stories and, in my case, great love. I'd make every single crappy choice and foolish error again if it meant I would end up exactly where I was right now. Every mistake was a piece of me, a part of my story, and without each of them there was no way I would be starting my own happy-ever-after in his perfect, stormy, blue-gray eyes. — Jay Crownover

Reporters are faced with the daily choice of painstakingly researching stories or writing whatever people tell them. Both approaches pay the same. — Scott Adams

So there's a choice that I made to tell stories that are still psychological melodramas about domestic issues. The challenge is to figure out how to make 10 films a career as a filmmaker, and that's a really challenging thing. — Ira Sachs

One could even argue that we have a duty to create and pass on stories about choice because once a person knows such stories, they can't be taken away from him. He may lose his possessions, his home, his loved ones, but if he holds on to a story about choice, he retains the ability to practice choice. — Sheena Iyengar

His dreams contained no stories at all, but only the hard stones of thoughts: the unimaginably unlikely coincidence of being alive at the same time as the love of your life, the frequency with which a person was expected to bear the body and the burden of someone else, the idiocy of thinking that kindness can protect the person who is kind, and worst of all, the bottomless pit of truth that he had suddenly, sickeningly seen: that the world to come was not an afterlife at all, but simply this world, to come- the future world, your own future, that you were creating for yourself with every choice you made in it. — Dara Horn

Men, for some mysterious reason, find life more difficult than women do. (My mother believes this, despite the female bodies, trapped, diseased, disappearing, or abandoned, thayt litter her stories.) Men must be allowed to play in the sandbox of their choice, as happily as they can, without disturbance; otherwise they get cranky and won't eat their dinners. There are all kinds of things men aren't equipped to understand, so why expect it of them? Not everyone shares this belief about men; nevertheless, it has it's uses. — Margaret Atwood

No one ever mentions this in stories about time travel. You identify and locate your destination, defy the laws of physics to get there, somehow manage to avoid as many as possible of the huge number of hazards History has littered around the place, manage not to lose or break your very expensive equipment, you're poised to record the History-changing event of your choice, and then you find you can't bloody get in. On — Jodi Taylor

As a dad, you are Vice President. You are part of the Executive Branch of the family, but you are the partner with the weaker authority. In your children's eyes, you mostly fulfill a ceremonial role of attending pageants and ordering pizza. I'm never the first choice. My kids don't even mask it, which I respect them for. "Let's see, the crabby guy with the scratchy beard or that warm soft lady that tells us stories for eight hours?" It's not even close. — Jim Gaffigan

Sometimes Geraldine feels like she can drive forever. Maybe that's partially why she took a job at Milo General Motors. Driving is the best means of escape that the human race has, at least, that's her opinion. She's never had the guts to try drugs before, both because her sister was a junkie in the last few months she knew her, and because she's heard the overdose horror stories, seen 'Requiem for a Dream', smelled the vapours of a meth lab that Julia's boyfriend built, heard the crunching glass of crack vials and heroine needles when they happen to break. Even this alone is too surreal, not to mention that if she were high or tripping on acid or whatever the drug of choice may be, this would give the ghosts more power to morph into something even more nightmarish than they already are. — Rebecca McNutt

Everyone has stories of the small coincidence by which their parents met or their grandmother was saved from fire or their grandfather from the grenade, of the choice made by the most whimsical means that led to everything else, whether you're blessed or cursed or both. Trace it back far enough and this very moment in your life becomes a rare species, the result of a strange evolution, a butterfly that should already be extinct and survives by the inexplicabilities we call coincidence. The word is often used to mean the accidental but literally means to fall together. The patterns of our lives come from those things that do not drift apart but move together for a little while, like dancers. — Rebecca Solnit

All stories I write are compulsive. Anything I've ever written was because I don't have a choice. I write stories because I can't wait to tell it, I can't wait to see how it ends. — Khaled Hosseini

We're all forced to lead many lives simultaneously. We do it out of necessity, not choice. We don't make a virtue of it. — Ashok Ferrey

For the world has chosen and it says: make me whole. Think of us as a kind of haggard Calypso, offering everything, asking the world to choose anew. But it's a lie, really. There is only one choice and it is always the same. Only in Pentexore was any other ever possible. The world always says: I choose to wither and die if it means love and tapestries and sons and suitors, if it means stories and wars and a thousand ships launching. And we only give the world what it wants. — Catherynne M Valente

Unfortunately I am afraid, as always, of going on. For to go on means going from here, means finding me, losing me, vanishing and beginning again, a stranger first, then little by little the same as always, in another place, where I shall say I have always been, of which I shall know nothing, being incapable of seeing, moving, thinking, speaking, but of which little by little, in spite of these handicaps, I shall begin to know something, just enough for it to turn out to be the same place as always, the same which seems made for me and does not want me, which I seem to want and do not want, take your choice, which spews me out or swallows me up, I'll never know, which is perhaps merely the inside of my distant skull where once I wandered, now am fixed, lost for tininess, or straining against the walls, with my head, my hands, my feet, my back, and ever murmuring my old stories, my old story, as if it were the first time. — Samuel Beckett

There is no narrative without structure, or plot. In a great story this structure seems like fate, like an inescapable judgment descending on its still unaware heroes, a great metaphysical causality, that crowds out all room for choice. Fate arises not as a limitation on our freedom, but as a manifestation of our freedom, testimony that choice is consequent. The exercise of your freedom cannot prevent the exercise of my own freedom, but it can determine the context in which I am to act freely. You cannot make choices for me, but you can largely determine what my choices will be about. Great stories explore the drama of this deeper touching of one free person by another. They are therefore genuinely sexual dramas astounding us once more with the magic of origins. — James P. Carse

Look, the Devil has asked me. We're very old acquaintances, he and I, and I couldn't turn him down. My estate is enormous, so he asked me for a little space, since hell has become totally overpopulated and there's no room left whatsoever. He doesn't have any choice in the matter Himself. Nowadays, everyone wants to go to hell, and the Devil, being as decent as he is, can't turn anyone down. You understand, don't you? There's nobody left in Heaven. Heaven has gone bankrupt,. — Alexandar Tomov

Tell me a story, Wilson. It can even be a long, boring, dusty English tome."
"Wow! Tome. Learn a new word, Echohawk?" Wilson wrapped his arms around me as I sagged against him.
"I think you taught me that one, Mr. Dictionary." I tried not to whimper as the pain swept through me.
"How about Lord of the Flies?"
"How about you just kill me now?" I ground out, my teeth gritted against the onslaught, appreciative of Wilson's diversionary tactics if not his choice in stories.
Wilson's laughter made his chest rumble against my cheek. "Hmm. Too realistic and depressing, right? Let's see . . . dusty tomes . . . how about Ivanhoe?"
"Ivan's Ho'? Sounds like Russian p**n ," I quipped tiredly. Wilson laughed again, a sputtering groan. He was practically carrying me at this point and looked almost as exhausted as I felt.
"How about I tell you one — Amy Harmon

Margaret ... you must know that you could never change your own life. You are a girl: girls have no choice. You could never even choose your own husband: you are of the royal family. A husband would always have been chosen for you. It is forbidden for one of royal blood to marry their own choice. You know this too. And finally, you are of the House of Lancaster. You cannot choose your allegiance. You have to serve your house, your family, and your husband. I have allowed you to dream, and I have allowed you to read, but the time has come to put aside silly stories and silly dreams and do your duty. — Philippa Gregory

A story is an invitation, and a challenge, and a choice. — Marilyn Chandler McEntyre

This I know: the mind, left to itself, repeats the same stories, the same loops. Mostly ones that don't serve us. So what's practical, what's transformative, is to consciously choose a thought. Then practice it again and again. With emotion, with feeling, with acceptance. Lay down the synaptic pathways until the mind starts playing it automatically. Do this with enough intensity over time and the mind will have no choice. That's how it operates. Where do you think your original loops came from? — Kamal Ravikant

Sitting on the train I watch the scenery speeding by, notice a cobweb in the top corner of the window, undulating with a gentle breeze I can't feel. I lean back in my seat and take my book out of the carrier bag. Turning it over in my hand, it feels warm. It feels how I want to feel; full of knowledge, full of the future.
The time I've spent staying in bed smoking dope I've been hibernating, recuperating and gaining strength. I'm weak socially, but being away from other drug users has made me resilient. It's allowed my mind and body to heal and mend. As if the winter is over, I've come out stronger now. I'm on my own. I have the choice of what to do with my life.
I'm going to stay clean. I'm going to be the woman I can be. — Christine Lewry

You have a choice in this world, I believe, about how to tell sad stories, and we made the funny choice. — John Green

All stories come to an end. That moment when we sigh and close the book, perhaps sit back in our chair and rest our palm over the cover, is met with quixotic emotions. On the one hand, we're satisfied if the author successfully tied up loose ends, turned a memorable phrase and rewarded the hero's moral choice with his heart's desire. Yet we're also saddened that the adventure is over. Sometimes when we see that we only have a few pages left we slow down, savoring each word, staving off the — Mary Alice Monroe

Hell, everyone's nice until some kind of hard choice is put in front of them.
Coronado: Stories — Dennis Lehane

We all live and die for the stories and the sounds. Sometimes we find them, other times they just happen upon us. We don't always get a choice. — Bob Mould

There must always be a fringe of the experimental in literature
poems bizarre in form and curious in content, stories that overreach for what has not hitherto been put in story form, criticism that mingles a search for new truth with bravado. We should neither scoff at this trial margin nor take it too seriously. Without it, literature becomes inert and complacent. But the everyday person's reading is not, ought not to be, in the margin. He asks for a less experimental diet, and his choice is sound. If authors and publishers would give him more heed they would do wisely. They are afraid of the swarming populace who clamor for vulgar sensation (and will pay only what it is worth), and they are afraid of petulant literati who insist upon sophisticated sensation (and desire complimentary copies). The stout middle class, as in politics and industry, has far less influence than its good sense and its good taste and its ready purse deserve. — Henry Seidel Canby

I fight evil, and words are my weapons of choice. — A.D. Posey

In the most basic way, writers are defined not by the stories they tell, or their politics, or their gender, or their race, but by the words they use. Writing begins with language, and it is in that initial choosing, as one sifts through the wayward lushness of our wonderful mongrel English, that choice of vocabulary and grammar and tone, the selection on the palette, that determines who's sitting at that desk. Language creates the writer's attitude toward the particular story he's decided to tell. — Donald E. Westlake

Here, in the camp, she could tell any old story, these people would have no choice but to believe her. That is not to say that refugee women like her lie, merely that they are uprooted. Their stories barely mean anything even to themselves now. No one listens to them, which is almost like not existing at all. — Slavenka Drakulic

Oh," the girl said, shaking her head. "Don't be so simple. People adore monsters. They fill their songs and stories with them. They define themselves in relation to them. You know what a monster is, young shade? Power. Power and choice. Monsters make choices. Monsters shape the world. Monsters force us to become stronger, smarter, better. They sift the weak from the strong and provide a forge for the steeling of souls. Even as we curse monsters, we admire them. Seek to become them, in some ways." Her eyes became distant. "There are far, far worse things to be than a monster. — Jim Butcher

I like movies that interest me and stories that interest me, I don't think about how much money it's gonna [cost] to make the movie, I don't think about any of that. I think about certain aspects like who's making the movie and who's gonna tell a story that I wanna be involved in, but I don't have that choice and I never have. — Alex Pettyfer

The Tantric view is that there is already a complete Buddha dormant within each of us, but we've individually and collectively become addicted to horror movies that we mistake for documentaries. From this perspective, our whole society is caught up in a kind of shared horror story, imagining ourselves as zombie consumers rather than empowered citizens: afraid, insecure, incapable beings who have no choice but to wander through life grasping after fleeting pleasures, needlessly competing with each other instead of collaborating, isolating ourselves from the plight of those whose stories we don't understand. Because our whole society is both constructing and watching this shared screenplay simultaneously, the physical world begins to take on the qualities of this horror movie, and it becomes more and more difficult to distinguish the theater of our experience from the screen of our own projections. — Ethan Nichtern

You've all heard stories about how these Seguleh have never been beaten. How they've slaughtered everyone who's ever faced them. Well look around... We're still here! And now - now they're offering you a choice! All you've to do is drop your weapons and surrender. That's all. But if you do that I can promise you one thing ... you ain't gonna have another shot at the bastards! So what's going to be? Hey? What's your answer?
Silence. Aragan glared right and left, his heart hammering, gulping breaths. Then at the far end of the line a hulking Dal Honese trooper drew his blade, held it out saluting, and bashed it to his shield twice. Hands went to sword-grips all up and down the lines. Swords hissed, drawing to clash in a great thunderous roar agains shields, once, twice, then extending in the formal salute.
There's your Malazan answer — Ian C. Esslemont

Influencers use four tactics to help people love what they hate: 1. Allow for choice. 2. Create direct experiences. 3. Tell meaningful stories. 4. Make it a game. — Kerry Patterson

I lost my voice and my best friend too
On swift, fierce winds and wings of blue,
The cold rain fell where beams had shone,
So I wrapped up tight and safe. Alone.

But I missed my friend, I missed my voice,
And my heart still whispered of another choice
To break out of my binding, safe, and warm,
And see what the world looked like after the storm.

So I struggled free and was greeted by
Colorful brushstrokes across the sky,
The melody of the summer breeze
And blue wings like mine in hazel trees.

On the soft, sweet air of the mountain glade,
We gathered together in cool, green shade,
And told our stories, beginnings to ends,
And found our song in the hearts of new friends. — Elaine Vickers

The choices we make in life are equally important to us, as those of others are to them. It is an arrogant attitude in the mind of those who feel superior to believe their choices are better than others. Having respect for others regardless of who they are is the greatest choice anyone can make. — Ellen J. Barrier

You have considerable choice in how you end your fiction. For all stories, the basic rule is the same: Choose the type of ending that best suits what's gone before. — Nancy Kress