Story That Changed Quotes & Sayings

You'd been coming here for years for checkups, and we couldn't get you to try a new hand or let us put you under again after what you'd been through at Brooke. Then suddenly you're here. You want the new hand; you want to work on the face. That article? It was a mixed bag: part love story and, yes, part humiliation. But, see, she changed you Asher. For the good. She helped you move forward. And we only let certain people change us. We only want to change for certain people. If she was worth changing for, she's probably worth talking to. — Katy Regnery

And for the next long years of my life, I tried to remember only the reading, not the terrible things that happened to me as I came and went up and down the stairs. The library became my sanctuary. I loved the ways the precious stories took shape but always had room to be read again. I became fascinated with how writers did that. How did they make a story feel so complete and yet to open-ended? It was like painting a picture that changed each time you looked at it. — Rene Denfeld

Snowden had been clear from our first conversation about his rationale for distrusting the establishment media with his story, repeatedly referring to the New York Times's concealment of NSA eavesdropping. He had come to believe that the paper's concealment of that information may very well have changed the outcome of the 2004 election. "Hiding that story changed history," he said. — Glenn Greenwald

If I knew this is your final goodbye; I'd have told you that still I've a lot of things to say. I'd have told you how you changed my life, how you made me close to Me, how you made me realize the beauty of the world.
If only I knew, this is your final goodbye ... I'd have never let you say it ... — Crestless Wave

The elk that you glimpse in the summer, those at the forest edge, are survivors of winter, only the strongest. You see one just before dusk that summer, standing at the perimeter of the meadow so it can step back to the forest and vanish. You can't help imagining the still, frozen nights behind it, so cold that the slightest motion is monumental. I have found their bodies, half drifted over in snow, no sign of animal attack or injury. Just toppled over one night with ice working into their lungs. You wouldn't want to stand outside for more than a few minutes in that kind of weather. If you lived through only one of those winters the way this elk has, you would write books about it. You would become a shaman. You would be forever changed. That elk from the winter stands there on the summer evening, watching from beside the forest. It keeps its story to itself. — Craig Childs

I grew up reading 19th-century novels and late Victorian children's books, so I try for a good story full of coincidence and error, landscape and weather. However, the world was radically changed during my lifetime, and I tell of that battering as best I can. — Fanny Howe

I was reading this story about these people who suffered from brain injuries, and then their behavior changed kind of drastically afterward, and I just said to myself, 'There's no way that that can possibly be true.' — Sam Kean

Because of streaming, serialized television has become less of a dirty word when you're pitching shows. I had to fight for that for so long as someone who's always gravitated towards ongoing story lines with characters that evolved and changed and storylines that continued over longer arcs. — Jason Katims

I used to think that if you changed from ... valuing one thing to valuing another, it was because you'd learnt something new, understood something better. And it's not like that at all. I just value what I'm stuck with. That's it, that's the whole story. People make a virtue out of necessity. They sanctify what they can't escape. — Greg Egan

All I dreamed about Dr. Jekyll was that one man was being pressed into a cabinet, when he swallowed a drug and changed into another being. I awoke and said at once that I had found the missing link for which I had been looking so long, and before I went again to sleep almost every detail of the story, as it stands, was clear to me. Of course, writing it was another thing. — Robert Louis Stevenson

I had enough of a story churning in my head that combined all the elements of the day - the interview, the concert, the after-party's private session - when he put his guitar away and asked me if I had ever experimented with homosexuality. Talk about unexpected segues. Letting him know that I had not and wasn't about to, I successfully changed the subject by asking him to give me a condensed account about traveling to Mississippi in search of Bukka White. — Kenny Weissberg

....[T]he night terrors were no match for the glory of waking up to a new day in the Land of Israel. In every conscious moment, Yael was aware that she was living through times that would form the legends and myths of future generations. Just as her generation told and retold the story of the Exodus from Egypt - the event that changed the nature of Israel forever - so would her people hundreds of years from now tell of the end of the Great Exile and the return to this land. The wonder of it touched everything around her, casting a golden glow over even the most mundane events. Nothing seemed impossible, and nothing seemed entirely real. — Yael Shahar

What I quickly discovered is that our so-called new South Africa has as much material for a story-teller as the old one. The landscape hasn't really changed. Who is in power now is different to who was in power then, but the squatter camps grow like cancer, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. — Athol Fugard

I think that perhaps everyone has a moment that splits their life in two. When you look back on your own time line there's a sharp spike somewhere along the way, some event that changed you, changed your life more than the others. A moment that creates a before and an after. Maybe it's when you meet your love or you figure out your life's passion or you have your first child. Maybe it's something wonderful. Maybe it's something tragic. But when it happens it tints your memories, shifts your perspective on your own life and it suddenly seems as if everyone you've been through falls under the label of pre or post. — Taylor Jenkins Reid

One thing I did learn from those classes is that the world is not, in any way, what people expected thirty years ago. The zombies are here, and they're not going away, but they're not the story. They were, for one hot, horrible summer at the beginning of the century, but now they're just another piece of the way things work. They did their part: They changed everything. — Mira Grant

More than a building that houses books and data, the library has always been a window to a larger world
a place where we've always come to discover big ideas and profound concepts that help move the American story forward ...
Libraries remind us that truth isn't about who yells the loudest, but who has the right information. Because even as we're the most religious of people, America's innovative genius has always been preserved because we also have a deep faith in facts.
And so the moment we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold into a library, we've changed their lives forever, and for the better. This is an enormous force for good. — Barack Obama

That's where the inspiration was and so the more that you rewrite and the more you rewrite and the more the numbnuts are coming in to give you notes then the more problems you run into and the more it suddenly doesn't seem like the movie, the story, the characters changed, watered down and we don't have that with this. — Todd Farmer

While they sorted us out for transportation I had a chance to look around. In the light of the dying sun the image glimpsed earlier through the crack in the box car seemed to have changed, grown more eery and menacing. One object immediately caught my eye: an immense square chimney, built of red bricks, tapering towards the summit. It towered above a two-story building and looked like a strange factory chimney. I was especially struck by the enormous tongues of flame rising between the lightning rods, which were set at angles on the square tops of the chimney. I tried to imagine what hellish cooking would require such a tremendous fire. Suddenly I realized that we were in Germany, the land of the crematory ovens. I had spent ten years in this country, first as a student, later as a doctor, and knew that even the smallest city had its crematorium. — Miklos Nyiszli

What if we changed the story that has been peddled to us over thousands of years by those religions that want to control us, that this life is merely a stepping stone to something better or something worse, and that we can only achieve the better by passing through the doors of their institutions and following their rules? What if we trash this arcane story which has caused so much suffering and hostility, and accept that we have already arrived in heaven and that there is nothing more gorgeous than here and now? — Danny Scheinmann

Matthew's story of the resurrection emphasizes typically Matthean themes, and so on. But this is like what you get when different artists paint portraits of the same person. This painting is certainly a Rembrandt; that is indubitably a Holbein. The touch of the individual artist is unmistakable. And yet the sitter is fully recognizable. The artists have not changed the color of her hair, the shape of his nose, the particular half smile. And when we ask why such stories, so different in many ways and yet so interestingly consistent in these and other features, could have come into existence so early, all the early Christians give the obvious answer: something like this is what happened, even though it was hard to describe at the time and remains mind-boggling thereafter. — N. T. Wright

Love not often, but forever. It's one of my mother's sayings, and all my life it has been the story of my heart ... Love for my mother; love for my friends; the dark and complex love of a woman for a man. But when Fleur was born, everything changed. A man who has never seen it may think he understands the ocean; but he thinks only of what he knows ... The reality, however, is beyond imagining: the scents, the sounds, the anguish, and the joy of it beyond any comparison with previous experience. That was Fleur. For the first instant, ... I knew that the world had changed. I had been alone and had never know it; had traveled, fought, suffered, danced, fornicated, loved, hated, grieved, and triumphed all alone, living like an animal from day to day, caring for nothing; desiring nothing; fearing nothing. Suddenly now everything was different ... I was a mother. — Joanne Harris

Crazy moment!! When you suddenly laughed because you remember something funny and then realised that strangers were lookin at you weirdly (why the hell he's laughin) and immediately you changed your expression to serious. — Khaled Besrour

I do think I'm country, but your definition of that word might be different from my definition. In my opinion, country music, the sound of country, has always evolved. But the one thing that has not changed is the story element. And I think country songs are truthful songs about life written by country people. — Sam Hunt

Bulahdeen ignored her. I taught literature for nearly forty years. The books I read when I was twenty completely changed when I read them when I was sixty. You know why? Because the endings changed. After you finish a book, the story still goes on in your mind. You can never change the beginning. But you can always change the end. That's what's happening here. — Sarah Addison Allen

Honor thy Father and thy Mother was once said, but then someone said: What if I don't know your Father? A still voice said: Does that makes him the devil? He is still someone's Father, his name has been changed, but his story is the same. Why hate when we should Celebrate. In this world of two's, you got the Mourning Son, and the Daughter of the Night. They both equal light once you make it through the night. Now, wake the funk up! — Bootsy Collins

I got my story, my dream, from America. The hero I had is Forrest Gump ... I like that guy. I've been watching that movie about 10 times. Every time I get frustrated, I watch the movie. I watched the movie before I came here again to New York. I watched the movie again telling me that no matter whatever changed, you are you. — Jack Ma

The voice-over world has changed radically in the time that I've been in it. It used to be this rather small, select group of people who did 90 percent of the work. Now it's kind of the reverse: 90 percent of the work is done by this very broad mix of people all over the country, and the guys who used to be the go-to guys are a much smaller percentage now. But there was this massive interest in voice-over as well as in the story, so I think that also added to the film's appeal. — Fred Melamed

I want to share my story, and I want to know yours. I believe with all my heart that sharing our stories, the real, ugly, broken ones, is one of the most powerful things in the world, because to share our story we must first accept it. We must own it. We must stop running from it or shoving it into the corner when company comes over. To share our story is to admit that we've been changed. — Anna White

Does that change things?" asked the old man. "Maybe
Anansi's just some guy from a story, made up back in Africa in
the dawn days of the world by some boy with blackfly on his leg,
pushing his crutch in the dirt, making up some goofy story
about a man made of tar. Does that change anything? People respond
to the stories. They tell them themselves. The stories
spread, and as people tell them, the stories change the tellers.
Because now the folk who never had any thought in their head
but how to run from lions and keep far enough away from rivers
that the crocodiles don't get an easy meal, now they're starting to
dream about a whole new place to live. The world may be the
same, but the wallpaper's changed. Yes? People still have the
same story, the one where they get born and they do stuff and
they die, but now the story means something different to what it
meant before. — Neil Gaiman

There's an interesting story around that ["Heaven Without a Gun"], because the girl I was dating at the time got into a bike accident and couldn't make it into the studio, and the gentleman Dave Hamlin who worked on this record along with Ohad sort of took it, rearranged it. Dave went and sonically changed it and changed the keys so that Andy could sing it better. All these pieces came together that suddenly displayed that the song was meant for Andy [Kim] to sing. And he always said, "I'll never understand it, but I'll sing it with all my heart." — Kevin Drew

In every story I'd read about dragons, they dwelled in caves far away from civilization. They didn't live in the upper heights of ritzy Gangnam with a view of the Han River shimmering in the moonlight. And they certainly didn't live in a villa that looked like a geometric cube with windows that changed color based on the time. — Heather Heffner

If my life were still a movie, this is the part that would end up on the cutting room floor. We were all just fill-ins for a long-running soap opera. The actors changed, but the story seldom did. Certainly not the action. — Charles Martin

Writing is hard work, and if anything's true about the process, it's that fact that a good story is hard to find and even trickier to get on paper. What's less romantic than staring alone at a blank screen? And edgy? I've changed the cat little because I didn't know what my characters were going to say next. — Adam Johnson

But when I was seven or eight years old, the film that changed my life was Titanic. It amazed me that it was a story that took place a hundred years ago. Those people living in 1912 had better technology than most North Koreans! But mostly I couldn't believe how someone could make a movie out of such a shameful love story. In North Korea, the filmmakers would have been executed. No real human stories were allowed, nothing but propaganda about the Leader. But in Titanic, the characters talked about love and humanity. I was amazed that Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet were willing to die for love, not just for the regime, as we were. The idea that people could choose their own destinies fascinated me. This pirated Hollywood movie gave me my first small taste of freedom. — Yeonmi Park

At the heart of every story is conflict - whether external or internal, make it a good one, and remember that this problem is going to shape your character, leaving her forever changed. — Jennifer McMahon

My ex-student, Idit Harel, who wrote a book, "Children Designs," has a documented story of a kid who was very shy, isolated and didn't talk much to other kids. She was a little overweight, and the other kids looked down on her for that reason.But then she made a discovery about how to do something on the computer. The discovery was picked up by other kids, and within a few weeks there was a total transformation. This kid was now in demand. And that changed her feeling about herself. — Seymour Papert

The story and the poem are obviously changed by being placed in the novel, so in a sense they're no longer the works that preceded the novel. — Ben Lerner

'Crucible' was going to be a 'passing of the torch' story. So something that was big enough to be worthy of that, that could show these characters being changed - along with their respective outlooks about life, the galaxy, and the Force - was Mortis. — Troy Denning

I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead, I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook, about how I saw that communication, truth, and trust are at the heart of power. — Fernando Flores

He started to say, "I have a lot of work - " just as Izzy
walked in the front door, and his mouth fell open. Her hair
had been swept up on one side, pinned back by a pink flower.
Nothing too big. Just the right size to look kind of sexy. His
gaze skimmed down over a pink sparkly dress that stopped
mid-thigh - and she had the legs for it. Now, not only was he
dealing with the fact that she wasn't a kid anymore, he was
seeing her as a gorgeous, sexy woman. It was as if someone
had waved a magic wand and she'd changed overnight. — Susan Meier

In the aftermath of loss, we do what we've always done, although we are changed, maybe more afraid. We do what we can, as well as we can. My pastor, Veronica, one Sunday told the story of a sparrow lying in the street with its legs straight up in the air, sweating a little under its feathery arms. A warhorse walks up to the bird and asks, "What on earth are you doing?" The sparrow replies, "I heard the sky was falling, and I wanted to help." The horse laughs a big, loud, sneering horse laugh, and says, "Do you really think you're going to hold back the sky, with those scrawny little legs?" And the sparrow says, "One does what one can." So what can I do? Not much. Mother Teresa said that none of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love. This reminder has saved me many times. — Anne Lamott

But correspondents are a wily bunch. Having stashed their typewriters, crossed the border, changed their clothes, and counted to ten, they began slipping back into the country one by one. So in 1928, the Foreign Press Office was opened anew on the top floor of a six-story walk-up conveniently located halfway between the Kremlin and the offices of the secret police - a spot that just happened to be across the street from the Metropol. Thus, — Amor Towles

Our parents tell us the story of our beginning and they have total control over it
they know they've changed it, and we know they've changed it, but we just let them. They massage the details to reflect who we are now, so that there will be a sense to it: you are this because that. We gave you a blanket with birdies on it and now you're a pilot, how lovely! All so that we think of ourselves as being in ... not just a story, but a good story. One written in full command of their craft. Someone who abides by the contract with the audience, even if the audience is us. Everyone loves a system. Everyone relaxes. — Catherynne M Valente

When you meet God in the story of Jesus. You get swept up into a story of such cosmic drama and beauty that you are forever changed. — J.D. Greear

That is the American story. People, just like you, following their passions, determined to meet the times on their own terms. They weren't doing it for the money. Their titles weren't fancy. But they changed the course of history and so can you. — Barack Obama

When she was little, someone gave her some weird book called The Wife Store. It was about a very lonely man who decided that he wanted to get married. So he went to the wife store, where endless women lined enormous shelves. He picked himself a wife and bought her. She was bagged up and put in a cart. He took her home. After that, the two of them went to the children store to buy a few kids.
Petey read this book over and over. Not because she liked it, but because she kept waiting for the story to change, kept waiting for the day she'd turn the page and a woman would get to the husband store. She kept waiting for justice. But, of course, the story never changed. She never got justice. If Petey were keeping one of her lists of the things she hated, she wold have to add: the fact that there was no justice. But The Wife Store was still on her shelf at home, if only to remind her that there were assholes in the world who would write such things, believe such things. — Laura Ruby

The best change you can make is to hold up a mirror so that people can look into it and change themselves. That's the only way a person can be changed." By looking into yourself," Zia said. "Even if you have to look into a mirror that's outside yourself to do it." "And you know," Maida added. "That mirror can be a story you hear, or just someone else's eyes. Anything that reflects back so you can see yourself in it. — Charles De Lint

It is conventional to tell that constitutional story - of a republican failure ending in restoration - but to do so is to limit the significance of the 1640s to that single constitutional queston. There is much more to say, and to remember, about England's decade of civil war and revolution. Political and religious questions of fundamental importance were thrashed out before broad political audiences as activists and opportunists sought to mobilize support for their proposals. The resulting mass of contemporary argument is alluring to the historian since it lays bare the presumptions of a society very alient to our own. At the same time, by exposing those presumptions to sustained critical examination, this public discussion changed them. — Michael Braddick

Hundreds of people began to care in a personal way about the suffering of farm workers because they care about you and learned that you were willing to go to jail with striking farm workers," Chris wrote the delegates from the Jesuit spirituality conference. He apologized profusely for having misled them into thinking they would be out in a few days. But no one complained. They told Chris the two weeks ranked among the most moving times of their lives. The gripes came from those who had opted for the picket line that obeyed the injunctions. They had been forced to make the decision too fast, they grumbled to Chris.

Chris saw the saga as a modern parable, and he loved to tell the story: The people who played it safe, unwilling to risk arrest, ended up feeling cheated and angry. Those willing to sacrifice emerged from the ordeal enriched, certain that the experience had changed their lives. — Miriam Pawel

Josh: I love you. Do you still love me?

Isla: How could you ask me that? Of course I love you. This hasn't changed anything.

Josh: But it was my fault. The whole weekend was my idea.

Isla: Hey. Hey. I wanted to go. It was my decision, too. I love you. I have always loved you.

Josh: What do you mean? Always?

Isla: I mean that you never have to worry about me leaving you, because I've been in love with you since our freshman year. There's no story. I saw you one day, and I just knew. — Stephanie Perkins

I concentrated on his eyes and his facial expression. Those said a lot about a person. I'd noticed that his eyes changed color based on his mood. Right now they were a true clear green, which meant he was happy. When his eyes turned cloudy with a mix of gray, he was angry. But my favorite shade was clear dark green, the color of his eyes when he'd just kissed me. Eyes only told part of the story. Drawing a portrait could be like looking at a person's soul, when done right. — Marysue G. Hobika

You start out with big dreams and I mean, big dreams artistically. You want to work with the greatest living directors, make a great movie. I wanted to make a great love story, I wanted to make a great epic and then you realize that the truth of it is that it's so hard to make a great film. It's hard to get a great role. Those big expectations change to realism pretty quickly. But what's never changed is my desire to work with great directors and to find projects that push me out of my comfort zone and keep me alive. I still don't think I've done my best work — Nicole Kidman

A strange thing happened then. The Speaker agreed with her that she had made a mistake that night, and she knew when he said the words that it was true, that his judgment was correct. And yet she felt strangely healed, as if simply saying her mistake were enough to purge some of the pain of it. For the first time, then, she caught a glimpse of what the power of speaking might be. It wasn't a matter of confession, penance, and absolution, like the priests offered. It was something else entirely. Telling the story of who she was, and then realizing that she was no longer the same person. That she had made a mistake, and the mistake had changed her, and now she would not make the mistake again because she had become someone else, someone less afraid, someone more compassionate. — Orson Scott Card

After modernism, things changed. Indeed, modernism sometimes seems to me like an equivalent of the Fall. Remember, the first thing Adam and Eve did when they ate the fruit was to discover that they had no clothes on. They were embarrassed. Embarrassment was the first consequence of the Fall. And embarrassment was the first literary consequence of this modernist discovery of the surface. Am I telling a story? Oh my God, this is terrible. I must stop telling a story and focus on the minute gradations of consciousness as they filter through somebody's ... — Philip Pullman

This work is the link between my Dear Natalie piece and my upcoming Agatha work. It bridges that lapse in time and shows how my thinking has changed. It shows me telling a story through the surreal and trying to use thought fragments alone to show a tortured existence. This piece was written after the Dear Natalies and before the Agatha mystery, but it is meant to be read after you've already read both.
This book is a bridge between two books, which would make it a bridge between two bridges. That's strange, but I've seen stranger. Like the time I woke up in a fish tank, having morphed into a goldfish during my sleep. I still fear the sound of a flushing toilet, and since then I refuse to let myself fall asleep while wearing flippers.
This book is 3,088 words of pure nonsense, strung together like pearls hurled at bacon. Yum! — Jarod Kintz

And perhaps that in itself was the great secret---not just for legacy, but also for life. You could carry a story inside you and hold it up to the light when you needed it the most. You could peer through it, like a frame, and see how it changed your view when you looked out onto the world. — Roshani Chokshi

Once upon a time, we were cynics facing the world alone. Our story changed into two warrior cynics facing the world together.
Now, we own the happily ever after and we refuse to let that bitch go. — Monica Murphy

I think in the old days, the nexus of weirdness ran through Southern California, and to a degree New York City. I think it's changed so that every bizarre story in the country now has a Florida connection. I don't know why, except it must be some inversion of magnetic poles or something. — Carl Hiaasen

When you look at a person, any person, everyone has a story. Everyone has gone through something that has changed their life. Anxiety, depression and panic attacks are not signs of weakness. They are signs of trying to remain strong for way too long. — Deepika Padukone

He felt greedy for something. He'd wanted to kiss Wylan since he'd first seen him stirring chemicals in that gruesome tannery - ruddy curls damp with the heat, skin so delicate it looked like it would bruise if you breathed on it too hard. He looked like he'd fallen into the wrong story, a prince turned pauper. From then on, Jesper had been stuck somewhere between the desire to taunt the pampered little merchling into another blush and the urge to flirt him into a quiet corner just to see what might happen. But sometime during their hours at the Ice Court, that curiosity had changed. He'd felt the tug of something more, something that came to life in Wylan's unexpected courage, in his wide-eyed, generous way of looking at the world. It made Jesper feel like a kite on a tether, lifted up and then plummeting down, and he liked it. — Leigh Bardugo

A circular plot structure, often seen in adventure novels and quest fantasies, is a narrative devise involving setting, character, and theme. Typically a protagonist ventures from home (or the starting place of the story), goes on a journey, often a dangerous one in which many challenges are overcome, and then returns home a changed person. The plot is usually chronological, with the events occurring in a setting that becomes a circle. By returning the character to the place where he started, the author can emphasize the character's growth or change while also highlighting the theme of the story. — Carl M. Tomlinson

The poet's role has changed over the centuries, the ages. The poets, the griots, used to be the keepers of the facts; they were the story tellers, and the stories were allegorically written truths: where we came from, how we migrated over this river, got with this tribe, became this nation, and tamed the mountains. It changed from that to being purely entertainment. And once it became purely entertainment, it lost something. — Malik Yusef

FDR's struggle with illness and subsequent metal-filled life are remarkably similar to the story of another great leader who was part robot: Iron Man. FDR, much like Tony Stark, was cocky and arrogant before his life-changing diagnosis, but the years of suffering changed all of that, and he emerged more humble, more fearless, and ready to defend America. Also, FDR wore iron braces and used a wheelchair, which, for the purposes of this comparison, is exactly like a well-armed robot suit. — Daniel O'Brien

Elizabeth understood as she never had before. Everyone, all of them had lived secure in the belief that the earth was stable, unchanging, eternal.
Now no one could trust the ground beneath their feet.
Yes, the earthquake was the story of destruction, but not just of things. An earthquake destroyed security. It destroyed complacency. It changed the people who lived through it. — Christina Dodd

Imagination is the politics of dreams; imagination turns every word into a bottle rocket ... Imagine every day is Independence Day and save us from traveling the river changed; save us from hitchhiking the long road home. Imagine an escape. Imagine that your own shadow on the wall is a perfect door. Imagine a song stronger than penicillin. Imagine a spring with water that mends broken bones. Imagine a drum which wraps itself around your heart. Imagine a story that puts wood in the fireplace. — Sherman Alexie

By running longer it's like I can physically exhaust that portion of my discontent. It also makes me realize again how weak I am, how limited my abilities are. I become aware, physically, of these low points. And one of the results of running a little farther than usual is that I become that much stronger. If I'm angry, I direct that anger toward myself. If I have a frustrating experience, I use that to improve myself. That's the way I've always lived. I quietly absorb the things I'm able to, releasing them later, and in as changed a form as possible, as part of the story line in a novel. — Haruki Murakami

Nothing stayed, nothing ever changed. But love, only love, that was the true part of the story, no matter what the beginning, middle or end. — Selena Kitt

What happened?" Bailey asks.
"That is somewhat difficult to explain," Tsukiko answers. "It is a long and complicated story."
"And you're not going to tell me, are you?"
She tilts her head a bit ... "No, I am not," she says.
"Great," Bailey mutters under his breath ... "The bonfire exploded? How?"
"Remember when I said it was difficult to explain? That has not changed. — Erin Morgenstern

Any fiction should be a story. In any story there are three elements: persons, a situation, and the fact that in the end something has changed. If nothing has changed, it isn't a story. — Malcolm Cowley

Funny story: I was hanging out with Adam Shankman for Samantha Ronson's birthday, and Lance Bass was there. I don't really know Lance, but he comes over to me and goes, 'Hey, I just wanted to let you know I'm a fan of 'Pretty Little Liars' and I'm rooting for your character.' It was surreal! That's how 'PLL' has changed my life. — Ryan Guzman

I had a very linear story line for this particular play, and I wanted to open the piece up a bit, so I started doing that with my writing. I would describe fragments of scenes on index cards, then move the card around to see how it changed the piece. — Philip Kan Gotanda

On the Today show, there was a story about a new poll that had been conducted regarding religious beliefs. A majority of Americans reported that they believed in angels, and a significant number thought they were personally protected by a guardian angel. He changed the channel to CNN, where they were covering a shooting at a North Carolina high school, a subject more comfortingly normal. — Bentley Little

Obviously, if the commander makes certain decisions that the reporter thinks is inhibiting his right to report a legitimate story, he has to appeal to the commander's boss to get that changed. — Bob Schieffer

There was much more she would have liked to tell her brother. But within a few months, she would be able to tell him in person. When he learned of the attack on the airship, nothing would stop Archimedes and his wife from coming. But at least they would fly to the Red City instead of Krakentown, where he might be recognized as the smuggler Wolfram Gunther-Baptiste. One day, she might write a story inspired by that part of his career. She would call it The Idiot Smuggler Who Destroyed the Horde Rebellion's War Machines and Changed His Name to Avoid the Rebel Assassins. Zenobia would take pity on the idiot's sister and leave her out of the tale. She — Meljean Brook

Alone is how our story starts. But then I came along and changed all that. — Erica Lorraine Scheidt

The bigger story here is that the fabric of the Net has changed; it's a place for people to connect up around shared interests and then collaborate towards some sort of action. — Steve Rubel

I've polished up stories for their reprinted appearances. I guess there's always something to be changed or improved, but one could get carried away and work on one story indefinitely. I'm too restless for that, too eager to begin the next one. — Jeffrey Thomas

Matthews' shout of treason in the House was no random outburst of lunacy, but the last act in an astonishing adventure: one that might indeed have changed the history of Europe. But by this point there was no-one left to confirm the truth of the story. Most of the witnesses were dead, and those who were alive were not interested in talking. — Mike Jay

Not counting 'Small Steps,' I think 'Holes' is my best book, in terms of plot, and setting, and the way the story revealed itself. It hasn't changed my life, other than that I have more money than I did before I wrote it. I'm still too close to 'Small Steps' to compare it to 'Holes.' — Louis Sachar

Little story that changed everything." "How so?" Nathan asked. "Well, the story changed the way I looked at change - from losing something to gaining something - and it showed me how to do it. After that, things quickly improved-at work and in my life. "At first I was annoyed with the obvious simplicity of the story because it sounded like something we might have been told in school. "Then I realized I was really annoyed with myself for not seeing the obvious and doing what works when things change. "When I realized the four characters in the story represented the various parts of myself, I decided who I wanted to act like and I changed. "Later, I passed the story on to some people in our company and they passed it on to others, and soon our business did much better, because most of us adapted to change better. And like me, many people said it helped them in their personal lives. "However there were a few people who said they — Spencer Johnson

As Mary Grannon, the beloved Mary of The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's 'Just Mary' hour says:
So many parents are clinging to some favorite story in their own youth and measuring all children's material by it - forgetting what the last minstrel found out in his travels, that 'old times are changed, old manners gone, a stranger fills the Stuart's throne.' Let's not be like the bigots of the iron time; let's be rooters for the modern. — Judith C. Waller

This revolution was a legend in the making. The kind of tale that sprawled out long before me and far beyond my reach. The sort of epic that was told over and over to explain how the world was never the same after this handful of people lived and fought and won or died trying. And after it happened, the story seemed somehow inevitable. Like the world was waiting to be changed, needing to be saved, and the players in the tale were all plucked out of their lives and moved into places exactly where they needed to be, like pieces on a board, just to make this story come true. But it was wilder and more terrifying and intoxicating, and more uncertain, than I'd ever thought. And I could be part of it. If I wanted to. It was getting way too late to rip myself out of this story now, or to rip it out of me. "Where — Alwyn Hamilton

It's not my business to worry about the reason. God knows the reason. One day I may discover what it was. Or not. It doesn't matter. All I know now is that I can't stake a bit of my life on it being true, the story. If it's true it requires the staking of the whole of my life. And that's because it's not only a story, as you and I have always called it. It's something that happened in reality, to reality, and changed it forever. It's something that asked a question that, once we've heard it, we have to answer. — Lucy Beckett

The writing is clean. I really wouldn't have changed a word. Most of it is true, too, except that the hero quits drinking and the girl grows up. On the last page, the couple gets married, which is a nice way for a love story to end. — Melissa Bank

When I was eight years old, I wrote a paragraph-long short story about a goat on my mother's hundred-pound, black-and-white-screen laptop. The story came about largely because I liked the way the word 'goat' looked on the page, but I decided then and there that I wanted to be a writer. That desire never changed. — Tea Obreht

Whatever was bound to happen
in my story did not happen.
But I know there are rules that cannot be broken.
Perhaps a name was changed.
A small mistake. Perhaps
a woman I do not know
is facing the day with the heavy heart
that, by all rights, should have been mine. — Lisel Mueller