Quotes & Sayings About Storytelling

Art is a captured emotion. When I say this I mean all artists, whether you are a photographer, a writer, or sculptor, you are trying to capture the way someone or something made you feel. As a story teller I am trying to captivate the audience and allow them to feel just a small portion of the emotion I am desperately trying to preserve. — Tommy Tran

When we hear our souls speak, we are free. — A.D. Posey

If there's a new HBO series, you know there's going to be a certain level of storytelling mastery - that you can trust it. — Chris Milk

I remember that - you know, I didn't receive a formal education. I was educated in the Montevideo cafe, in the cafes of Montevideo. There, I received my first lessons in the art of telling stories, storytelling. — Eduardo Galeano

Storytelling and elegant style don't always go hand in hand. — Donna Tartt

Listen, and you will realize that we are made not from cells or from atoms. We are made from stories. — Mia Couto

I've always had an idealistic streak about storytelling in that I believe we owe more to audiences than repeatedly bludgeoning them over the head while stealing their lunch money. We owe them inspiration. That's why I'm more interested now in creating new heroes than hooking up jumper cables to old ones. — Mark Frost

I think that storytelling and creation are very close to what the center of what magic is about. I think not just for me, but for most of the cultures that have had a concept of magic, then the manipulation of language, and words, and thus of stories and fictions, has been very close to the center of it all. — Alan Moore

The power of storytelling is exactly this: to bridge the gaps where everything else has crumbled. — Paulo Coelho

I've certainly collaborated with others for their songs and it's fun. To me, it's exciting to write from a place that doesn't have to be so true to my life and is more just storytelling. — The Rocket Summer

Everything I do in its essence is about helplessness. That's the story I want to tell all the time. It's the story I wanted to live - somebody who appears to be, or is, weak becoming stronger. — Joss Whedon

Storytelling is how we survive, when there's no feed, the story feeds something, it feeds the spirit, the imagination. I can't imagine life without stories, stories from my parents, my culture. Stories from other people's parents, their culture. That's how we learn from each other, it's the best way. That's why literature is so important, it connects us heart to heart. — Alice Walker

I think video games are going to completely take over storytelling in our society. Video games are not a fad ... — Guillermo Del Toro

Writing in the dark is hard, but you have to light your own candle and do it anyway. — A.D. Posey

Creativity is divine. — A.D. Posey

A great story can change the world. — Stewart Stafford

In the end, it wasn't so much that there was an alternative narrative
there always was
but it came down to belief: Which one did you want to believe. Which one suited you best? Or, perhaps more to the point: Which one told the story you were already telling yourself? — Michael Paterniti

There are stories that don't need a plot. Sooner or later they rise above the confusion and untangle their mysteries in a series of sentences. — Patrice Nganang

A good picture book can almost be whistled ... All have their own melodies behind the storytelling. — Margaret Wise Brown

These stories become what we know, what we understand, and what we are, or, perhaps we should say, what we have become, or can perhaps be. — Salman Rushdie

Your tale, sir, would cure deafness. — William Shakespeare

Food was always a conduit in our family for storytelling, and it was a way for us to keep in touch and remember things. We're people that use food to keep each other together and to always cheer us up and make all of our days better. — Rachael Ray

I think being snobby about the kind of storytelling people do, it just irks me. It irks me. And in fact, it's one of the things that drives me to make as many horror movies as I do. — Jason Blum

Writing is like breathing for my soul. — A.D. Posey

They're [zombies] us, you can also have the wrestler zombie, the clown zombie, the Jay Leno zombie and the nun zombie. I've never seen the clown werewolf or vampire. But because zombies are us, at the lowest possible level, they're a lot more versatile for storytelling. — Tom Savini

Dancing, singing, storytelling and silence are the four universal healing salves. — Gabrielle Roth

Personally, I've made myself a very small window of what I enjoy in this business, which is I love being a big part of the storytelling process. — Bradley Cooper

It is a law of the story-teller's art that he does not tell a story. It is the listener who tells it. The story-teller does but provide him with the stimuli. — Melville Davisson Post

Telling a story is like sowing a seed - you always hope to see it become a beautiful tree, with firm roots and branches that soar up in the sky. But it is a peculiar sowing, for you will never know whether your seed sprouts or dies. — Laila Lalami

Love is growing up. — A.D. Posey

Stories are like snapshots, pictures snatched out of time, with clean hard edges. But this was life, and life always begins and ends in a bloody muddle, womb to tomb, just one big mess, a can of worms left to rot in the sun. — James Crumley

Be the sun breaking through the clouds. — A.D. Posey

Outside Styx's apartment was not the first time Rochester and I had met, or would it be the last. We first encountered each other at Haworth House in Yorkshire when my mind was young and the barrier between reality and make-believe had not yet hardened into the shell that cocoons us in adult life. The barrier was soft, pliable and, for a moment, thanks to the kindness of a stranger and the power of a good storytelling voice, I made the short journey
and returned. — Jasper Fforde

Chad Michael Ward is a master of the storytelling craft. His imagery, both still and moving, reaches deep into the darkest corners of the mind, combining the macabre and the sensuous Revealing humanity's secret daydream atrocities. CMW taps into our most excitable of emotions with a blend of fear and human sexuality. Like an erotic car accident we can not look away from. — Dave Navarro

Lead with your heart. The rest will follow. — A.D. Posey

That guy in the corner. Never tells the truth, as a matter of principle. Why answer a question, he says, if you can tell a good story instead? — Pete McCarthy

Look through the eyes of your highest self. What do you see? — A.D. Posey

Like Sylvia Plath, Natalie Jeanne Champagne invites you so close to the pain and agony of her life of mental illness and addiction, which leaves you gasping from shock and laughing moments later: this is both the beauty and unique nature of her storytelling. With brilliance and courage, the author's brave and candid chronicle travels where no other memoir about mental illness and addiction has gone before. The Third Sunrise is an incredible triumph and Natalie Jeanne Champagne is without a doubt the most important new voice in this genre. — Andy Behrman

With iron and blood, it seems, and from the rich depths of the earth, John Griswold has fashioned a classic American novel, its dignified intonations of our young nation's sweat and tears evocative of the indelible storytelling of Dos Passos, Frank Norris, and Upton Sinclair. — Bob Shacochis

Of course I believe in magic. I believe in storytelling. — Luke Taylor

What may be myth in one world may always be fact in some other. — C.S. Lewis

All answers to life's key questions are found within. — A.D. Posey

We're so complex; we're mysteries to ourselves; we're difficult to each other. And then storytelling reminds us we're all the same. — Brad Pitt

I have long admired the visceral storytelling and moral complexity of John Vaillant's brilliant non-fiction about humankind's tragically ambivalent relationship with the natural world. Now he brings his abundant literary gifts to a debut novel set in a very real borderland in which human beings are themselves treated like animals. The Jaguar's Children is a beautifully rendered lament for an imperiled culture and the brave lives that would preserve it. You should read it. — John Burnham Schwartz

Some stories are easy to follow, and easy to tell. There is an introduction, a twist, and a happily-ever-after. And when telling the story, everyone forgets those small details, like that one quiet morning when the two of you woke wake up with the sunrise and talked about cookies. Or that night when she had her period, and the cramps were killing her, and she just needed your hug and something warm. — Andrea Tomic

These were our bedtime stories. Tales that haunted our parents and made them laugh at the same time. We never understood them until we were fully grown and they became our sole inheritance. — Edwidge Danticat

I believe we owe it to each other to tell stories. It's as close to a credo as I have or will, I suspect, ever get. — Neil Gaiman

In life, be a kid in a candy store. — A.D. Posey

Want a role? Fuck a screenwriter. — A.D. Posey

Our senses are often the gateway to our stories. — Sharon Salzberg

But books were full of stories and stories were full of lies and lies hurt Jesus's feelings, so I didn't know what to think. I blamed my family. They were the ones who taught me so much about telling stories, and how not to do it, and then, in inspired moments of surprise, how to tell one so good you forgot what day it was, and I liked forgetting what day it was, so I made certain life choices that would allow me to get paid to forget what day it was and teach others to forget what day it was, which is, after all, what I think heaven probably is: the whole world, forgetting what day it is. You have to, I bet, with an endless supply of them. — Harrison Scott Key

It's not magic that takes us to another world - it's storytelling. — Val McDermid

Listen to what the sky is telling you. — A.D. Posey

Pheoby's hungry listening helped Janie to tell her story. — Zora Neale Hurston

I had the most incredible English and literature teachers in school, and it really influenced my love of storytelling. It's what made me excited to study journalism in college. I love editorials and documentaries. All of that came from being given the opportunity to lose myself in good writing when I was a kid. — Sophia Bush

A day of rest yields a hundred days of progress. — A.D. Posey

Good storytelling is one thing rural whites and Indians have in common. But native Americans have learned through harsh necessity that people who survive encroachment by another culture need story to survive. And a storytelling tradition is something Plains people share with both ancient and contemporary monks; we learn our ways of being and reinforce our values by telling tales about each other. — Kathleen Norris

Explore your own peace. — A.D. Posey

I think George R. R. Martin made fantasy grow up. He brought a level of reality into the storytelling where you realize the good guys don't always win and anyone can die, because that's how life works. Bringing that level of reality into the story I think forced the genre to mature in a lot of ways that it hadn't prior. — Peter V. Brett

We [Rodriguez and Frank Miller] wanted to take the movies and turn them into a graphic novel, so that people wouldn't even know what they were looking at. It's still visual storytelling, but it's approached completely different. The two mediums don't have to be separate mediums. They can be one and the same. — Robert Rodriguez

For storytelling purposes, there has to be conflict, but that doesn't mean the people have to be mean. I've never liked mean-spirited comedy. — Michael Schur

Ava's father believed that myths and fairy tales - like dreams - opened a window into the unconscious. by listening to the language of dreams and old tales, he said, all humans could learn to understand themselves and the world, better. — Kate Forsyth

Self-pity, a dominant characteristic of sociopaths, is also the characteristic that differentiates heroic storytelling from psychological rumination. When you talk about your experiences to shed light, you may feel wrenching pain, grief, anger, or shame. Your audience may pity you, but not because you want them to. — Martha Beck

I'm always interested in trying to stay on the cutting edge of television storytelling. To be slightly in front, pushing for the next new thing. — David Nevins

I must have been chosen because I know it all from beginning to end. I am certainly not the story itself. I am only the grass that tattles on the wind. — Alfredo Vea

The more intelligent the storytelling becomes and the deeper the character development, people will realize in film and television, like they do in real life, that human beings possess both good and bad. — Robert LaSardo

Storytelling, a primitive art, is as old as the beginning of mankind. People want to receive what's out there in the form of stories, not just facts, opinion, analysis. — Lee Gutkind

I've always said I have one skill. That skill - if I have it at all - is storytelling. — Mitch Albom

To aspiring writers, I say : Don't give up. Storytelling has been an integral part of the human condition since the beginning of time. Don't let anyone tell you your dreams don't have value. They do. — Beverly Jenkins

To paraphrase Muggeridge: Everything is a parable that God is speaking to us, the art of life is to get the message. — Chester Elijah Branch

Required for good fiction: character, conflict, change through time. And if you're really blessed, you get resolution. But life doesn't usually work out that way. — Ted Conover

Casting is storytelling. — Joss Whedon

Scratch the surface in a typical boardroom and we're all just cavemen with briefcases, hungry for a wise person to tell us stories. — Alan Kay

Short forms are returning online. Interactivity is coming back; it was always there in oral storytelling. — Margaret Atwood

In the end, you have to make love to your story and see what happens. — A.D. Posey

Having spent a lot of time on sets, I was really interested in the overall storytelling aspect of shows and projects. — Tom Verica

The problem is I want to do everything. I really love all of it, and I love every aspect of movie-making and storytelling, and I love television, I love the Internet. I wish I had time to do absolutely everything. — Joss Whedon

Storytelling is shaped by two contrary, yet complementary, impulses - one toward brevity, compactness, artful omission; the other toward expansion, amplification, enrichment. — Joyce Carol Oates

A well-written novel, the most immersive of all forms of storytelling, should command your full attention and belief. — Dave Morris

My life has been the antithesis of that book 'The Secret'. I've always been interested in doing what I do. I love storytelling and I really enjoyed acting, but it never seemed like a realistic thing. — Aaron Stanford

Storytelling is an ancient and honorable act. An essential role to play in the community or tribe. It's one that I embrace wholeheartedly and have been fortunate enough to be rewarded for. — Russell Banks

A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick. Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose it's moorings or orientation ... Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart larger. — Ben Okri

Power consists to a large extent in deciding what stories will be told. — Carolyn G. Heilbrun

I don't actually breakdance. — James Webb

My heart is in independent film-making. For me, it's where the fun, gritty storytelling is being told. — Aaron Paul

If I really knew how to do good storytelling, I would be a writer. Mystery is not a huge part of it ... It's tension, it's relationships. I think it's a struggle. — Scott Cohen

In older science fiction stories, they had to rely on storytelling as opposed to spectacle. The old run of the 'Twilight Zone,' the star was the writing and the storytelling, and the characters and the twists and the cleverness in the setup and payoff and execution. — Josh Trank

Most people think its sex, money, and drugs but Hip-Hop is about lyrics, storytelling, and everybody having a different style. That's just another idea of beautiful, being yourself and creating music that represents you and what you like. — Rapsody

Father may have been wanting in some things, but here he was masterful. Night upon night, I marveled at his power to hold listeners in rapt attention. He could tell a story with such detail, such flourish, that afterwards a man could swear it had been his own memory, and not a tale at all. — Seth Grahame-Smith

I'm in the storytelling business, and so you're always drawn to the unusual. And early on, I discovered that's the easiest way to tell stories. If you come up through a newspaper as I did, your whole goal is to get a story on the front page, and you only get something on the front page if it's unusual — Malcolm Gladwell

Once you buy into a television show, there doesn't have to be resolution from week to week. You can develop characters and storylines and react to the audience, so you get more of a serialized version of storytelling where you can go much deeper into each character. It's more like a novel. — Jon Favreau

Crusoe and Friday. Ishmael and Ahab. Daisy and Gatsby. Pip and Estella. Me. Me. Me. I am not alone. I am surrounded by words that tell me who I am, why I feel what I feel. Or maybe they just help me while away the hours as the rain pounds down on the porch roof, taking me away from the gloom and on to somewhere sunny, somewhere else. — Anna Quindlen

While I don't like violent programs per se, I do like good storytelling, which made me a fan of shows like Breaking Bad and American Horror Story. — Hank Stuever

Storytellers think they're writing for the audience. They're writing, in a way, to hurt the audience. — Chuck Wendig

A writer's uniqueness glows and transforms the heart and the soul of a reader. — A.D. Posey

A film that is a true work of art transcends theatre and heartwarmingly changes lives. — A.D. Posey

Literature might be called the art of story, and story might in turn be called a universal language, for every culture we know of has a tradition of storytelling. No doubt stories have touched your life, too, from bedtime stories you may have heard as a child to news stories you see on TV or read in a newspaper. We might even say that a major goal of living is to created the story of our own lives, a story we hope to take pleasure and pride in telling. — Andrea A. Lunsford

I love storytelling and I love just relating directly to an audience. That's why we do theatre, it's because we love contact with the audience. We love the fact that the audience will change us. The way the audience responds makes us change our performance. — Simon Callow

What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory
meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion
is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw. — William Maxwell

The key is in the craft. — A.D. Posey