Quotes & Sayings About Tall Tales

There's no way to really preserve a person when they've gone and that's because whatever you write down it's not the truth, it's just a story. Stories are all we're ever left with in our head or on paper: clever narratives put together from selected facts, legends, well edited tall tales with us in the starring roles — Steven Hall

Things like this don't happen back in Libertyville, Illinois.
You don't get lost in the woods behind your house.
You don't get trapped inside a fortress-like wall ten feet tall. — Travis Thrasher

Offstage, she fixed him in place with compliments and ironic bossiness, and he tended not to look at her at all when they spoke. He was the only one in the band she called by name, implying a permanence to his position that was professionally reassuring but personally debilitating. When they wrote together or when one presented the other with something prepared in private, with no audience to absorb the excess, he felt the room crowding with their other selves, lives unled and correspondences unwritten, happiness opted against, and he could not believe she did not see it, too. He sweated to ornament her fears and tall tales and fake portraits, and with the remnants of his energy he hid the rest of himself from her. The best of him was a child's drawing of her on an off day. — Arthur Phillips

This was not what we wanted to hear that morning. Adventures inspire, tall tales excite, and fantasies stir the imagination, but sad stories seldom ever buoy the spirit. We all paused to take in the sad news. — J.W. Lord

O' beautiful for spacious skies
But now those skies are threatening
They're beating plowshares into swords
For this tired old man that we elected king
Armchair warriors often fail
And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales
The lawyers clean up all details
Since daddy had to lie
But I know a place where we can go
And wash away this sin
We'll sit and watch the clouds roll by
And the tall grass wave in the wind
Just lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair spill all around me
Offer up your best defence
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence — Don Henley

Library events scare me, as they provide refuge for local historians, fabulists, tellers of tall tales, historical reenactors, and even dream weavers. Not to mention the single most feared creature on the planet: the self-published poet — Joe Queenan

I make up characters. I create whole worlds in my head. I add words to the lexicon of daily conversation - maybe you talk about your vajayjay and tell your friend that someone at work got Poped because of my shows. I birth babies, I end lives. I dance it out. I wear the white hat. I operate. I gladiate. I exonerate. I spin yarns and tell tall tales and sit around the campfire. I wrap myself in fiction. Fiction is my job. Fiction is it. Fiction is everything. Fiction is my jam. — Shonda Rhimes

Whenever the circus would come to town, I would tell Ethan all kinds of kinky clown domination stories involving the leather clown, like the time she forced me to have sex with her in the little car, or the time she kept spraying me with the seltzer bottle until I obeyed her every command. Ethan and I would laugh and laugh at these tall tales, but I could tell deep down, he was wondering whether the leather clown was really real or not. And I would let him wonder. — John S. Hall

My Cuddle Time Bible Story Book
Sleeping with Jesus
Baby Bibles: Tall Tales for Tiny tots
Everybody Poops (Except God) — Dave Eggers

There was once, in the country of Alifbay, a sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name. It stood by a mournful sea full of glumfish, which were so miserable to eat that they made people belch with melancholy even though the skies were blue ...
And in the depths of the city, beyond an old zone of ruined buildings that look like broken hearts, there lived a happy young fellow by name of Haroun, the only child of the storyteller Rashid Khalifa, whose cheerfulness was famous throughout that unhappy metropolis, and whose never-ending stream of tall, and winding tales had earned him not one but two nicknames. To his admirers he was Rashid the Ocean of Notions, as stuffed with cheery stories as the sea was full of glumfish; but to his jealous rivals he was the Shah of Blah. — Salman Rushdie

A long time ago in a kingdom by the sea there lived a princess as tall and bright as a sunflower. — Jeanne Desy

Mary bit her lip. "She is merely saying hello."
Oh, I am, Tottie agreed. I've been wanting to say hello to Mr. Jack for an age, personal-like. Her hand glided over his chest and headed down. Such a fine cocky fella, ye are. Shall we see if it's all just tall tales, then, me lad? — Kristen Callihan

If asked to sketch a picture of the typical archer I would be hard put. They seem to come in all shapes, sizes, colors and backgrounds. Inwardly they seem to have in common a love for the outdoors, a reverence for wildlife, and a close tie with history. There is nothing they seem to enjoy more than telling tall tales around a campfire or talking about archery to others. It would be difficult to find a more interesting group of people. — Fred Bear

I don't think that we necessarily lie. I mean, we make our living by pretending that we're someone else. I don't tell tall tales. I always tell the truth. — Albert Finney

It's fun telling you tall Texas tales. You always look like a little girl who's hearing Cinderella for the first time. — Edna Ferber

Before the real city could be seen it had to be imagined, the way rumours and tall tales were a kind of charting. — Michael Ondaatje

Harlem is not a playground for rich bankers and consultants. It's got students of all colors. It's got old people who keep history and tell tall tales. — Marcus Samuelsson

The business of lying is transacted in the abode of the gullible. — Michael Bassey Johnson

As I was writing, I realised I wasn't sufficiently extrovert to gather enough interesting souls with tall tales around me. I was no Louis Theroux. But neither was I interested in exploring my inner life in public, in the manner of a Jonathan Raban. — Clive Sinclair

Can't we go another way?"
"Nope. Only way to reach the green grass of Oregon or the sweet gold of California is through hell itself."
I roll my eyes. The Major has been especially colorful since his amputation, cussing and exaggerating and telling tall tales. He reminds me of Daddy, except not fit for female company. — Rae Carson

For the house of Dunraven, the ravens represented a spiritual claim to the Tower for the Celtic, especially the Welsh, people. For the English, the ravens represented the colorful savagery of their ancestors, which, however, testified to the exalted state of civilization they had since achieved. The national sagas of the Welsh and English gradually blended in tall tales told to tourists by Yeoman Warders, to eventually create a national myth. The romanticized past of Wales, predicated on survival, was fused with that of England, predicated on progress and conquest, to create a legend of Britain. — Boria Sax

I'm not a fan of Dr. Seuss's better-known work, but his fables leave me awe-struck. 'Ten Tall Tales' is a collection of stories where his trademark anarchy is combined with a tautness of writing that shines an affectionate yet uncompromising spotlight on some of the absurdities of human behaviour. — Giles Andreae

If you read folklore and mythology, any kind of myths, any kind of tall tales, running is always associated with freedom and vitality and youthfulness and eternal vigor. It's only in our lifetime that running has become associated with fear and pain. — Christopher McDougall

I had been interested in the local legends and tall tales regarding the site, and the director had been kind enough to introduce me to several residents who'd grown up in the area and who knew the stories of this mythical "gateway to hell," now a state park, presumably because the devil had departed, making way for field-trippers and hikers. — Rick Yancey

He glared at me and pointed at the plate of food. "Eat. I must return to the tent and see if Hisself requires anything." He smirked and raised an eyebrow. "Simus is telling his tall tales, and those city-dwellers are believing every word. I needs get back and poke holes in the bucket he carries his conceit in. — Elizabeth Vaughan

The United States of America is logically the least magical place in the world. Planned by committee, not even a country, just a legal umbrella for fifty associated provinces, an elaborate polling system for creating other larger and more permanent committees. No mysteries; no demons; one God at the most. Sure, it had its own folklore and tall tales, but it wasn't the same. Its rulers weren't descended from men and women who spoke with birds and rode dragons. Johnny Appleseed and Paul Bunyan were hayseeds, folksy also-rans compared to the madness in the ancient royal blood going back to the Druids, to Byzantium, to Mithraic cults. — Austin Grossman

I've always been into having stories told to me. I was a voracious reader, my father was also a teller of tales; and the kind of Baron Munchausen proxy of a tall tale was much more interesting than a true tale. — Damon Lindelof

People say, "Look, your book [Tales and Wisdom from Duck Dynasty's Favorite Uncle] is about tall tales." And I said, "No, you don't understand, OK? The book is tall tales, OK, by me. But look, those tall tales are my life, OK? And look, I added some spices in there. That's the five percent. You know the one about the wolves chasing me? The only thing about that - they wasn't wolves, they was coyotes". — Si Robertson