Quotes & Sayings About Telling The Whole Story

A news organization has a much different responsibility. I might not be telling you the whole story. I might not be telling you a story in a manner that is properly sophisticated. — Aaron Sorkin

The Lord givith and the Lord takith away. I was given a lot of signs from the universe and looking at it in retrospect made me feel like God was telling me I needed to follow my dream. My granny getting in that car accident and being at that hospital when I was going there to see my girl ... that whole part of the story where I go to the show and come back to the hospital ... and it was almost like as soon as I found out that my granny didn't make it as soon as I got back, I also found out that my son had just come out. — Ryan Montgomery

Stories are thick with meanings. You can fall in love with a story for what you think it says, but you can't know for certain where it will lead your listeners. If you're telling a tale to teach children to be generous, they may fix instead on the part where your hero hides in an olive jar, then spend the whole next day fighting about who gets to try it first.
People take what they need from the stories they hear. The tale is often wiser than the teller. — Susan Fletcher

When the soldiers dress Jesus up in a purple robe, they do so in order to mock him, but John tells us of it in order to declare that Jesus is indeed the one in purple, the one before whom the nations will bow. Pilate circles around the possibility that Jesus is in some sense "king of the Jews," but without realizing that, according to the Jews' own ancient traditions, their king is to be king of the whole world. John knows that he is telling a story of someone dying the death of a criminal. He is determined that his readers will "hear" the story also as the death of the rightful king. Jesus's kingdom will not come by violence (18:36). It will come through his own death. When he is lifted up from the earth, he will draw all people to himself (12:32). — N. T. Wright

... and you start telling a story about accidentally stealing shoes from an outlet and we've been on the steps for almost twenty minutes and you're so nervous and excited that you keep talking about shoes as if you have to keep talking about shoes or you might jump me right here, on the steps. I chose this spot because my whole fucking life I've walked by these steps and seen couples that make me feel alone, rejected. And now there are loners passing by you and me, jealous, and you're still talking and fuck, it's hard to listen when I can smell your body wash. — Caroline Kepnes

When everyone is determined to present someone as a monster, there are two possibilities: either he's a saint or they themselves are not telling the whole story. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

businessman. And the economy right now is terrible." She turned to her father. "Do you mean that old dump on Arbor Drive? There's nothing down there but empty buildings. No one will go down there for ice cream." "Ah, that's where you're wrong, Virginia." Her father pointed at her with one hand while gripping the arm of his chair with the other. "The city council wants to renovate the entire area. They're adding a bike path and a new boat launch. That whole stretch along the lake will become just like the old Atlantic City boardwalk." Like the fish that got away, every time her father told this story, it grew in size. There was just no telling — Tracy Brogan

Dimitri is dead," she said.
It was a statement, not a question, but she was looking to me for confirmation. I wondered if I'd given away something, some hint that there was still more to the story. Or maybe she just needed the certainty of those words. And for a moment, I considered telling them that Dimitri was dead. It was what the Academy would tell them, what the guardians would tell them. It would be easier on them ... but somehow, I couldn't stand to lie to them - even if it was a comforting lie. Dimitri would have wanted the whole truth, and his family would too.
"No," I said, and for a heartbeat, hope sprang up in everyone's faces - at least until I spoke again. "Dimitri's a Strigoi. — Richelle Mead

As regards any specific book, I'm trying primarily to tell a story, in the most effective way I can think of, the most moving, the most exhaustive. But I think even that is incidental to what I am trying to do, taking my output ( the course of it) as a whole. I am telling the same story over and over, which is myself and the world ... I'm trying to say it all in one sentence, between one Cap and one period. I'm still trying to put it all, if possible on one pinhead. I don't know how to do it. All I know to do is to keep on trying in a new way ... life is a phenomenon but not a novelty, the same frantic steeplechase toward nothing everywhere and man stinks the same stink no matter where in time. — William Faulkner

As she waited for the applause to subside, she thought of the statistic that said people feared public speaking more than they feared death. She loved it. She enjoyed all of the concatenated moments of presenting in front of a listening audience - teaching, performing, telling a story, teeing up a heated debate. She also loved the adrenaline rush. The bigger the stakes, the more sophisticated or hostile the audience, the more the whole experience thrilled her. — Lisa Genova

He would not mind hearing Petrus's story one day. But preferably not reduced to English. More and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa. Stretches of English code whole sentences long have thickened, lost their articulations, their articulateness, their articulatedness. Like a dinosaur expiring and settling in the mud, the language has stiffened. Pressed into the mold of English, Petrus's story would come out arthritic, bygone(117). — J.M. Coetzee

You know every story, every wound, every memory. Their whole life's happiness is wrapped up in you... every single second. Don't you get it? Look down the road to her wedding. I'm in a room alone with her, fixing her veil, fluffing her dress, telling her no woman has ever looked so beautiful. And my fear is she'll be thinking, "I wish my mom was here. — Jackie Harrison

I'm a big fan of the 70's action films. Where there is a lot of character and a lot of great action, but the action is kind of cemented with a great back-story with characters. And I thought, this kind of reminded me of the movies that, early on when I was telling Dwayne (Johnson) and the guys, the producer ... my whole thing is if you look at a movie like The Driver by Walter Hill, it's a film where there's no names. They are just named, "the driver", "the cop". — George Tillman Jr.

Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster.
This is the whole of the story and we might have left it at that had there not been profit and pleasure in the telling; and although there is plenty of space on a gravestone to contain, bound in moss, the abridged version of a man's life, detail is always welcome. — Vladimir Nabokov

The crude commercialism of America, its materialising spirit, its indifference to the poetical side of things, and its lack of imagination and of high unattainable ideals, are entirely due to that country having adopted for its national hero a man who, according to his own confession, was incapable of telling a lie, and it is not too much to say that the story of George Washington and the cherry-tree has done more harm, and in a shorter space of time, than any other moral tale in the whole of literature. — Oscar Wilde

So many tankers come down with maintenance problems all at once. I do not think that the press is telling us the whole story. Then again, maybe they are just a little slow on the uptake. The truth will reveal that Allah has truly blessed us. — Christian F. Burton

I am a technophile, so there is no such thing as a first draft. The first draft plunges on, and about a quarter of the way through it I realise I'm doing things wrong, so I start rewriting it. What you call the first draft becomes rather like a caterpillar; it is progressing fairly slowly, but there is movement up and down its whole length, the whole story is being changed. I call this draft zero, telling myself how the story is supposed to go. — Terry Pratchett

Who doesn't want to be loved? That's the whole point. So, when you can get that from someone across the globe, for just telling a story, that's a special thing. — Charles Halford

I can only answer that I tried to tell the truth and, if not be objective, at least be fair; history is not served when reporters prize trepidation and propriety over the robust journalistic duty to tell the whole story. — Randy Shilts

And as the Baudelaires told Hector their long story, they began to feel as if the handyman was carrying more than their suitcases. They felt as if he was carrying each word they said, as if each unfortunate event was a burden that Hector was helping them with. The story of their lives was so miserable that I cannot say they felt happy when they were through telling it, but by the time Sunny concluded the whole long story, the Baudelaires felt as if they were carrying much less. — Lemony Snicket

Anyone who tells you they're not nervous playing on the CMAs stage, I'm afraid they're not telling you the whole story. — Hunter Hayes

I'm a liar, but an honest one. People reproach me for not always telling the same story in the same way. But this happens because I've invented the whole tale from the start and it seems boring to me and unkind to other people to repeat myself. — Federico Fellini

The story of undocumented immigrants in this country is not just about undocumented immigrants. It's about the country as a whole, and it's about us being able to tell the truth about where we are with this issue because we haven't been telling the truth about where we are with this issue. — Jose Antonio Vargas

The worst of such stories is that the triumphant romancers can always be put to confusion and crushed by the very details in which real life is so rich and which these unhappy and involuntary story-tellers neglect as insignificant trifles. Oh, they have no thought to spare for such details, their minds are concentrated on their grand invention as a whole, and fancy any one daring to pull them up for a trifle! But that's how they are caught. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

September looked down at her black silks. Everyone saw her as a Criminal. They did it because of how she looked. But that was the whole purpose of clothes, she supposed. Clothes are a story you choose to tell about yourself, a different one every day. Even folk who wore plain overalls every day and didn't comb their hair and knew more about cattle breeds than fashion were telling a story: I am a person who doesn't know or care about fashion because those aren't things worth knowing or caring about. — Catherynne M Valente

I know the responsibility that entails from telling a story. The one thing I despise the most is when I go to a movie and I see a whole bunch of lazy actors making me waste my time and money. — Zoe Saldana

The characters are telling you the story. I'm not telling you the story, they're going to do it. If I do it right, you will get the whole story. — George V. Higgins

I really don't want to produce artwork that does not have meaning beyond simple decorative values. I want to use public space to create a public voice, and a public consciousness about the presence of people who are, in fact, the majority of the population but who are not represented in any visual way. By telling their stories we are giving voice to the voiceless and visualizing the whole of the American story. — Judy Baca

Children, only animals live entirely in the Here and Now. Only nature knows neither memory nor history. But man - let me offer you a definition - is the storytelling animal. Wherever he goes he wants to leave behind not a chaotic wake, not an empty space, but the comforting marker-buoys and trail-signs of stories. He has to go on telling stories. He has to keep on making them up. As long as there's a story, it's all right. Even in his last moments, it's said, in the split second of a fatal fall - or when he's about to drown - he sees, passing rapidly before him, the story of his whole life. — Graham Swift

The gimmickry is simply a device, a defense, to obscure the black, blinding, murderous rage and sorrow at the core of this whole story, which is both too black and blinding to look at
avert your eyes!
but nevertheless useful, at least to the author, even in caricatured or condensed form, because telling as many people as possible about it helps, he thinks, to dilute the pain and bitterness and thus facilitate its flushing from his soul — Dave Eggers

Scapegrace: Back then, I was full of ideas, I was going to renovate the whole front of the pub,, and extend out to the west, maybe get in a music system a little dancefloor. In the end, I decided not to. Too expensive, you know. And, like, nobody wanted to dance so.
Skulduggery: Vaurien, if you're trying to kill us, there are quicker ways than telling us your life story
Valkryie: Less painful too. — Derek Landy

Far from being aloof or detached from power, the church is all about power - the end of power, meaning the purpose of power, the taming of power, and the unleashing of power for true flourishing. The church proclaims the true story of power. By telling the whole story from Genesis to Revelation, with its astonishing bookends of good, very good and glorious news, the church recognizes and affirms our human ambitions and aspirations, placing them in the context where they truly make sense and can find their rightful place. By telling the full truth about idolatry and injustice, not least by recalling the stories of how our own heroes fell into compromise and foolishness, the church makes clear just how damaging our pride is to ourselves, our neighbors and the whole groaning creation. And by recounting over and over the immense cost of redemption, the church leads us to abashed and grateful humility before the one who gave up everything for us. — Andy Crouch