Stories Quotes - Page 7

• I've always believed the lies we use to make our fictions reveal the truth with far more honesty than any history or herstory or life story.

  Charles de Lint

  Honesty, Lying, Fiction

  "Memory and Dream". Book by Charles de Lint, 1994.

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• The only real reason for self-referencing is the fun factor. It's fun for the writer, getting little peeks at what old characters might be up to. And it's fun for readers to spot a familiar face, or pick up on a made-up book title or something from an earlier story. I don't know that it does -- or even should -- contribute to the story in hand being any better than it would have been without it.

  Charles de Lint

  Fun, Real, Book

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• Newspaper reporting is really storytelling. We call our articles 'stories,' and we try to tell them in a way that even people who don't know all the background can understand them.

  Serge Schmemann

  People, Trying, Way

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• If you're a fan of American roots music, you won't want to miss 'Awake My Soul--The Story of the Sacred Harp.' Filmmakers Matt and Erica Hinton have done a fine job capturing the history, sound and spirit of this unusual but compelling art form that, trust me, you don't have to be religious to appreciate.

  Eric Zorn

  Religious, Art, Jobs

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• One solace yet remains for us who came Into this world in days when story lacked Severe research, that in our hearts we know How, for exciting youth's heroic flame, Assent is power, belief the soul of fact.

  William Wordsworth

  Heart, Flames, Soul

  William Wordsworth (1994). “The Collected Poems of William Wordsworth”, p.359, Wordsworth Editions

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• Long as there's a sun that sets, Primroses will have their glory; Long as there are violets, They will have a place in story: There's a flower that shall be mine, 'Tis the little Celandine.

  William Wordsworth

  Flower, Long, Littles

  William Wordsworth (1994). “The Collected Poems of William Wordsworth”, p.160, Wordsworth Editions

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• The first paragraph. The last paragraph. That's where the story is going and how it's going to end. Or else you'll go off in a hundred different directions.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Lasts, Firsts, Different

  Hunter S. Thompson, Beef Torrey, Kevin Simonson (2008). “Conversations with Hunter S. Thompson”, p.155, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Most of my stuff is just a series of false leads. I'll approach a story as a subject and then make a whole bunch of different runs at the lead. They're all good writing but they don't connect. So I end up having to string leads together.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Running, Writing, Together

  Hunter S. Thompson (2012). “Ancient Gonzo Wisdom”, p.272, Pan Macmillan

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• As for 'story' I never yet did enjoy a novel or play in which someone didn't tell me afterward that there was something wrong with the story, so that's going to be no drawback as far as I'm concerned. "Good Lord, why am I so bored" "I know; it must be the plot developing harmoniously." So I often reply to myself, and there rises before me my special nightmare that of the writer as craftsman, natty and deft.

  E. M. Forster

  Play, Bored, Special

  Selected Letters (1983-1985): Letter 104, to Forrest Reid, June 19, 1912.

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• The story of the Fall always fascinates me as a play ground, but I cannot find any profound meaning in it, because of my 'liberal' view of human nature: I cannot believe in a state of original innocence, still less in a profound meaning in it, and I am always minimising the conception and the extent of Sin and the sinfulness of sex.

  E. M. Forster

  Sex, Believe, Fall

  Selected Letters (1983-1985): Letter 396, to Eric Fletcher, July 9, 1951.

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• The story does what no theorem can quite do. It may not be "like real life" in the superficial sense: but it sets before us an image of what reality may well be like at some more central region.

  C. S. Lewis

  Real, Doe, May

  C. S. Lewis (2002). “Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories”, p.27, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Of course all children's literature is not fantastic, so all fantastic books need not be children's books. It is still possible, even in an age so ferociously anti-romantic as our own, to write fantastic stories for adults: though you will usually need to have made a name in some more fashionable kind of literature before anyone will publish them.

  C. S. Lewis

  Children, Book, Writing

  C. S. Lewis (2002). “On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature”, p.58, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• There are millions of stories in the world, and several hundred of them good ones.

  Chauncey Depew

  World, Hundred, Millions

  Chauncey Mitchell DePew (2005). “My Memories of Eighty Years”, p.293, Cosimo, Inc.

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• A witty illustration or an apt story will accomplish more than columns of argument.

  Chauncey Depew

  Witty, Illustration, Argument

  Chauncey Mitchell DePew (2005). “My Memories of Eighty Years”, p.318, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The moral of human life is never simple, and the moral of a story which aims only at being true to human life cannot be expected to be any more so.

  James Anthony Froude

  Simple, Moral, Life Is

  James Anthony Froude (1849). “The Nemesis of Faith”, p.3

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• What do my science fiction stories have in common with pornography? Fantasies of an impossibly hospitable world, I'm told.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Fiction Stories, World, Common

  Kurt Vonnegut (1988). “Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut”, p.133, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• I should say that, in addition to my tree-love (it was originally called The Tree), it arose from my own pre-occupation with the Lord of the Rings, the knowledge that it would be finished in great detail or not at all, and the fear (near certainty) that it would be 'not at all'. The war had arisen to darken all horizons. But no such analyses are a complete explanation even of a short story.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  War, Tree, Details

  Letter to Caroline Everett, June 24, 1957.

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• It gives me great pleasure, a good name. I always in writing start with a name. Give me a name and it produces a story, not the other way about normally.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Writing, Names, Giving

  Interview with Dennis Gerrolt. BBC Radio 4 programme "Now Read On", January 1971.

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• Though my short stories are the more readable, my novels do have more to say; and they will, if anyone has the patience for it, repay a rereading.

  R. A. Lafferty

  Rereading, Novel, Short Story

  "The Alien Critic" Journal, August 1973.

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• The best time to write a story is yesterday. The next best time is today.

  R. A. Lafferty

  Writing, Yesterday, Today

  "It's Down the Slippery Cellar Stairs". Book by R. A. Lafferty, 1995.

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• It's quite a thing, if you've never been in or known a small southern town. The people are not particularly sophisticated, naturally. They're not worldly wise in any way. But they tell you a story whenever they see you.

  Harper Lee

  Wise, People, Southern

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• We cherish the conventional story of Dr. King and nonviolence, in fact, precisely because that narrative demands so little of us…This conventional narrative is soothing, moving, and politically acceptable, and has only the disadvantage of bearing no resemblance to what actually happened.

  Timothy B. Tyson

  Kings, Moving, Demand

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• If all stories are fiction, fiction can be true -- not in detail or fact, but in some transformed version of feeling. If there is a memory of paradise, paradise can exist, in some other place or country dimensionally reminiscent of our own. The sad stories live there too, but in that country, we know what they mean and why they happened. We make our way back from them, finding the way through a bountiful wilderness we begin to understand. Years are nothing: Story conquers all distance.

  Jayne Anne Phillips

  Country, Memories, Distance

  FaceBook post by Jayne Anne Phillips from Feb 25, 2012

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• The word 'risk' derives from the early Italian risicare, which means 'to dare'. In this sense, risk is a choice rather than a fate. The actions we dare to take, which depend on how free we are to make choices, are what the story of risk is all about. And that story helps define what it means to be a human being.

  Peter L. Bernstein

  Mean, Fate, Italian

  Peter L. Bernstein (2012). “Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk”, p.18, John Wiley & Sons

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• We don't know how much we are capable of loving until the people we love are being taken away, until a beautiful story is ending.

  Donald Miller

  Beautiful, Taken, People

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