Storyteller Quotes - Page 11

• I've never seen a great military, political, or corporate leader who was not a great storyteller. Telling stories is a core competency in business, although it's one that we don't pay enough attention to.

  Bran Ferren

  Military, Leader, Political

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• It is the storytellers task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State approval.

  Graham Greene

  Lying, Understanding, Tasks

  Graham Greene, Marie-Françoise Allain (1991). “Conversations with Graham Greene”

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• The best songs are stories, and the best singers storytellers. Great singers can make you care about what they're feeling. You have a sense of knowing them.

  Steve Ross

  Song, Knowing, Feelings

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• Trust the story ... the storyteller may dissemble and deceive, the story can't: the story can only ever be itself.

  James Robertson

  Stories, May, Deceiving

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• I'm deeply interested in the photograph as a record of an encounter and enjoy putting myself in a timeline of image-makers, alongside other travelers, such as anthropologists, colonists, missionaries, even tourists. I do that to emphasize subjectivity, rather than privilege any single perspective - I see myself as only one of many storytellers.

  Susan Meiselas

  Perspective, Tourists, Encounters

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• A major writer combines these three - storyteller, teacher, enchanter - but it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes him a major writer.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Teacher, Writing, Three

  Vladimir Nabokov (2017). “Lectures on Literature”, p.5, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I am an old-fashioned storyteller. I try to make people laugh and cry. A fiction writer's duty is to entertain. If you can sneak in something profound or symbolic, so much the better.

  W. P. Kinsella

  Sneak In, People, Profound

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• I've always been fascinated by the grassroots folktale level of a culture, and as a storyteller, I have to follow what seems to be leading me on.

  Robin McKinley

  Culture, Levels, Grassroots

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• All humans are storytellers with their own unique point of view. When we understand this, we no longer feel the need to impose our story on others or to defend what we believe. Instead we see all of us as artists with the right to create our own art.

  Miguel Angel Ruiz

  Spiritual, Art, Believe

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• The wider the author's arsenal of tools and the better technically equipped the storyteller is, the better the tale will be.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Writing, Tools, Literature

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• Not all poetry wants to be storytelling. And not all storytelling wants to be poetry. But great storytellers and great poets share something in common: They had something to say, and did.

  Sarah Kay

  Want, Common, Poet

  "How I got the courage to tell my story" by Sarah Kay, www.cnn.com. May 1, 2011.

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• The theory I'm putting forward here is that storytelling is a genetic characteristic in the sense that early human hunters who were able to organize events into stories were more successful than hunters who weren't—and this success translated directly into reproductive success. In other words, hunters who were storytellers tended to be better represented in the gene pool than hunters who weren't, which (incidentally) accounts for the fact that storytelling isn't just found here and there among human cultures, it's found universally.

  Daniel Quinn

  Successful, Events, Here And There

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• Honestly, the essence of publishing hasn't changed. Since the days of the cave man carving stuff on the cave walls, people have wanted stories, and storytellers have wanted an audience. That is still the case. The changes are really a matter of format.

  Susan Wiggs

  Wall, Men, Essence

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• I was a super-duper Tupac fan, and I realized later, when I became a huge Nas fan and a huge Eminem fan, I was drawn to the storytellers. They all told stories in different ways, but they were all like the best storytellers.

  J. Cole

  Fans, Different, Stories

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• Hi. My name is Debby, and I am a storyteller. I don't think of myself as an actress. I am more like a face that takes words on a page, and puts them in front of your eyes.

  Debby Ryan

  Eye, Thinking, Names

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• I've always used the technique of the cuento. I am an oral storyteller, but now I do it on the printed page. I think if we were very wise we would use that same tradition in video cassettes, in movies, and on radio.

  Rudolfo Anaya

  Wise, Thinking, Technique

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• THE STORIES WE TELL fearlessly explores the textures of the human heart, finding a path toward hope through a Savannah that is jagged with class issues, faith misused, and broken trust. Henry loses you in a landscape peopled with secret keepers, storytellers and liars, and proves that in the end, love is the only reliable compass. This is everything you expect from Patti Callahan Henry—lyrical writing, characters worth rooting for, a sure-footed belief in the power of goodness—plus a twisty plot that will keep the pages turning long into the night.

  Joshilyn Jackson

  Liars, Character, Writing

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• Painters were also attorneys, happy storytellers of anecdote, psychologists, botanists, zoologists, archaeologists, engineers, but there were no creative painters.

  Kazimir Malevich

  Creative, Zoologist, Anecdotes

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• I'm not a good storyteller. I always think I'm going to get interrupted, or something's going to get edited. I think that comes from being in a large family, so you have to get your story in really quick or someone cuts you off.

  Amy Sedaris

  Cutting, Thinking, Stories

  "Amy Sedaris Likes To Watch You Cry". Interview with Lucas Kavner, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 2, 2011.

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• I'm a storyteller, not a prophet. I'm just interested in a good story.

  David Eddings

  Stories, Prophet, Good Story

  "Fantasy master David Eddings dies aged 77" by Alison Flood, www.theguardian.com. June 4, 2009.

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• A defeated nation is always explaining itself. That's why the best storytellers are always from vanquished nations.

  Mark Richard

  Defeated, Explaining, Nations

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• I have a theory of my own about what the art of the novel is, and how it came into being....It happens because the storyteller's own experience...has moved him to an emotion so passionate that he can no longer keep it shut up in his heart.

  Murasaki Shikibu

  Art, Writing, Passionate

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• Do remember, though, that unless you're a playwright, the result [dialogue] isn't what you want; it's only an element of what you want. Actors embody and re-create the words of drama. In fiction, a tremendous amount of story and character may be given through the dialogue, but the story-world and its people have to be created by the storyteller. If there's nothing in it but disembodied voices, too much is missing.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Drama, Writing, Character

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• The job of a storyteller is to tell stories, and I have concentrated on that obligation.

  James A. Michener

  Jobs, Writing, Stories

  James A. Michener (2014). “The World Is My Home: A Memoir”, p.17, Dial Press

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• I write at eighty-five for the same reasons that impelled me to write at forty-five; I was born with a passionate desire to communicate, to organize experience, to tell tales that dramatize the adventures which readers might have had. I have been that ancient man who sat by the campfire at night and regaled the hunters with imaginative recitations about their prowess. The job of an apple tree is to bear apples. The job of a storyteller is to tell stories, and I have concentrated on that obligation.

  James A. Michener

  Jobs, Writing, Adventure

  James A. Michener (2014). “The World Is My Home: A Memoir”, p.17, Dial Press

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