Stories Quotes

• A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Writing, Insightful, Story Writers

  75 Copy quote

• I am, at the end of the day, a guy who loves story.

  Max Landis

  Guy, The End Of The Day, Love Story

  "Screenwriter Max Landis Talks His Daniel Radcliffe-fronted Take on FRANKENSTEIN; Describes It As 'Fun, Sad, Scary, and Moving'" by Adam Chitwood, collider.com. March 1, 2013.

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• Crime and legal stories, broadly speaking, are just where my interest happens to lie.

  William Landay

  Lying, Crime, Interest

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• I confessed recently to an old friend, "I realized I was looking at you, in your visit, through old glasses. Speaking old words. Telling old stories. I realize that in my life I've made so many physical changes and I need to give my spirit time to catch up." Time for my spirit to look at my friend through the new glasses of current life experiences. Old friends are precious. They become even more treasured when they are wrapped in the currentness of life experiences and not relegated to the past in which they once lived.

  Mary Anne Radmacher

  New Relationship, Past, Glasses

  9 Copy quote

• Along with its enchanting and exquisite melodies, West Side Story has attitude and a tremendous amount of frenetic energy. It's emotional, theatrical and technical. It's everything.

  Steve Vai

  Attitude, Emotional, Energy

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Crime stories show us the part of people's lives they try to keep hidden.

  Bill James

  People, Trying, Crime

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• As far as I'm concerned, an audience is an audience. Whether it's an audience in Hull or the National Theatre, that's who you play to. It's not money - it's good to get some, but that's not why I do it. You do it because you have to, to tell a story.

  Sylvester McCoy

  Play, Theatre, Hull

  4 Copy quote

• That's the irony in the work: the best stories are the worst things that happen. My best times were somebody else's worst.

  Michael Connelly

  Irony, Worst, Happens

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• When I really have to push and grope and scratch and claw to make a story work, that's a telltale sign that maybe something conceptually isn't right.

  David E. Kelley

  Scratches, Claws

  6 Copy quote

• When I was a little kid, before I learned how to write, I would tell stories.

  Amanda Hocking

  Writing, Kids, Littles

  "Meet Mega Bestselling Indie Heroine Amanda Hocking". Interview with Tonya Plank, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 5, 2011.

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• In the old days, I just could not leave characters alone. Now I just try to keep the ones that still have something in the way of stories to tell.

  Gilberto Hernandez Guerrero

  Character, Trying, Way

  "Los Bros Hernandez". Interview with Noel Murray, www.avclub.com. January 19, 2005.

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• Some novels present a story form many points of view. Most movies tell only one person's side of the story. Sometime it's easy to use the strongest point of view, or find the character with the most dramatic experience. It depends on which themes the scriptwriter wants to explore.

  Seth Grahame-Smith

  Character, Views, Use

  4 Copy quote

• They all laughed. I drew their pictures and they asked for copies and I handed them out as if they were my tickets to the show. In the Navy Yard, I could drink with men because I worked with men; in the Parkview, I could drink with men because I drew their pictures. The world was a grand confusion. Finally, when I was bleary, when my hand wouldn't do what I wanted it to do, I went home. I would lie alone in the dark, feeling that I was a character in a story that had lost its plot.

  Pete Hamill

  Lying, Character, Home

  Pete Hamill (1994). “A Drinking Life: A Memoir”, Wheeler Pub Incorporated

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• My best stories come out of nowhere, with no concern for form at all.

  Barry Hannah

  Form, Concern

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• For people who are displaced, you can reconstruct the story of your life from the objects you have access to, but if you don't have the objects then there are holes in your life. This is why people in Bosnia - if anyone was running back into a burning house it was to salvage photos.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Running, People, House

  "Aleksandar Hemon: A personal history of Sarajevo". Interview with John Freeman, www.theguardian.com. February 23, 2013.

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• Beware of the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.

  Ben Okri

  Inspiring, Night, Water

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• The way to tell a really big story, I think, is to tell a really small story.

  Bruce Feiler

  Thinking, Way, Bigs

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• Don't forget - no one else sees the world the way you do, so no one else can tell the stories that you have to tell.

  Charles de Lint

  Healing, Beautiful Life, Teens

  38 Copy quote

• There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

  Maya Angelou

  Inspirational, Moving On, Powerful

  FaceBook post by Maya Angelou from Feb 14, 2013

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• The purpose of a story is to be an axe that breaks up the ice within us.

  Franz Kafka

  Ice, Purpose, Break

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• The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Peace, Science, Technology

  Muriel Rukeyser (1994). “Out of Silence: Selected Poems”, p.135, Northwestern University Press

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• It goes without saying that all of the people, living, dead, and otherwise, in this story are fictional or used in a fictional context. Only the gods are real.

  Neil Gaiman

  Real, People, Used

  Neil Gaiman (2011). “American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition: A Novel”, p.14, Harper Collins

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• The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in.

  Harold Clarke Goddard

  Believe, Destiny, Battle

  "The Meaning of Shakespeare". Book by Harold Clarke Goddard, 1951.

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• Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.

  Robert McKee

  Meaningful, Powerful, Creative

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• The story is always better than your ability to write it.

  Robin McKinley

  Writing, Rejection, Ability

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