Stories Quotes - Page 11

• The business of the church is to tell and embody a story

  Lesslie Newbigin

  Church

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• Pearl Harbor is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on December 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. Its centerpiece is 40 minutes of redundant special effects, surrounded by a love story of stunning banality. The film has been directed without grace, vision, or originality, and although you may walk out quoting lines of dialog, it will not be because you admire them.

  Roger Ebert

  Two, Grace, Vision

  "Pearl Harbor" by Roger Ebert, www.rogerebert.com. May 25, 2001.

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• When I found out that Santa Claus wasn't real, I wasn't upset; rather, I was relieved that there was a much simpler phenomenon to explain how so many children all over the world got presents on the same night! The story had been getting pretty complicated -- it was getting out of hand.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Children, Real, Night

  Richard P. Feynman (2011). “"What Do You Care What Other People Think?": Further Adventures of a Curious Character”, p.26, W. W. Norton & Company

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• When you close the book, does the story end? No! That's such a bland way to read. Every story goes on forever in our imaginations, and its characters live on.

  Mizuki Nomura

  Book, Character, Imagination

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• Fiction is about feeling, which is to say that short stories are about all of us.

  Tom Bailey

  Feelings, Fiction, Short Story

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• In A Midnight Carol Patricia Davis illuminates the dark and brilliant humanity of Charles Dickens -- the man who lived a rags-to-riches life more remarkable than any of his stories.

  Richard Lederer

  Dark, Men, Humanity

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• Millions upon millions of people came here full of hope and aspiration to this extraordinary land of liberty and opportunity, and helped build the United States. So the Atlantic Ocean was absolutely critical to the story of America.

  Simon Winchester

  Ocean, Opportunity, Land

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• We were growing up in West Virginia. Everybody was poor there in the southern part of the state. It was like growing up in the Great Depression from the stories I hear people tell. Everybody was poor and so we didnt know that we were any different from anybody else.

  James Green

  Growing Up, Virginia, People

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• As we've said, it's not a coincidence that Fear Itself, Schism, and other big stories end at the same time. This is the first brick in the next road.

  Tom Brevoort

  Next, Firsts, Bricks

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• A choreographer deals with the movement that you create, and with a creative director it's about the story, the stage, the lighting, the costuming, executing someone's idea, choosing how far to go or how little to go, and blending it so that you feel it, you're emotionally effected.

  Laurieann Gibson

  Ideas, Creative, Directors

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• Everyone cares for disabled people, right? What they don't care for are genuine civil rights for disabled people. MARY JOHNSON tells the tortuous, enraging story of how Congress enacted a law that instead of protecting against discrimination has turned 'the disabled' into a political punching bag.

  William Greider

  Rights, Law, People

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• Had there been no Renaissance and no Italian influence to bring in the stories of other lands English history would, it may be, have become as important to the English imagination as the Greek Myths to the Greek imagination; and many plays by many poets would have woven it into a single story whose contours, vast as those of Greek myth, would have made living men and women seem like swallows building their nests under the architrave of some Temple of the Giants.

  William Butler Yeats

  Italian, Men, Land

  William Butler Yeats, Richard J. Finneran, George Bornstein (2007). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IV: Early Essays”, p.82, Simon and Schuster

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• Love--what a volume in a word, an ocean in a tear, A seventh heaven in a glance, a whirlwind in a sigh, The lightning in a touch, a millennium in a moment, What concentrated joy or woe in blest or blighted love! For it is that native poetry springing up indigenous to Mind, The heart's own-country music thrilling all its chords, The story without an end that angels throng to hear, The word, the king of words, carved on Jehovah's heart!

  Martin Farquhar Tupper

  Love, Country, Kings

  Martin Farquhar Tupper (1849). “Proverbial philosophy: a book of thoughts and arguments, originally treated”, p.115, Philadelphia, E. H. Butler & co.

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• My God may not be your idea of God, but one thing I know of my God he makes me a humanitarian. I am a proud Jew because we gave the world the Bible and the story of Joseph.

  Albert Einstein

  Ideas, World, May

  William Hermanns, Albert Einstein (1983). “Einstein and the Poet: In Search of the Cosmic Man”, Branden Publishing Company

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• When we seek a textbook case for the proper operation of science, the correction of certain error offers far more promise than the establishment of probable truth. Confirmed hunches, of course, are more upbeat than discredited hypotheses. Since the worst traditions of "popular" writing falsely equate instruction with sweetness and light, our promotional literature abounds with insipid tales in the heroic mode, although tough stories of disappointment and loss give deeper insight into a methodology that the celebrated philosopher Karl Popper once labeled as "conjecture and refutation.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Disappointment, Writing, Loss

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History”, p.437, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Synonyms know each other like old colleagues, like a set of friends who've seen the world together. They swap stories, reminisce about their origins and forget that though they are similar, they are entirely different, and though they share a certain set of attributes, one can never be the other. Because a quiet night is not the same as a silent one, a firm man is not the same as a steady one, and a bright light is not the same as a brilliant one because the way they wedge themselves into a sentence changes everything.

  Tahereh Mafi

  Night, Men, Light

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• Not very long ago some one invented the assertion that there were only "Four Hundred" people in New York City who were really worth noticing. But a wiser man has arisen - the census taker - and his larger estimate of human interest has been preferred in marking out the field of these little stories of the "Four Million.

  O. Henry

  New York, Men, Long Ago

  O. Henry (2015). “The Complete Poetry of O. Henry (Including a Biography of the Author): From the American writer, a master of short stories, known for The Gift of the Magi, Cabbages and Kings, The Cop and the Anthem, Options, Roads of Destiny, The Four Million…”, p.146, e-artnow

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• Writing a story requires you to understand how the world works, how characters think, how their emotions drive them to do surprising things, and so on. In other words, as a writer, you have to be more than a stylist. You need to learn to become a master of storytelling.

  David Farland

  Writing, Character, Thinking

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• Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature.

  O. Henry

  Art, Writing, Drawing

  O. Henry (2015). “O. Henry's stories: Short Stories and Classic Literature”, p.429, 谷月社

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• In creating the strange milieu in which your story takes place, you must first understand as well as you possibly can the familiar milieu in which your own life is taking place. Until you have examined and comprehended the world around you, you can't possibly create a complex and believable imaginary world.

  Orson Scott Card

  Creating, World, Firsts

  Orson Scott Card (2001). “How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy”, p.61, Writer's Digest Books

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• You grow a whole lot more as a writer by getting old stories out of the house and letting new ones come in and live with you until they grow up and are ready to go. Don't let the old ones stay there and grow fat and cranky and eat all the food out of the refrigerator. You have dozens of generations of stories inside you, but the only way to make room for the new ones is to write the old ones and mail them off.

  Orson Scott Card

  Growing Up, Writing, House

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• If it isn't a wonderful story first, who cares how "important" it is?

  Orson Scott Card

  Important, Who Cares, Firsts

  "Future on Fire". Book by Orson Scott Card, 1991.

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• We live in the world of images, but we also live in the world of the Internet, of zapping and where people move. You can make little videos on your phone. I love very composed images, but the idea of moving pictures with a story, with a plot is quite interesting, too.

  Karl Lagerfeld

  Moving, Ideas, Phones

  "Media People: Q&A With Karl Lagerfeld". Interview with Miles Socha, wwd.com. September 12, 2014.

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• If rock-and-roll is well done, there's nothing so terribly wrong with that kind of music. But the lyrics are another story.

  Kate Smith

  Rocks, Rock And Roll, Done

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• Fiction is Truth's elder sister. Obviously. No one in the world knew what truth was till some one had told a story.

  Rudyard Kipling

  Fiction, World, Elders

  Rudyard Kipling (2015). “The Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated): 5 Novels & 440+ Short Stories, Complete Poetry, Historical Military Works and Autobiographical Writings (Kim, The Jungle Book, The Man Who Would Be King, Land and Sea Tales, Captain Courageous…)”, p.7302, e-artnow

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