Stories Quotes - Page 23

• I see myself as a novelist, period. I mean, the material I work with is what is classified as science fiction and fantasy, and I really don't think about these things when I'm writing. I'm just thinking about telling a story and developing my characters.

  Roger Zelazny

  Writing, Character, Mean

  "A Conversation With Roger Zelazny". Talking with Terry Dowling and Keith Curtis in Science Fiction Vol. 1, #2, June 1978.

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• I love irony in pictures. There's one photograph from Vietnam by Philip Jones Griffiths that shows a very large GI having his pocket picked by a tiny Vietnamese woman. It told the whole story of the clash of two cultures and how the invader could never win.

  John Pilger

  Winning, Two, Pockets

  "This much I know". Interview with Tom Templeton, www.theguardian.com. November 13, 2005.

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• Hanns Heinz Ewers tells a short story of a boy who was so unnatural of disposition as to take a special delight in people sick with elephantiasis. Our "European intellectuality" finds itself in an identical condition today which, through Jewish pens, worships the Kokoschka, Chagalls and Pechsteins as the leaders of the Art of the future. Features of degeneracy are already apparent, as, for instance, with Schwalbach, who dares representing Jesus as flat footed and bow legged.

  Alfred Rosenberg

  Jesus, Art, Boys

  "The Myth of the Twentieth Century". Book by Alfred Rosenberg, 1930.

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• Do you want to tell the truth, or do you want to tell a story?

  Robert Charles Wilson

  Want, Telling The Truth

  "Julian Comstock: A Story of the 22nd Century". Book by Robert Charles Wilson, June 1, 2009.

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• Santa Claus is a god. He's no less a god than Ahura Mazda, or Odin, or Zeus. Think of the white beard, the chariot pulled through the air by a breed of animal which doesn't ordinarily fly, the prayers (requests for gifts) which are annually mailed to him and which so baffle the Post Office, the specially-garbed priests in all the department stories. And don't gods reflect their creators' society? The Greeks had a huntress goddess, and gods of agriculture and war and love. What else would we have but a god of giving, of merchandising, and of consumption?

  Donald E. Westlake

  Prayer, War, Animal

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• I think kids abandon stories all the time. They start stories and get frustrated or get a different, better idea. I think that it is more worthwhile to stick with a story and revise it and try to finish it than abandon ship. Revisions, for any writer, are the name of the game.

  Gail Carson Levine

  Kids, Thinking, Games

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• It wasn't a case of me sitting down and thinking, right then, what shall I do with my life? Airline pilot? Plumber? Guitar manufacturer? Writer .... yeah, writer. I've always loved writing, from a very early age--I guess I was writing my first stories when I was still in single digits. It progressed, and the love of writing grew in my mind and is still growing. Doing it full-time, there are different stresses and tensions, and the business side of it comes to the fore sometimes. But I still love it, and I'm always thankful that I can do what I do and make a living from it.

  Tim Lebbon

  Stress, Writing, Thinking

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• When you're telling a story, you've got to give details.

  Gao Xingjian

  Giving, Details

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• I believe stories are very important to all performances. The life story of the performer shapes their work, and the life stories of the audience alter how they receive the work, what they read into the performer.

  Marina Abramovic

  Believe, Important, Shapes

  "An Interview with Marina Abramović: Art, Science and the Marina Abramović Institute". Interview with Stephanie Spiro, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 23, 2013.

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• Once I'd worked out that I couldn't possibly expect people to enjoy a monstrous, 3000-page book, I realised I could in fact create a labyrinth of a story with four different points of entry. But what interested me was creating something that would rearrange itself every time you read one of the other books. So depending on which order you read them, the implications and angles would change. To get that right, each one of the books had to have its own personality and texture -- even though they are connected, they are very different creatures.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Book, Order, Creating

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• As readers, we want not only a strong story, but also characters we can relate to, characters that feel real. We have to find something of ourselves in them. Each character, even those only there to serve the mechanics of the plot, should have a number of layers. The entire world you are stepping into as a reader must feel real. It must have resonance, you must be able to touch the light; smell the smells.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Strong, Real, Character

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• I understand some of the people's impatience with the show last year. I think that Lisa's (Lili Taylor) story line (marrying Nate with minimal motivation in season three) became a little bit of a diversion - and that happens. It happens in every show.

  Chris Albrecht

  Motivation, Thinking, Years

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• Everyone is here on earth as an artist; to tell his particular story or sing her irreplaceable song; to leave a unique creative signature.

  Leonard Wolf

  Song, Artist, Unique

  Naomi Wolf, Leonard Wolf (2006). “The Treehouse: Eccentric Wisdom from My Father on How to Live, Love, and See”, Simon and Schuster

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• I can't tell a story in the white man's language, so I say what I want to say with my paintings.

  Allen Sapp

  Men, White Man, Want

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• My favorite form is the short story. From an aesthetics stand point you really have to pare down to the bone. You can't write a throw-away scene.

  Roger Zelazny

  Writing, Bones, My Favorite

  "Phlogiston Forty Four: An Interview with Roger Zelazny". Interview by Alex Heatley, Phlogiston Forty Four, 1995.

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• We all recall the cruel stepmother in fairy tales. That archetype is often a necessary element in a fairy tale so that the heroine/hero can become a person of character and power. Stories of heroes and heroines often begin with a wound or loss or injustice and end with heroic acts of restoration.

  David Richo

  Hero, Character, Loss

  David Richo (2007). “The Power of Coincidence: How Life Shows Us What We Need to Know”, p.17, Shambhala Publications

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• I'm more interested in plot than theme, but I hope my values find their way into my stories: kindness, sympathy, effort, and humor!

  Gail Carson Levine

  Kindness, Effort, Plot

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• Writing is a weird thing because we can read, we know how to write a sentence. It's not like a trumpet where you have to get some skill before you can even produce a sound. It's misleading because it's hard to make stories. It seems like it should be easy to do but it's not. The more you write, the better you're going to get. Write and write and write. Try not to be hard on yourself.

  Gail Carson Levine

  Writing, Skills, Trying

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• I think the gender story will become less fraught with hard edges - and not that we'll have androgyny, but that men and women will move more fluidly into each other's domains.

  Elizabeth Lesser

  Moving, Men, Thinking

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• When you're reading a novel, I think the reason you care about how any given plot turns out is that you take it as a data point in the big story of how the world works. Does such-and-such a kind of guy get the girl in the end? Does adultery ever bring happiness? How do winners become winners?

  Elif Batuman

  Girl, Book, Reading

  "The Rumpus Interview With Elif Batuman". Interview with Sean Carman, therumpus.net. April 25, 2012.

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• I've always loved books. My mother told me that before I could talk, I'd babble in my crib as I turned the pages of my little cloth books, apparently telling stories to go along with the pictures.

  JoAnn Ross

  Mother, Book, Littles

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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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• I never even considered writing a career option. I just liked the play of words. I was certainly interested in story, but the stories I was telling then were in narrative verse and prose poems, short and succinct, except for one novel-length poem written in narrative couplets.

  Charles de Lint

  Writing, Play, Careers

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• I think I realized very early on that you can spend a lot of time constructing a really perfect scene in final draft and just end up throwing it away because you didn't figure out that mathematics of the story first.

  Brit Marling

  Thinking, Perfect, Finals

  "Brit Marling Talks SOUND OF MY VOICE, THE EAST, Working with Robert Redford in THE COMPANY YOU KEEP, and More". Interview with Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub, collider.com. April 27, 2012.

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• That's why we sail. So our children can grow up and be proud of whom they are. We are healing our souls by reconnecting to our ancestors. As we voyage we are creating new stories within the tradition of the old stories, we are literally creating a new culture out of the old.

  Nainoa Thompson

  Travel, Children, Growing Up

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