Storyteller Quotes

“Your heart is like a great river after a long spell of rain, spilling over its banks. All signposts that once stood on the ground are gone, inundated and carried away by that rush of water. And still the rain beats down on the surface of the river. Every time you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: That’s it. That’s my heart.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“A storyteller makes up things to help other people; a liar makes up things to help himself.”
― Daniel Wallace, The Kings and Queens of Roam

“When we want mood experiences, we go to concerts or museums. When we want meaningful emotional experience, we go to the storyteller.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Writing is something you do alone. It’s a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don’t want to make eye contact while doing it.”
John Green”
― John Green

“For surely a king is first a man. And so it must follow that a king does as all men do: the best he can.”
― Cameron Dokey, The Storyteller's Daughter

“All stories have a curious and even dangerous power. They are manifestations of truth -- yours and mine. And truth is all at once the most wonderful yet terrifying thing in the world, which makes it nearly impossible to handle. It is such a great responsibility that it's best not to tell a story at all unless you know you can do it right. You must be very careful, or without knowing it you can change the world.”
― Vera Nazarian, Dreams Of The Compass Rose

“Obscurity is never a virtue.”
― Roald Dahl

“Time changes nothing, girl, but the size of your underwear. . .and hopefully your hairdo.”
― Minton Sparks

“If a storyteller worried about the facts - my dear Lucian, how could he ever get at the truth?”
― Lloyd Alexander, The Arkadians

“That's what we storytellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instill hope again and again and again.”
― Kelly Marcel & Sue Smith

“Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.”
― Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

“The difference between real life and a story is that life has significance, while a story must have meaning.

The former is not always apparent, while the latter always has to be, before the end.”
― Vera Nazarian

“Perhaps it's chasing me. But I don't think it will ever catch me because I am moving fast.”
― Roald Dahl

“I'll tell you a secret.

Old storytellers never die.

They disappear into their own story.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“If the storytellers told it true, all stories would end in death.”
― George Pelecanos

“When people told themselves their past with stories, explained their present with stories, foretold the future with stories, the best place by the fire was kept for the storyteller.”
― Jim Henson Productions

“The skeleton key unlocks the mind and swings open the door of imagination. A far better place than here A much safer place than there The quintessential somewhere The mystical nowhere The enigmatic anywhere My gift to you - the key to everywhere.
The mortal will find itself lost while the soul always knows the way it is grateful for the darkness and celebrates the day

I can give you peace my peace I give you... but I cannot be your savior or your god - I cannot be the light along your path - I can only give you the lamp and point the way.

The blind will see... the deaf will hear... but those who choose reason will never understand.

Woe to the ones who think they know the answers they will cease to ask the questions that may be their own salvation.

We possess the knowledge of the Universe from conception. Once born we are taught to forget.

If we cannot look out at our world and see our children's vision then we are truly blind we are unable to lead them to paradise.

"Even people who are in the dark search for their shadows. Shadows exist only if there is light. We will never find total darkness - not even in death... ...and we always cast a shadow no matter how overcast our skies become. You are never alone."

Do not listen to the voice that shouts to you from behind desks behind podiums behind altars. Do not pay attention to the orators and the opportunists. Do not be distracted by the promises made behind masks. Listen to the quiet. Listen to the whispers as they gently guide you through the assaults of man's absurdities. Listen to the gentle breathing of your mother and lay your head to rest in her peace and in her warm embrace and understand that truth and power lie within you. Breathe silence.

The free bird will always return to the cage sooner or later to seek food and water and the loving hand of it's caretaker.”
― M. Teresa Clayton

“The Gingerbread House has four walls, a roof, a door, a window, and a chimney. It is decorated with many sweet culinary delights on the outside.

But on the inside there is nothing—only the bare gingerbread walls.

It is not a real house—not until you decide to add a Gingerbread Room.

That’s when the stories can move in.

They will stay in residence for as long as you abstain from taking the first gingerbread bite.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“I tell the story to you now, but in each telling the story itself changes a little, changes direction, and that in turn changes you and me. So be very careful not only in how you repeat it but in how you remember it, goslings. More often than you realize it, the world is shaped by two things -- stories told and the memories they leave behind.”
― Vera Nazarian, Dreams Of The Compass Rose

“Follow your gut, Storyteller, it will lead to your happy ending.”
― Isabel Greenberg, The Encyclopedia of Early Earth

“If I were a zombie
I'd never eat your brain
I'd just want your heart”
― Stephanie Mabey

“I doubt I was much of a storyteller, but I would have put that smile in my book. On page 104, right next to the image of the Ward. I would have written it on my heart. I would have proofread it a thousand times under a thousand moons until a thousand tears thoroughly rationalized what it meant to me. Each time for when I’d met the darkness, and then succumbed. The smile read “you can’t break me’”—bold and in italics.”
― Nadège Richards, Asylum 54.0

“Only a writer would slap a bumper sticker on her car that read, 'Seriously, I'd rather be working'.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich

“Different ways to tell a story. Some tellers make a noise to announce the coming of the story for get someone else to call everyone's attention. Some wait for people to gather around, for the quiet to settle. Others just begin. They don't wait for everyone to lean in - that'll happen soon enough. They don't speak loudly or even want everyone to hear. Those that hear are the ones the story was meant for.”
― Michelle Porter, A Grandmother Begins the Story

“None of that however, is the ever transforming tangible form to which I’d referred.

It was rather a yet-cited, five-inch thick, loosely bundled heap of paper which not fully three hours past our beginning, the former 15-year-old would then briefly waggle in his left hand as he stood near center of the very escape route alluded to in the same chapter.

Within its pages were row-upon-row of dark impressions; marked one-by-one by an array of blows arising from a basket of clustered steel typebars cast with embossed slugs upon their tips ‒ striking in sequential forward arcs, as if inhabited by a crew of nether-situated Lilliputians sitting side-by-side; wielding slender embossed hammers, forged character-by-character to smash against pigment-impregnated woven black ribbons; poised in turn overtop a seemingly endless succession of lily-white storyteller's leaves; each a direct byproduct of majestically beautiful, seasonally fragrant, faintly audible, partly edible, often climbable, utterly tangible trees ‒ its outer layer of fifteen pages having chronicled the antecedent evoked by this very beginning more than 400 billion harvested timber ago.

So then to be more succinct, Nate’s story began again with yet another scurrying rat…”
― Monte Souder (Rat Luck)

“None of that however, is the form to which I’d referred. [ever transforming tangible form]

It was rather a yet-cited, five-inch thick, loosely bundled heap of paper which not fully three hours past our beginning, the former 15-year-old would then briefly waggle in his left hand as he stood near center of the very escape route alluded to in the same chapter.

Within its pages were row-upon-row of dark impressions; marked one-by-one by an array of blows arising from a basket of clustered steel typebars cast with embossed slugs upon their tips ‒ striking in sequential forward arcs, as if inhabited by a crew of nether-situated Lilliputians sitting side-by-side; wielding slender embossed hammers, forged character-by-character to smash against pigment-impregnated woven black ribbons; poised in turn overtop a seemingly endless succession of lily-white storyteller's leaves; each a direct byproduct of majestically beautiful, seasonally fragrant, faintly audible, partly edible, often climbable; utterly tangible trees ‒ its outer layer of fifteen pages having chronicled the antecedent evoked by this very beginning more than 400 billion harvested timber ago.

So then to be more succinct, Nate’s story began again with yet another scurrying rat…”
― Monte Souder (Rat Luck)

“None of that however, is the form to which I’d referred.

It was rather a yet-cited, five-inch thick, loosely bundled heap of paper which not fully three hours past our beginning, the former 15-year-old would then briefly waggle in his left hand as he stood near center of the very escape route alluded to in the same chapter.

Within its pages were row-upon-row of dark impressions; marked one-by-one by an array of blows arising from a basket of clustered steel typebars cast with embossed slugs upon their tips ‒ striking in sequential forward arcs, as if inhabited by a crew of nether-situated Lilliputians sitting side-by-side; wielding slender embossed hammers, forged character-by-character to smash against pigment-impregnated woven black ribbons; poised in turn overtop a seemingly endless succession of lily-white storyteller's leaves; each a direct byproduct of majestically beautiful, seasonally fragrant, faintly audible, partly edible, often climbable; utterly tangible trees �� its outer layer of fifteen pages having chronicled the antecedent evoked by this very beginning more than 400 billion harvested timber ago.

So then to be more succinct, Nate’s story began again with yet another scurrying rat…”
― Monte Souder (Rat Luck)

“Write in exile.
Write naked.
Write in blood. Ink is too expensive.
Write like you will never get home again.”
― Denis Johnson

“Perrault likes this bit of the tale--- the pattern of it. The rhythm. He likes the shapes things make. And he likes beautiful, refined things: frescos, hyacinths, clockmakers, marzipans, butterfly wings, golden tableware, fountains, good shoes, the nightingale's song. He is an aesthetic man.”
― Clare Pollard, The Modern Fairies

“The truth about my life is interesting enough not to make up a single detail. I never have to create an unimaginable story or problems, hardships, successes or victories or scenarios for a storyline. They write themselves. You just never know when I label it fiction or non-fiction.”
― Niedria D. Kenny