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A Quotes

Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.

All A Quotes

“A good story is alive, ever changing and growing as it meets each listener or reader in a spirited and unique encounter, while the moralistic tale is not only dead on arrival, it's already been embalmed. It's safer that way. When a lively story goes dancing out to meet the imagination of a child, the teller loses control over meaning. The child gets to decide what the story means.”

“A good story is both one hundred percent true and one hundred percent false. A good story uses small lies to take a stab at piercing larger truths. An overstatement and understatement are part of writer’s craft; each standing alone is an untruth. An understatement might be used as an attempt at humor, just as an overstatement might be used to probe a truth that lies beyond the exact retelling of who, what, when, and where style employed in police report writing. Even writing biography, autobiography, memoir, and personal essays that studiously and relentless adheres to established facts can distort the truth. Faithful adherence to stringing rote facts together omits many aspects of both the subject and the operable social, cultural, and political environment that stages human interaction, contest, conflict, drama, and strife.”

“A good story isn't the one that shuts everyone down and sort of leaves them in silent awe. A good story is one that, even before you finish the anecdote, you can see their eyes shining because it has so resonated with something from their own lives that everyone in the group has a version of the same story and they cannot wait to tell it, and that they're going to compete to make their version even more extreme than your version. So your version is just a seed.”

“A good strategy focuses efforts on a target, and that focus can only be achieved by not diffusing energy in other directions - that is the meaning of Michael Porter's dictum of "choosing what not to do." At the same time, a good strategy chooses the right target to focus on, not wasting the focus of energy on a target that cannot be affected or that is unimportant - that is the meaning of Drucker's distinction between efficiency and effectiveness.”

“A good strategy of life is obvious: When the right path is found, it must be walked no matter how hard it is and the precious target this path destined to must be arrived at by defeating every difficulty encountered!”