A Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with A. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“A story matrix connects all of us.
There are rules, processes, and circles of responsibility in this world. And the story begins exactly where it is supposed to begin. We cannot skip any part.”
“A story meant to motivate all and sundry irrespective of their circumstances”
Source: She: Ekla Cholo Re
“A story might sell if there's a headline like 'Marilyn Manson admits to being Satanic', all the little hypocrites will go and buy the magazine, read about what evil, weird people we are and will feel better about themselves.”
“A story must be told in such a way that it constitutes help in itself. My grandfather was lame. Once they asked him to tell a story about his teacher. And he related how the holy Baal Shem used to hop and dance while he prayed. My grandfather rose as he spoke, and he was so swept away by his story that he himself began to hop and dance to show how the master had done. From that hour he was cured of his lameness. That's how to tell a story.”
“A story must be told or there'll be no story, yet it is the untold stories that are most moving.”
Source: The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
“A story must simmer in its own juice for months or even years before it's ready to serve.”
Source: A Peculiar Treasure
“A story needs rhythm. Read it aloud to yourself. If it doesn't spin a bit of magic, it's missing something.”
“A story never looks as good as when the other fellow buys it.”
“A STORY NEVER TOLD BEFORE”
Source: Failure Race : A story never told before
“A story of remarkable simplicity and charm. A young swimmer invites us into sea off the coast of California where through her eyes we see an entire realm of creatures we have never known so intimately before. Truly for people of all ages, Lynne Cox's adventure with the baby whale, Grayson, becomes a parable and an experience, thanks not only to the author's great and generous spirit, but through her immense gift for describing nature.”
“A story once went the rounds of Israel to the effect that Ben-Gurion described me as 'the only man' in his cabinet. What amused me about is that he (or whoever invented the story) thought that this was the greatest compliment that could be paid to a woman. I very much doubt that any man would have been flattered if I had said about him that he was the only woman in the government!”
“A story only matters, I suspect, to the extent that the people in the story change.”
Source: The Ocean at the End of the Lane
“A story really isn't truly a story until it reaches its climax and conclusion.”
“A story rises from the springs of creation, from the pure will to be; it tells itself; I takes its own course, finds its own way, its own words; and the writer's job is to be its medium.”
Source: Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places
“A story should be like a river, flowing and never stopping, your readers passengers on a boat, whirling downstream through constantly refreshing and changing scemery.”
“A story should be managed so that it should suggest interesting things to the reader instead of the author's doing all the thinking for him, and setting it before him in black and white.”
Source: The Country of the Pointed Firs: And Selected Short Fiction
“A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.”
“A story should, to please, at least seem true,
Be apropos, well told, concise, and new:
And whenso'er it deviates from these rules,
The wise will sleep, and leave applause to fools.”
“A story so cherished it has to be dressed in casualness to disguise its significance in case the listener turned out to be unsympathetic.”
Source: The Thirteenth Tale
“A story tells us what happened, but a plot tells us why”
“A story that is more interesting than any novel written by Nicolas Spark; a relationship that has more emotions than any movie made by Karan Johar; and a drama that is more exciting than any TV show...this what we have in our 15 years of marriage and 19 years of togetherness (?)...”
“A story that lingers like a voice in the next room, half-heard and impossible to forget.”
Source: The Uninvited: A Haunting and Supernatural Literary Mystery Inspired by True Events
“A story that must be told never forgives silence.”
Source: Never Look an American in the Eye: A Memoir of Flying Turtles, Colonial Ghosts, and the Making of a Nigerian American
“A story that needs to have words said about it, is a story that does not contain all its own right words.
-- Introduction to Varley's "Persistence Of Vision" collection”
“A story. This was the key to immortality. The things that made kings quiver and deities distrustful: Nothing but a tale.”
Source: A Crown of Wishes
“A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise... Because this is how life is full of surprises.”
“A story to me must have some surprise...I must have a passion to write the story.”
“A STORY TO SING IS WHEN THE WORDS START TO FLY.”
Source: Words to Think. Or to Sing.
“A story told in pieces Skies broken
Biomes created under such pains
The body building unique tumors The turmoil just constantly eats The pain sighs and comes back beats Under this spell, under this pieces I want to live, I want to be bones The cancer, the breast cancer survivor I survived, in the loss of my left I suffered but i survived I lost the right I fought never failed but under such anguish I survived..”
“A story told me by Michael Barrie: Jesus and the Blessed Virgin go out to play golf. The Blessed Virgin is at the top of her form, drives and lands on the green. Jesus slices and lands in the bushes. A squirrel picks up the ball and runs off with it. A dog grab the squirrel, which still holds the ball in its mouth. An eagle swoops down, picks up the dog, squirrel and ball, and soars into the air. Out of a clear sky, lightning strikes the eagle, which drops the dog which drops the squirrel which drops the ball, right into the hole. The Blessed Virgin throws down her driver and exclaims indignantly, ‘Look, are you going to play golf or just fuck around?”
Source: The Sixties: Diaries 1960–1969
“A story told today can be treasured by a heart that starts beating a hundred years from now.”
“A story untold could be the one that kills you.”
“A story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it.”
Source: Atonement
“A story was once so great
For this heart he took no name
Poisoned by hate and shade
Trapped in a melancholy stage
Only her can break this cage
A spell has only her name
Gone with a selfish phase
A love only fewer can taste”
“A story was worth more than a life. Lives ended. Stories never died.”
Source: Girl of Dust and Smoke
“A story went the rounds about a San Franciscan white matron who refused to sit beside a Negro civilian on the streetcar, even after he made room for her on the seat. Her explanation was that she would not sit beside a draft dodger who was a Negro as well. She added that the least he could do was fight for his country the way her son was fighting on Iwo Jima. The story said that the man pulled his body away from the window to show an armless sleeve. He said quietly and with great dignity, "Then ask your son to look around for my arm, which I left over there.”
Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
“A story where myth, fantasy, fairy tale, or science fiction explore and ask questions moves beyond pragmatic dailiness to wonder. Rather than taking the child away from the real world, such stories are preparation for living in the real world with courage and expectancy. A child who has been denied imaginative literature is likely to have far more difficulty in understanding cellular biology or post-Newtonian physics than the child whose imagination has already been stretched by reading fantasy and science fiction.”
Source: Madeleine L'Engle Herself: Reflections on a Writing Life
“a story will tell itself, when it’s ready”
“A story with a moral appended is like the bill of a mosquito. It bores you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your conscience.”
Source: Selected Stories
“A story with a problem is like a person with a problem: interesting.”
Source: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
“A story without context is like a diamond without a mounting. The stone may be beautiful lying loose on a table, but when it is carefully mounted in the right setting it can dazzle you with its brilliance and sparkling beauty.”
Source: Fascinating Stories of Forgotten Lives
“A story works when there's momentum, life behind the words. Some stories have this and others don't, and it's difficult to say why this is. If all stories "worked," though, writing wouldn't be much of a challenge; it wouldn't be art.”
“A story written but never told is lost to time.”
Source: The Last Elder King: The Watcher's Stone
“A story written but never told is lost to time.”
–Dustin Collins, author
From: The Last Elder King”
“A story, after all, does not only belong to the one who is telling it. It belongs, in equal measure, to the one who is listening.”
Source: No One You Know
“A story, in which native humour reigns, Is often useful, always entertains; A graver fact, enlisted on your side, May furnish illustration, well applied; But sedentary weavers of long tales Give me the fidgets, and my patience fails.”
Source: The complete poetical works of William Cowper, with life and critical notice of his writings
“A story, to me, has a particular sprite, like the angel of the spirit of that story - and it's my job to attend to what it wants to do.”
“A story, to me, has a particular sprite, like the angel of the spirit of that story - and it's my job to attend to what it wants to do. When I tell the story of Cinderella, the sprite does not want me to make it into an allegory of the fall of communism. The sprite would be unhappy if I did that.”
“A story-a true story-can heal as much as medicine can.”
Source: Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife
“A story: A man fires a rifle for many years, and he goes to war. And afterward he turns the rifle in at the armory, and he believes he’s finished with the rifle. But no matter what else he might do with his hands, love a woman, build a house, change his son’s diaper; his hands remember the rifle.”
Source: Jarhead: A Solder's Story of Modern War