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Storytelling Quotes

Browse 1553 quotes about Storytelling.

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Storytelling Quotes

“Death of the Father would deprive literature of many of its pleasures. If there is no longer a Father, why tell stories? Doesn't every narrative lead back to Oedipus? Isn't storytelling always a way of searching for one's origin, speaking one's conflicts with the Law, entering into the dialectic of tenderness and hatred?”

IfsWayStoriesLawFatherLiteraturePleasureConflictHatredStorytellingNarrativeTendernessEnteringDialecticsOedipus
Book:How to Live Together: Novelistic Simulations of Some Everyday Spaces
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“Songwriters I've always been drawn to are people who deal with something of depth in the lyric writing. ...I've always been influenced by the folk song, the storytelling tradition in folk music. And so for years I wrote mostly story songs. I still do that, but as I've gone on, it's gotten a little more personal. I used to write mostly in the third person. I write a little more in the first person now.”

PeopleWritingYearsFirstsLittlesPersonsStillsStoriesUsedSongDealsGoneTraditionThirdsDepthFolksStorytellingSongwritingSongwritersFirst PersonFolk MusicThird PersonFolk Songs
Author:Bruce Hornsby
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“Orson Welles was a force of nature, who just came in and wiped the slate clean. And Citizen Kane is the greatest risk-taking of all time in film. I don’t think anything had even seen anything quite like it. The photography was also unlike anything we’d seen. The odd coldness of the filmmaker towards the character reflects his own egomania and power, and yet a powerful empathy for all of them--it’s very interesting. It still holds up, and it’s still shocking. It takes storytelling and throws it up in the air.”

ThinkingStillsCharacterFilmForceInterestingPowerfulRiskAirCitizensPhotographyEmpathyCleanStorytellingAll TimeOddFilmmakerShockingVery InterestingRisk-takingSlateForces Of NatureColdnessUp In The AirCitizen KaneEgomania
Author:Martin Scorsese
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“I see manuscripts and books that are spoiled for the literary reader because they are one long stream of top-of-the-head writing, a writer telling a story without concern for precision or freshness in the use of language. Some of this storytelling reads as if it were spoken rather than written, stuffed with tired images that pop into the writer's head because they are so familiar. The top of the head is fit for growing hair, but not for generating fine prose.”

IfsWritingLongBookStoriesUseLanguageGrowingWrittenHairFineReaderFitConcernTiredPopsFamiliarStorytellingStreamsProseSpoiledPrecisionManuscriptsFreshnessUse Of Language
Author:Sol Stein
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“Fantasy is, at its best, the purest access to storytelling that we have. It universalizes a tale, it evokes wonder and timeless narrative power, it touches upon inner journeys, it illuminates our collective and individual pasts, throws a focus beam on the present day, and presages the dangers and promises of the future.”

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Author:Guy Gavriel Kay
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“Legal ethics is a misnomer ... lawyers conducting themselves legally are not necessarily conducting themselves morally ."...and ..."The zero sum nature of the legal system, combined with the universal adoption of zealotry as the marching orders of practioners and prosecutors, transforms the moral mission of the legal system from one of truth-seeking, storytelling, and justice, to one of fabrication, distortion, and manipulation in pursuit of victory. These victories, however, make us all losers.”

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Author:Thane Rosenbaum
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“It is a skill we learn early, the art of inventing stories to explain away the fearful scared strangeness of the world. Storytelling and make-believe, like war and agriculture, are among the arts of self-defense, and all of them are ways of enclosing otherness and claiming ownership.”

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Book:Owning It All: Essays
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“The incomparable James Walvin has done it again: he has crafted a beautifully written and deeply informed single volume history of the Atlantic slave trade and its consequences on three continents. This book is full of fresh ideas and astounding detail; it is at once great storytelling, punctuated with real people and voices, and an unblinking analysis of numerous great questions and paradoxes about the power of slavery in creating the Atlantic world over four centuries.”

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Author:David W. Blight
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“All of the elements of the comic way tend to spread to others, insinuating joy where it was previously absent. Conversation has a way of leaping among persons, as it does at parties and celebratory gatherings. Storytelling always begets storytelling. It is difficult to watch others at play without wanting to join them. This is not only a human phenomenon, for researchers have consistently noted that animals at play are often imitated by other animals. So wherever it is possible to initiate a playful activity, it will have a good chance of replicating itself through other parts of the system.”

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Author:Joseph Rusling Meeker
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“The very act of writing assumes, to begin with, that someone cares to hear what you have to say. It assumes that people share, that people can be reached, that people can be touched and even in some cases changed. So many of the things in our world lead us to despair. It seems to me that the final symptom of despair is silence, and that storytelling is one of the sustaining arts; it’s one of the affirming arts. A writer may have a certain pessimism in his outlook, but the very act of being a writer seems to me to be an optimistic act.”

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Author:Tobias Wolff
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“I think we need to be put back in touch with our childhood...to be reminded of what's important, like memories about people we loved, or things that happened to us that affected our lives, things we can laugh about and shed a few tears about... I think storytelling is a way of saying 'I love you. I love you enough to tell you something that means a great deal to me.'”

PeopleThinkingWayNeedsMeanImportantEnoughMemoriesDealsLaughingOur LivesHappenedChildhoodLove YouTearsOur ChildrenStorytellingAffectedShedWhat's ImportantSay I Love You
Author:Kathryn Tucker Windham
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