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Storytelling Quotes

Browse 1553 quotes about Storytelling.

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Storytelling Quotes

“There’s one more thing that happens as I listen to life stories. I realize I’m not just listening to other people’s stories; I’m helping them create their stories. Very few of us sit down one day and write out the story of our lives and then go out and recite it when somebody asks. For most of us it’s only when somebody asks us to tell a story about ourselves that we have to step back and organize the events and turn them into a coherent narrative. When you ask somebody to tell part of their story, you’re giving them an occasion to take that step back. You’re giving them an opportunity to construct an account of themselves and maybe see themselves in a new way. None of us can have an identity unless it is affirmed and acknowledged by others. So as you are telling me your story, you’re seeing the ways I affirm you and the ways I do not. You’re sensing the parts of the story that work and those that do not. If you feed me empty slogans about yourself, I withdraw. But if you stand more transparently before me, showing both your warts and your gifts, you feel my respectful and friendly gaze upon you, and that brings forth growth. In every life there is a pattern, a story line running through it all. We find that story when somebody gives an opportunity to tell it.”

StoriesIdentityLivingStorytellingBiographiesLivesAcknowledgmentAutobiographies
Book:How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
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“Students sometimes tell me. that they're waiting for someone to die before they feel they can write their story. They say this sheepishly, guiltily. As if, in some way, they're wishing for that person to expire, already, so they can get on with the business of writing about them. I try to liberate my students from those tortured thoughts by telling them that they may as well just start now, because it can be more difficult to write about the dead than to write about the living. The dead can't fight back. The dead have no voice. They can't say: But that isn't how it was. You're getting it wrong. They can't say: But I loved you so. They can't say: I had no idea.”

WritingDeathLivingGuiltStorytellingRemembrance
Book:Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love
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“Time is not a straight line. It is a conversation between memory and imagination." When we listen closely, the past whispers through the choices we make, and the future leans in to hear our reply. Every act of kindness sends a ripple through unseen moments. Every thought and every word become architecture for a world not yet built. Perhaps the woman from tomorrow is simply the echo of who we become when we live wisely today, a reminder that destiny is not written by clocks, but by the courage to stay awake in the story we are still writing...”

WisdomTimeImaginationConsciousnessDestinyKindnessCourageAwarenessMemoryStorytelling
Book:Leila and the Whispering River!
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“The life cycle of the butterfly is a good example of an analogy for workplace transformation. Its stages of development, the struggle, the growth, and the birth of something completely new!”

GrowthChangeLeadershipTransformationStorytellingMetamorphosisAnalogyPersonaldevelopmentMindfulleadershipWorkplacewisdom
Book:Mindful Storytelling: A Playbook for Corporate Leaders Who’ve Lost the Narrative Plot
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“There once was this man who found himself talking to his son. He had often told the boy stories of heroes and villains, good and evil. He began by saying that all of us—even himself—had these two sides of ourselves fighting with each other, these two wolves. And these two wolves? They're always fighting. One was all that was pure in the world—the light, the hope, and the sanctuary. The other was all that was bad in the world—the dark, the despair, and the revenge. This same fight is going on inside of you, son... and inside of every other person on this earth. And this fight isn't just once; it's constant, happening every day." Her voice softened, and I could almost picture her sitting cross-legged on the floor, her expression thoughtful as she relayed the story. "What happens after that?" I asked hoarsely, my chest still tight but my mind began to quiet, drawn into her words despite myself. "The little boy in the story asks which wolf wins," she continued, her tone, a warmth so faint it was nearly imperceptible. "And his father looked at him and says, 'The one you feed.”

PhilosophyRelationshipEmotionalStorytellingIsolationExistentialismLiterary FictionTales Family
Author:Sasha Harding
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“However, narrating what you remember, telling it to someone, does something else. The more a person recalls a memory, the more they change it. Each time they put it into language, it shifts. The more you describe a memory, the more likely it is that you are making a story that fits your life, resolves the past, creates a fiction you can live with. It’s what writers do. Once you open your mouth, you are moving away from the truth of things. According to neuroscience. The safest memories are locked in the brains of people who can’t remember. Their memories remain the closest replica of actual events. Underwater. Forever.”

TruthMemoirStorytelling
Book:The Chronology of Water
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“Each of us has the power to positively affect a fellow human being with our story. We might broaden a perspective, open a new door to success, improve someone’s work life, help them through a moment of crisis, or make them bit happier or healthier thanks to our story. Share your dream of a better tomorrow, and invite others to join you in that dream.”

DreamInspirationSuccessSupportPerspectiveEmpowermentValueImprovementStorytellingBenefit
Author:Steve Multer
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“As Rebeca reveals what scraps of story she does have to Luca, he starts to understand that this is the one thing all migrants have in common, this is the solidarity that exists among them, though they all come from different places and different circumstances, some urban, some rural, some middle-class, some poor, some well educated, some illiterate, Salvadoran, Honduran, Guatemalan, Mexican, Indian, each of them carries some story of suffering on top of that train and into el norte beyond. Some, like Rebeca, share their stories carefully, selectively, finding a faithful ear and then chanting their words like prayers. Other migrants are like blown-open grenades, telling their anguish compulsively to everyone they meet, dispensing their pain like shrapnel so they might one day wake to find their burdens have grown lighter. Luca wonders what it would feel like to blow up like that. But for now he remains undetonated, his horrors sealed tightly inside, his pin fixed snugly in place.”

StoriesSufferingVoiceGriefTraumaStorytellingPtsdMigrantsProcessing EmotionsMigrant Story
Book:American Dirt
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“I won't be seeing you again," he said. "It's just as well. I've told you too much to want to see you again." I wasn't so sure of that. It seemed possible that he would want to see me later on for that very reason. I alone, he believed, possessed an unfalsified image of his life. But that could make him hate me; perhaps he would feel that I had taken his wife from him, this time irrevocably—if he really believed that his own memory deceived him and only mine remained clear.”

MemoryStorytellingFarewellForgettingRememberingGoodbyesSharing LifeSharing Secrets
Book:The Night in Lisbon
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“Stories are not confrontational. Storytelling is about entering the mind of your audience so that they connect the dots, according to the pattern you want them to see.”

LeadershipCreativityPsychologyInfluenceCommunicationEmpathyStrategyInsightStorytellingPersuasion
Book:Business Storytelling from Hype to Hack: How Do Stories Work? Unlock the Software of the Mind
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