Stories are not like the real world; they aren't held back by what we know is false or true. What's important is how a story makes you feel inside.
If every event which occurred could be given a name, there would be no need for stories.
A tale spinner's goal is entertainment.
(...) a director should tell a story that is close to his own existential experience.
A story must be told or there'll be no story, yet it is the untold stories that are most moving.
Soll ich dir eine Geschichte erzählen? Nein.Warum nicht? Der Junge sah ihn an und wandte den Blick ab.Warum nicht? Diese Geschichten sind nicht wahr. Das müssen sie auch nicht sein. Es sind Geschichte...
People take on the shapes of the songs and the stories that surround them, especially if they don't have their own song.
My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is ro...
I think the best stories always end up being about the people rather than the event, which is to say character-driven.
A story is not a thing. A story is an act. It only exists in the brief moment of its telling. The question you must ask is what a story has the power to do. The truth of something you do is very diffe...
All fiction boils down to two plots: Either a stranger comes to town or someone goes on a trip.
Story is more akin to the lines on your palm. No matter what your fortuneteller claims, the lines are not maps of your future. They are side effects of the flexion of the hand.
Things worth telling - take time
The only disadvantage in surviving a dangerous experience lies in the fact that your story of it tends to be anticlimactic. You can never carry on right through the point where whatever it is that thr...
My father never told us how the stories worked. He didn't reveal the layers, the nuggets of information, the fragments of truth and fantasy. He didn't need to -- because, given the right conditions, t...
All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each s...
I am a storyteller, for better and for worse. I suspect that a feeling for stories, for narrative, is a universal human disposition, going with our powers of language, consciousness of self, and autob...
Tell the story that's been growing in your heart, the characters you can't keep out of your head, the tale story that speaks to you, that pops into your head during your daily commute, that wakes you...
[I]f you set out to mention everything you would never be done, and that's what counts, to be done, to have done. Oh, I know, even when you mention only a few of the things there are you do not get do...
We tell ourselves stories in order to live,