Story Quotes

Yes, in all my research, the greatest leaders looked inward and were able to tell a good story with authenticity and passion.

Ours is the old, old story of every uprising race or class or order. The work of elevation must be wrought by ourselves or not at all.

Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.

I've been an inveterate reader of literary magazines since I was a teenager. There are always discoveries. You're sitting in your easy chair, reading; you realize you've read a story or a group of poems four times, and you know, Yes, I want to go farther with this writer.

Most important to any fake story is a plausible, realistic edge with a satirical twist that is topical.

I had an idea for a story about a young woman who was living with people who were different, not just superficially different - such as hair colour, or eye colour, or skin colour - but different in some significant way.

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

But, in North Korea, it's just the opposite. There's one story. It's written by the Kim regime. And 23 million people are conscripted to be secondary characters. There, as a youth, your aptitude towards certain jobs is measured, and the rest of your life is dictated, whether you'll be a fisherman or a farmer or an opera singer.

I think there are some songwriters who are just brilliant who can write and then I think there are some songwriters who can like me I have a problem writing chorus lyrics but I can write a song in a story like that.

The thing with film and theater is that you always know the story so you can play certain cues in each scene with the knowledge that you know where the story's going to end and how it's going to go. But on television nobody knows what's going to happen, even the writers.

I wanted to tell a story that interested me as much in the telling as in the watching.

I remember when an editor at the National Geographic promised to run about a dozen of my landscape pictures from a story on the John Muir trail as an essay, but when the group of editors got together, someone said that my pictures looked like postcards.

Obviously, for me, story is first and foremost, even in the face of the attractive idea of having all the cast there, or having a great piece of talent come to it.

If you're sitting in your minivan, playing your computer animated films for your children in the back seat, is it the animation that's entertaining you as you drive and listen? No, it's the storytelling. That's why we put so much importance on story. No amount of great animation will save a bad story.

On stage, generally speaking, the story is stopped or held back by songs, because that's the convention. Audiences enjoy the song and the singer, that's the point.

It's their story, and I got to be the guy in the back while they were in the foreground.

Ibrahim tells his story without a grain of complaint, and this was true for all of the band members. This is very much part of the Cuban spirit and soul.

Muhammad is more human, more self-doubting, even self-tortured at times. His story is full of adventure, intrigue, betrayal.

I think I just have this need to be a storyteller. That's why I wasn't a great dancer - I couldn't articulate a story. I was a better choreographer. I have the need to to just express myself in that way. I can't explain it.

You lie awake at 3 in the morning thinking of story ideas. You're online at 8 a.m. on a Sunday or midnight on a Wednesday. It's a job that you never push aside.

I don't know if you've ever tried writing a Doctor Who story, but it's a lot more difficult than it initially appears, especially if you've got more than one assistant.

I was going to get the Carolyn Bessette story out of her one way or another.

In any story, the villain is the catalyst. The hero's not a person who will bend the rules or show the cracks in his armor. He's one-dimensional intentionally, but the villain is the person who owns up to what he is and stands by it.

There is nothing wrong with just telling the story.

I'd much rather see a world where, when you make some quirky comment on a blog or news story or you upload a video clip, instead of just a moment of fame for your pseudonym, you'll get 50 bucks. The first time that happens, you'll realise that you're a full-class citizen. You have the potential to make money from the system.

In so many musicals today, the story is moved forward by a song. I don't think we're gonna try to do that.

I take in a lot of stuff from real life, movies, television, news and it all gets mixed in my head and somehow turns into a story idea.

If I didn't get a job, between 16 and 18, that wasn't significant, I was just going to go to college. I didn't want to be a struggling actor at 36 with five kids, doing something I hated. You see the story so much. It's such a vicious business to be in when you're not meant to be in it.

My interpretation of a strong director is someone who knows their story. That's what directors are, they're storytellers because they're directing where your focus is going to be as an audience.

If the breaking news story had to do with hard news, politics specifically, I had a lot to do with it. If it had to do with music, Kurt Loder was more involved.