Storytelling quotes
Welcome to our collection of Storytelling quotes! Storytelling is an ancient art form that has captivated audiences for centuries. Whether it's through books, movies, or oral traditions, stories have the power to transport us to different worlds, evoke deep emotions, and connect us with characters we'll never forget.
Storytelling is not just for entertainment; it is a powerful medium for sharing experiences, passing down wisdom, and sparking imagination. Through the art of storytelling, we can explore the depths of human nature, tackle complex issues, and shed light on the universal truths that bind us all.
In this collection, you'll find an inspiring array of quotes about Storytelling from renowned authors, filmmakers, and artists. These quotes celebrate the magic of storytelling and remind us of the immense impact it can have on our lives. Whether you're a writer, a reader, or simply someone who appreciates the beauty of a well-told tale, we hope these quotes inspire you to embrace the enchanting world of storytelling.
So, dive into the pages of our Storytelling quotes category and let these words transport you to new realms, ignite your imagination, and remind you of the incredible power of a good story.
Kathryn Stockett
— Novelist....we ain't doing civil rights here. We just telling stories like they really happen.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorCharacters begin as voices, then gain presence by being viewed in others' eyes. Characters define one another in dramatic contexts. It is often very exciting, when characters meet - out of their encounters, unanticipated stories can spring.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterReality is not always probable, or likely. But if you're writing a story, you have to make it as plausible as you can, because if not, the reader's imagination will reject it.
Sarah Vowell
— AuthorHistory is full of really good stories. That's the main reason I got into this racket: I want to make the argument that history is interesting.
Peter Temple
— Acclaimed Australian Crime Fiction AuthorI like having a plot, I like characters with a reason to get up in the morning.
E. B. White
— Versatile Writer & Author of Beloved ClassicsDon't write about Man; write about a man.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesI have always tried to have a message, not to be a preacher, but a message that shows it's better to be a good guy than a bad guy, and I try to make it clear that doing the right thing is more attractive than not.
Jeff Pinkner
— Acclaimed Screenwriter & ProducerWe just keep making the shows that we love, and the good news is that we can never rest on our laurels, knowing that we're going to be on forever. We're constantly challenged to write the very best story that we can, week in and week out, hoping that that will allow us to keep telling more of them.
Daniel Craig
— Iconic James Bond ActorAction movies live and die by the story that you're trying to tell. It's hard. It's very difficult to do an action movie that stays engaging.
Len Wiseman
— Talented Filmmaker of "Underworld"A lot of these movies are informed by the movies that come before them.
M. F. K. Fisher
— Pioneering Food WriterI am more modest now, but I still think that one of the pleasantest of all emotions is to know that I, I with my brain and my hands, have nourished my beloved few, that I have concocted a stew or a story, a rarity or a plain dish, to sustain them truly against the hungers of the world.
Aisha Tyler
— American actress, comedian, director, and talk show hostI don't know if I was always an open person, but I think stand-up comics specifically have this way of running towards embarrassing things - whereas regular people tend to run away - because the embarrassing story is always going to be the really funny story.
Eli Roth
— American film director, producer, and actorWhen you're making a television show, it's about the story and arc of the show rather than any particular episode or director.
Glennon Melton
— American author and activistA good day is a good day. A bad day is a good story.
Steven Strait
— American actor and singerI love how you can shoot a movie in a month or two or three of four, and it's this encapsulated story that you box up and ship out into the world, and what it is, is what it is.
Andy Muschietti
— Argentinian DirectorFor horror, the needs of the story have to be first.
Kathryn Stockett
— NovelistNo one tells us, girls who don't go on dates, that remembering can be almost as good as what actually happens.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorThough I am never exactly "blocked" I do have difficult periods. I am led by a fascination with material - the challenge of presenting it in an original and engaging way. I have no problem imagining stories, characters, distinctive settings & themes - but the difficulty is choosing a voice & a language in which to present it.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterThe things that are said in literature are always the same. What is important is the way they are said. Looking for metaphors, for example: When I was a young man I was always hunting for new metaphors. Then I found out that really good metaphors are always the same.
E. B. White
— Versatile Writer & Author of Beloved ClassicsA library is many things. It's a place to go, to get in out of the rain. It's a place to go if you want to sit and think. But particularly it is a place where books live, and where you can get in touch with other people, and other thoughts, through books. If you want to find out about something, the information is in the reference books---the dictionaries, the encyclopedias, the atlases. If you like to be told a story, the library is the place to go.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesComic books to me are fairy tales for grown-ups.
Jeff Pinkner
— Acclaimed Screenwriter & Producerhen, there's such a temptation to just constantly write things that are going to make the fans happy. Sometimes it takes a little bit of unhappiness to make those happy pay-offs work better. That's something that is fascinating to us and I think has really changed the way that stories are told.
Eli Roth
— American film director, producer, and actorI think you should make movies as long as the story dictates.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorIf Shakespeare's great plays are variants of stories, even novels, you can see how each character is telling his story from his perspective; each is vying with the others for dominance, but in the end, in tragedy, most of these voices will die, to be replaced by the yet more vigorous voice of a younger generation.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterUnlike the novel, a short story may be, for all purposes, essential.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesComics are stories; they're like novels or anything else. So the first thing you have to do is become a good storyteller.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorTo choose the ideal voice for a character is to give a character an ardent and vivid life, to allow him or her to speak, rather than speaking for them, in an older style of omniscient narration.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesTo my way of thinking, whether it's a superhero movie or a romance or a comedy or whatever, the most important thing is you've got to care about the characters. You've got to understand the characters and you've got to be interested. If the characters are interesting, you're half-way home.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorI tend to think in dramatic terms. In life, there may be an actual drama, but it would be the fictionalized, imagined drama that engaged me.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesTo me, writing is fun. It doesn't matter what you're writing, as long as you can tell a story.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorIt is important for me to discover the ideal title, for without this title the story or novel isn't quite in focus.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesIf you have a character that seems to be all perfect, it's hard to relate to him because when you read a story you really want to empathize with the character that you are reading about. And it's hard to empathize with someone who is flawless and who has no problems.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorNot even the most devastating truth can be told; it must be evoked.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesI think the way you become a good storyteller is to read a lot of stories and evaluate them in your own mind.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorOnly when you have completed a novel, or a story, can you return to the beginning and revise or rewrite.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesVirtually every kid is exposed to giants and ogres and talking wolves, and so forth. And magic. And I think you never outgrow your love for those imaginative, fanciful, farfetched, fantastic characters and situations.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorBefore you can write a novel you have to have a number of ideas that come together. One idea is not enough.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesTechnology isn't a villain. Technology should help, but if you just use the technology for the sake of technology, then you're cheating your audience. You're not giving them the best story and the best direction and so forth.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorNo, the thing is, we all love storytelling, and as a writer you get to tell stories all the time.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesWe're living in a world where everything moves very quickly. We've become a very visual society, so I think it's a very natural thing that people are captivated with the illustrations in a story.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorNovels begin, not on the page, but in meditation and day-dreaming - In thinking, not writing.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesEvery kid loves fairy tales, stories of witches and giants and magicians. Then, when you get a little older you can't read fairy tales anymore.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorMy writing is full of lives I might have led.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesI had been writing comic books for years and I was doing them to please a publisher, who felt that comics are only read by very young children or stupid adults. And therefore, we have to keep the stories very simplistic... And those were all things I hated.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorI can't imagine a mental life, a spiritual existence, not inextricably bound up with language of a formal, mediated nature. Telling stories, choosing an appropriate language with which to tell the story: This seems to me quintessentially human, one of the great adventures of our species.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesIt's a tremendous challenge, because there have been so many characters created over the years. Every time you think you come up with a great name, you find out somebody has already done it. Dreaming up the stories isn't that hard, but coming up with a good title is the toughest part.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorIn a sense, I may not consciously know what I'm doing. I feel that I'm telling a story. I'm a kind of medium by which something is transmitted.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesI thought it would be fun to take the kind of character that nobody would like, none of our readers would like, and shove him down their throats and make them like him.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesSome artists, such as Jack Kirby, need no plot at all. I mean I'll just say to Jack, "Let's let the next villain be Dr. Doom" ... or I may not even say that. He may tell me. And then he goes home and does it. He's so good at plots, I'm sure he's a thousand times better than I. He just makes up the plots for these stories. All I do is a little editing ... I may tell him that he's gone too far in one direction or another. Of course, occasionally I'll give him a plot, but we're practically both the writers on the things.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesEverything has changed and we're all living in one city now. What happens somewhere affects things everywhere, so I have to be careful and whatever stories I work on, I want them to have redeeming moral values.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesI hate being too serious about anything. If I'm with my friend, I want to be having fun with him or her. And if anybody is reading my story, I want them to be not only reading the story, but I want them to feel they're having fun; that they're enjoying it. So any way you can make it more informal, more fun-filled, more amusing - instead of just a dry story that goes on and on - if there's any way to do that, I like to try and do it.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesThe more you read, the better you're going to become as a storyteller.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesNo matter what you write, it's a matter of putting words in a certain order so that the reader will be interested in what you're writing.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesComic books are just a way to show a story. Then there are the movies, and television and exhibits like this that take the stories and make them seem so realistic. In the comic book, you're just reading a story - hopefully a good, exciting story that whets your appetite for all of this stuff to come.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesTo be honest, when I was writing these stories a million years ago, I never thought about movies at all one way or another. It would have seemed almost miraculous for these things to be movies someday. To me, they were just comic books that I hoped would sell so I could keep my job.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesIdeally, anything one writes should have a social conscience: if you can write a story that thrills, and with a good message, that's the perfect type of a story.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesNo matter how good a story is, if you're at a newsstand and you see a lot of comic books, you don't know how good the story is unless you read it. But you can spot the artwork instantly, and you know whether you like the artwork, whether it grabs you or not.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesIf nobody is looking for a story, and I have no reason to write a story, I would really much rather to do anything else because it's no fun writing stories, particularly not for me. I just do it in order to sell them and make a couple of bucks.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesI think kids love superheroes, and the more you can crowd into a story, the more excited they get.
Stan Lee
— Comic Book Icon & Creator of Marvel HeroesIt is impossible to do a movie exactly the way a comic book is written and drawn, just as it's impossible to do a movie exactly like a novel or exactly like anything else. When you go to different forms of media, you have to adapt.