There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

I love story songs because I've always loved books.

One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I'll never know.

Your life story would not make a good book. Don't even try.

No, it's not a very good story - its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.

Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of the critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

When I see a story I ask: is this something I'd like to be in? Is this something I'd like to see? And if I'd like to see it would I like to tell it?

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

Writing is truly a creative art - putting word to a blank piece of paper and ending up with a full-fledged story, rife with character and plot.

If you want a happy ending, that depends of course on where you stop your story.

All men are children and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed and wakes them in the morning.

Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.

When the storytelling in a culture goes bad, the result is decadence.

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.

A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise. Because that is how life is - full of surprises.

Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

I used to take my short stories to girls' homes and read them to them. Can you imagine the reaction, reading a short story to a girl instead of pawing her?

The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.

Life is as tedious as twice-told tale, vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.

Keep it simple. Make a blank face and the music and the story will fill it in.

But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?

The basic quality that any great story must have is a story that illustrates the human condition.

Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree, the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.

You see something, then it clicks with something else, and it will make a story. But you never know when it's going to happen.

Nobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities of a marvelous tale.

A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.

What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is little enough, for all life is a dream and dreams themselves are only dreams.

The only thing I shy away from is non-consensual violence. I can't write a story where someone is a simple victim because it's boring.

The story of life is quicker then the blink of an eye, the story of love is hello goodbye.

For an occurrence to become an adventure it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.

What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told.

It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story.

Of course it's the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story.

But I hate things all fiction... there should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric - and pure invention is but the talent of a liar.

The story of a love is not important - what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.

Emotionally in our minds we get so filled with resentments, where we've got a story about absolutely everything.

I try to tell a story the way someone would tell you a story in a bar, with the same kind of timing and pacing.

The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died and then queen died of grief is a plot.

The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.

The stories that I want to tell, especially as a director, don't necessarily have a perfect ending, because the older you get the more you appreciate a good day versus a happy ending. You understand that life continues on the next day, the reality of things is what happens tomorrow.

You can tell a more over-the-top incredible story if you use a nonfiction form.

Sensationalism sells: Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story.

You know the process of making a documentary is one of discovery, and like writing a story you follow a lead and that leads you to something else, and then by the time you finish the story is nothing like you expected.

The story goes that I first had the idea for THHGTTGalaxy while lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck.

I start drawing and eventually the characters involve themselves in a situation. Then in the end I go back and try to cut out most of the preachments.

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.

The truth is that there is only one terminal dignity - love. And the story of a love is not important - what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.

When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which never happened.

Green Eggs and Ham was the story of my life. I wouldn't eat a thing when I was a kid, but Dr. Seuss inspired me to try cauliflower!

The face has to be washed day after day. One meal is not the end of the story, you have to eat again and again.

I want to tell you a terrific story about oral contraception. I asked this girl to sleep with me and she said 'No.'

Tacking on the kiss at the end made it too romantic, much more like a Victorian or 20th-century story, rather than the early 19th-century story that it really is.

The America we all know has been a story of the many becoming one, uniting to preserve liberty, uniting to build the greatest economy in the world, uniting to save the world from unspeakable darkness.

Behind every small business there's a story worth knowing. All the corner shops in our towns and cities the restaurants cleaners gyms hair salons hardware stores - these didn't come out of nowhere.

If you've heard this story before don't stop me because I'd like to hear it again.

Animation offers a medium of story telling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world.

Minimalism seems closest to the sophisticated storytelling of movies. Movies have really educated contemporary audiences to be the most intelligent sophisticated audiences in history. We don't any longer need to have the relationship between one scene and the next explained. We will figure it out ourselves.

Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.

Sir Roger told them, with the air of a man who would not give his judgement rashly, that much might be said on both sides.

If I want to knock a story off the front page, I just change my hairstyle.

Who were the fools who spread the story that brute force cannot kill ideas? Nothing is easier. And once they are dead, they are no more than corpses.

What I'm always trying to do with every book is to recreate the effect of the stories we heard as children in front of campfires and fireplaces - the ghost stories that engaged us.

She had prejudices on the side of ancestry, she had a value for rank and consequence, which blinded her a little to the faults of those who possessed them.

I don't think it's a story. The guy's in Miami. I mean who ... cares?

The perfection of our union especially our commitment to equality of opportunity has been a story of constant striving to live up to our Founding principles. This is what Abraham Lincoln meant when he said 'In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free - honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve.'