There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
Maya AngelouI love story songs because I've always loved books.
Dolly PartonOne morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I'll never know.
Groucho MarxYour life story would not make a good book. Don't even try.
Fran LebowitzNo, 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.
Stephen KingNever trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of the critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.
David Herbert LawrenceWhen 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?
Clint EastwoodWriting 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.
William ShatnerIf you want a happy ending, that depends of course on where you stop your story.
Orson WellesAll men are children and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed and wakes them in the morning.
Henry David ThoreauBetter the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.
John RuskinWhen the storytelling in a culture goes bad, the result is decadence.
AristotleImagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.
Albert EinsteinA story to me means a plot where there is some surprise. Because that is how life is - full of surprises.
Isaac Bashevis SingerHomer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.
AristotleI 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?
Ray BradburyThe history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.
Virginia WoolfLife is as tedious as twice-told tale, vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.
William ShakespeareBut are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?
H. P. LovecraftThe basic quality that any great story must have is a story that illustrates the human condition.
William ShatnerMen 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.
Jane AustenYou see something, then it clicks with something else, and it will make a story. But you never know when it's going to happen.
Stephen KingNobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities of a marvelous tale.
Nathaniel HawthorneWhat 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.
Pedro Calderon de la BarcaThe 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.
Chuck PalahniukThe story of life is quicker then the blink of an eye, the story of love is hello goodbye.
Jimi HendrixFor an occurrence to become an adventure it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.
Jean-Paul SartreWhat would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told.
Andre GideIt is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story.
Agatha ChristieBut 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.
Lord ByronThe 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.
Helen HayesEmotionally in our minds we get so filled with resentments, where we've got a story about absolutely everything.
Chuck PalahniukI try to tell a story the way someone would tell you a story in a bar, with the same kind of timing and pacing.
Chuck PalahniukThe king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died and then queen died of grief is a plot.
E. M. ForsterThe story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.
Abraham MaslowThe 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.
Drew BarrymoreYou can tell a more over-the-top incredible story if you use a nonfiction form.
Chuck PalahniukSensationalism sells: Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Tiger WoodsYou 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.
William ShatnerThe story goes that I first had the idea for THHGTTGalaxy while lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck.
Douglas AdamsI 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.
Dr. SeussIn 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.
Marilyn MansonThe 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.
Helen HayesGreen 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!
Jim CarreyThe face has to be washed day after day. One meal is not the end of the story, you have to eat again and again.
Sai BabaI want to tell you a terrific story about oral contraception. I asked this girl to sleep with me and she said 'No.'
Woody AllenTacking 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.
Jane AustenThe 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.
Mitt RomneyBehind 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.
Paul RyanIf you've heard this story before don't stop me because I'd like to hear it again.
Groucho MarxMinimalism 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.
Chuck PalahniukMiracles 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.
C. S. LewisSir Roger told them, with the air of a man who would not give his judgement rashly, that much might be said on both sides.
Joseph AddisonIf I want to knock a story off the front page, I just change my hairstyle.
Hillary ClintonWho 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.
Simone WeilWhat 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.
Chuck PalahniukShe 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.
Jane AustenI don't think it's a story. The guy's in Miami. I mean who ... cares?
Kobe BryantThe 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.'
Paul Ryan