Sayings about Stories
Never tell your story to a deaf man. ~ Traditional Proverb
A drink precedes a story. ~ Irish Proverbs
Who came back from the grave and told the story? ~ Tunisian Proverbs
If you want to know how the true story goes, wait till the arguments start. ~ African Proverb
A good storyteller must be able to lie a little. ~ Chinese Proverb
There are two sides to every story — and then there’s the truth. ~ American Proverbs
He who comes with a story to you brings two away from you. ~ Irish Proverb
A story is only half told if there is only one side presented. ~ Icelandic Proverb
Time is a great story teller. ~ Irish Proverbs
Every story has two sides and every song has twelve versions. ~ Icelandic Proverb
Quotations about Stories
A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled. ~ Raymond Chandler
Life is too short for a long story. ~ Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
We all live in suspense from day to day; in other words, you are the hero of your own story. ~ Mary McCarthy
Your life story would not make a good book. Don’t even try. ~ Fran Lebowitz
The public history of modern art is the story of conventional people not knowing what they are dealing with. ~ Robert Motherwell
To me, the greatest thing that has happened on this earth of ours is the rise of the human race to the vision of God. That story of the human rise to what I call the vision of God is the story which is told in the Bible. ~ Jan Christian Smuts
The guru, if he is gifted, reads the story as any bilingual person might. He does not translate-he understands. ~ Sheldon Kopp
Success is like a liberation, or the first phrase of a love story. ~ Jeanne Moreau
My friends have made the story of my life. In a thousand ways they have turned my limitations into beautiful privileges, and enabled me to walk serene and happy in the shadow cast by my deprivation.~ Helen Keller
When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story’s voice makes everything its own. ~ John Berger
The life of every person is like a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another. ~ James M. Barrie
Death is not a period but a comma in the story of life. ~ Amos Traver
A true friend laughs at your stories even when they’re not so good, and sympathizes with your troubles even when they’re not so bad. ~ Author Unknown
Objects in pictures should so be arranged as by their very position to tell their own story. ~ Goethe Quotes
One mark of a second-rate mind is to be always telling stories. ~ Jean De La Bruyere
Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story. ~ John Barth
A cruel story runs on wheels, and every hand oils the wheels as they run. ~ Ouida
If you want your life to be a magnificent story, then begin by realizing that you are the author and everyday you have the opportunity to write a new page.~ Mark Houlahan
It’s very simple, I just tell my sad story, and people weep. ~ Corazon Aquino
I think of an author as somebody who goes into the marketplace and puts down his rug and says, “I will tell you a story,” and then he passes the hat. ~ Robertson Davies
Life is uncharted territory. It reveals its story one moment at a time. ~ Leo Buscaglia
The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost. ~ Arthur Miller
The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out. ~ Walter Benjamin
Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death. ~ Walter Benjamin
If you’ve heard this story before, don’t stop me, because I’d like to hear it again. ~ Groucho Marx
We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say — and to feel — “Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.”~ John Steinbeck
It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear. ~ Italo Calvino
The story of life is quicker than the blink of an eye, the story of love is hello, goodbye. ~ Jimi Hendrix
The first law of story-telling. Every man is bound to leave a story better than he found it. ~ Mrs. Humphrey Ward
I don’t remember, I didn’t do it. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. ~ Joe Simmons
There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before. ~ Willa Cather
Lessons of wisdom have the most power over us when they capture the heart through the groundwork of a story, which engages the passions. ~ Laurence Sterne
Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you. ~ Ernest Hemingway Quotes
No story ever looks as bad as the story you’ve just bought; no story ever looks as good as the story the other fellow just bought. ~ Irving Thalberg
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 Barca
No storyteller has ever been able to dream up anything as fantastically unlikely as what really does happen in this mad Universe. ~ Lazarus Long
Sometimes you can tell a large story with a tiny subject. ~ Eliot Porter
A boy’s story is the best that is ever told. ~ Charles Dickens
Of course, it is the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story. ~ Margaret Thatcher Quotes
A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind. ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer
Many a good story has been ruined by over verification. ~ James Gordon Bennett
If an idiot were to tell you the same story every day for a year, you would end by believing it. ~ Horace Mann
Once I have heard the story or joke used twice by other speakers or entertainer, I avoid it. ~ Tom Ogden
Once a newspaper touches a story the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists. ~ Norman Mailer
The greatest religions convert the world through stories. ~ Ben Okri
Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself. ~ Octavia E. Butler
Every story has three sides. Yours, mine and the facts. ~ Foster M. Russell
History’s like a story in a way: it depends on who’s telling it. ~ Dorothy Salisbury Davis
All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality — the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape. ~ Arthur Christopher Benson
It all goes back, of course, to Adam and Eve -a story which shows among other things, that if you make a woman out of a man, you are bound to get into trouble. ~ Carol Gilligan
It’s really important that, as women, we tell our stories. That is what helps seed our imaginations. ~ Ann Bancroft
If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story. ~ Orson Welles
No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters. ~ George Eliot
