Anecdote Quotes

“The plural of anecdote is not data.”

“There is a point in the future where even the worst disaster starts to settle into an anecdote.”

“I would go to parties and say I was an editor, and people, especially women – and that was important to me back then – would say, “Oh, really?” and raise their eyebrows and look at me a little more carefully. I remember the first party I went to after I became a teacher, someone asked me what I did for a living, and I said, “Well, I teach high school.” He looked over my shoulder, nodded his head, said, “I went to high school,” and walked away.Once I repeated this anecdote around a big table full of Mexican food in the garden at a place called La Choza in Chicago, and Becky Mueller, another teacher at the school, said that I was a “storyteller.” I liked that. I was looking for something to be other than “just” a teacher, and “storyteller” felt about right. I am a teacher and a storyteller in that order. I have made my living and my real contribution to my community as a teacher, and I have been very lucky to have found that calling, but all through the years I have entertained myself and occasionally other people by telling stories.”

“Anecdotes came with his DNA.”

“Enough anecdotes make a pattern.”

“One anecdote of a man is worth a volume of biography.”

“When we have a narrative in mind, we often plug in anecdotes that confirm it.”

“As we grow older, our bodies get shorter and our anecdotes longer.”

“He was telling an interesting anecdote full of exciting words like "encyclopedia" and "rhododendron".”

“Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit, and the only means of making concrete the purpose of its varied quickness and stillness.”