Stories Quotes

“When a day passes, it is no longer there. What remains of it? Nothing more than a story. If stories weren't told or books weren't written, man would live like the beasts, only for the day. The whole world, all human life, is one long story.”

“When a day passes, it is no longer there. What remains of it? Nothing more than a story. If stories weren't told or books weren't written, man would live like the beasts, only for the day. The whole world, all human life, is one long story.”

“The first good news for all of us, the first joyful story of our lives, is that there is a story at all, and an Author who has loved us into being.”

“At seventy-one you can't expect to hear a story, any story, and take it as it is. At my age a story stirs up a vortex that sucks into its eye more stories, and spits out still more. I must remember what I must.”

“When story and behavior are consistent, we relax; when story and behavior are inconsistent, we get tense. We have a deep psychological need for our stories and behaviors to be consistent. We need to be able to trust the story, because it's the lens through which we see reality. We will go to great lengths in the attempt to make a story that explains an action and supports or restores consistency. If we cannot make story and action fit, we either have to make a new story or change the action. ... [But] The drive for consistency and the ability to redefine abhorrent action so it fits the story are very complex issues. We have a huge ability to continue believing stories we are told are true in order to stay comfortable with actions we don't want to change, or don't feel capable of changing.”

“The difficulty with Poe is not figuring out which of his stories rise to the level required of this collection, but rather which of his stories to exclude from it.”

“Lies are just stories, and stories are all that matter. We all tell stories. Some are more truthful than others, maybe, but in the end the only thing that counts is what you can make people believe.”

“I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt makingcreatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: ‘mythical’ in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the ‘inner consistency of reality’. There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath.”

“People need stories. Stories of love, hope, survival, wisdom and sometimes pain. Maybe you don’t tell them the full truth; maybe you tell them lies. But what is this world? A lie in itself.”

“By Aladdin's lamplit scrotum, man! Everything is a story. What is there but stories? Stories are the only truth.”

“There's always a story. It's all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything's got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.”