Tellers Quotes

“We poor tellers of tales have our moments too, it seems. Like great generals sitting upon horses upon the tops of hills and throwing troops into the arena, we throw the little soldier words into our battles.”

“Thus the 'fortune-teller' is trying to foresee something that is really quite unforeseeable. This is characteristic of all forms of foreseeing. And precisely because what they 'see' is so vague, it is hard to repudiate fortune-tellers' claims.”

“The worst of such stories is that the triumphant romancers can always be put to confusion and crushed by the very details in which real life is so rich and which these unhappy and involuntary story-tellers neglect as insignificant trifles. Oh, they have no thought to spare for such details, their minds are concentrated on their grand invention as a whole, and fancy any one daring to pull them up for a trifle! But that's how they are caught.”

“What is literature but the expression of moods by the vehicle of symbol and incident? And are there not moods which need heaven, hell, purgatory, and faeryland for their expression, no less than this dilapidated earth? Nay, are there not moods which shall find no expression unless there be men who dare to mix heaven, hell, purgatory, and faeryland together, or even to set the heads of beasts to the bodies of men, or to thrust the souls of men into the heart of rocks? Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet." (A Teller of Tales)”

“When the true history fades, ask education and the unbiased story tellers”

“When I get tired of new clunky writing, I resort to old fashioned story tellers, like Wilkie Collins.”

“I could not stop talking because now I had started my story, it wanted to be finished. We cannot choose where to start and stop. Our stories are the tellers of us. ”

“If the story-tellers could ha' got decency and good morals from true stories, who'd have troubled to invent parables?”

“I usually don't like to 'spoon feed' my audience, because I grew up idolizing story tellers who tell stories using symbolism, so it was in my nature to do the same.”

“Fairy tales represent hundreds of years of stories based on thousands of years of stories told by hundreds, thousands, perhaps even millions of tellers.”