“The moral of the story was that if you can talk, it s better not to tell the truth.”
“A hero isn’t a hero until he brings the boon back to the tribe.”
“Life is a fairytale if we know how to write the story.”
“The more ‘life’ a story has the more readily will it be susceptible of allegorical interpretations: while the better a deliberate allegory is made the more nearly will it be acceptable just as a story.”
“Our story begins at home, but it doesn’t have to end there.”
“It’s a long story. I’ll make it short as I can.”
“Tell the fucking story.”
“There’d be no story without complications. With nothing to overcome, we’d die unstoried deaths.”
“The seventh reader interrupts you: Do you believe that every story must have a beginning and an end? In ancient times a story could only end in two ways: having passed all the tests, the hero and heroine married, or else they died. The ultimate meaning to which all stories refer has two faces: the continuity of life, the inevitability of death. You stop for a moment to reflect on these words. Then, in a flash, you decide you want to marry Ludmilla.”
“Mi ero svegliato stanco come mi ero addormentato, una luce tagliente che entrava dalla finestra creando dal nulla nuvole dorate di polvere. Non era la luce di tutti gli altri giorni, non era bianca o rosa, allegra o triste, rinfrescante, bagnata o calda, ma era più potente di tutte le luci di tutte le albe che avevo vissuto, riusciva a entrare fin negli angoli più nascosti, riusciva a curvare e percorrere i disegni dei più oscuri labirinti fino a svelare quegli interstizi dove mai luce era arrivata, dove forse mai lo sguardo si era posato. Guardando i suoi occhi neri e grandi non potevo fare a meno di pensare a quella luce verde che aveva inondato tutti gli oggetti, che era scesa dolorosamente negli occhi e che ora scorreva ineliminabile nelle vene. Di fronte al suo specchio di carne mi capitò di dire le cose verdi che non avrei mai pensato di poter dire e che forse non dovrebbero mai essere pronunciate”
“Just as there are two sides to every story, there are two sides to every person. One that we reveal to the world and another we keep hidden inside. A duality governed by the balance of light and darkness. Within each of us is the capacity for both good and evil. But those of us who are able to blur the moral dividing line hold the true power.”
“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.”
“Life is ironic. Some people use their terrible childhood as an excuse of their unfortunate rest of the life… while others create a masterpiece out of their terrible childhood, they create a story loved by the entire world.”
“The end is the best part of any story”
“Men grow up expecting to be the hero of their own story. Women grow up expecting to be the supporting actress in somebody else s. As a kid growing up with books and films and stories instead of friends, that was always the narrative injustice that upset me more than anything else. I felt it sometimes like a sharp pain under the ribcage, the kind of chest pain that lasts for minutes and hours and might be nothing at all or might mean you re slowly dying of something mundane and awful. It s a feeling that hit when I understood how few girls got to go on adventures. I started reading science fiction and fantasy long before Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, before mainstream female leads very occasionally got more at the end of the story than together with the protagonist. Sure, there were tomboys and bad girls, but they were freaks and were usually killed off or married off quickly. Lady hobbits didn t bring the ring to Mordor. They stayed at home in the shire.”
“We are all inclined to accept conventional forms or colours as the only correct ones. Children sometimes think that stars must be star-shaped, though naturally they are not. The people who insist that in a picture the sky must be blue, and the grass green, are not very different from these children. They get indignant if they see other colours in a picture, but if we try to forget all we have heard about green grass and blue skies, and look at the world as if we had just arrived from another planet on a voyage of discovery and were seeing it for the first time, we may find that things are apt to have the most surprising colours.”
“They’re criminal, but I’m a villain in someone’s untold story.”