“But I m going to try to tell the truth. Except for the parts I m leaving out, because there s still stuff I m just not going to tell you. Get used to it.”
“I think it s a shame that something as creative and vital to the nature of the human species as story-telling is largely controlled by the soulless cretins known as publishers.”
“A slavish concern for the composition of words is the sign of a bankrupt intellect. Be gone, odious wasp! You smell of decayed syllables.”
“Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.”
“Tell the story that s been growing in your heart, the characters you can t keep out of your head, the tale story that speaks to you, that pops into your head during your daily commute, that wakes you up in the morning.”
“Whatever story you re telling, it will be more interesting if, at the end you add, and then everything burst into flames.”
“Authors do not choose a story to write, the story chooses us.”
“Once upon a time there was what there was, and if nothing had happened there would be nothing to tell.”
“If a story is not about the hearer he [or she] will not listen . . . A great lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting--only the deeply personal and familiar.”
“Then there is the other secret. There isn t any symbolysm [sic]. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.”
“People have wanted to narrate since first we banged rocks together & wondered about fire. There’ll be tellings as long as there are any of us here, until the stars disappear one by one like turned-out lights.”
“Any fool can tell a story. Take a few odds and ends of things that happen to you, dress them up, shuffle them about, add a dash of excitement, a little color, and there you have it.”
“If a storyteller worried about the facts - my dear Lucian, how could he ever get at the truth?”
“A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.”
“Laugh and cry and tell stories. Sad stories about bodies stolen, bodies no longer here. Enraging stories about the false images, devastating lies, untold violence. Bold, brash stories about reclaiming our bodies and changing the world.”
“The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spellbound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.”
“A story must be judged according to whether it makes sense. And making sense must be here understood in its most direct meaning: to make sense is to enliven the senses. A story that makes sense is one that stirs the senses from their slumber, one that opens the eyes and the ears to their real surroundings, tuning the tongue to the actual tastes in the air and sending chills of recognition along the surface of the skin. To make sense is to release the body from the constraints imposed by outworn ways of speaking, and hence to renew and rejuvenate one s felt awareness of the world. It is to make the senses wake up to where they are.”