The Best Quotes About Stories and Storytelling

1. There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." - Maya Angelou

2. "A well-told story is like a window that opens, showing us the world outside." - Neil Gaiman

3. "The universe is made of stories, not atoms." - Muriel Rukeyser

4. "Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent." - Neil Gaiman

5. "A story can cross the barriers of time, past, present, and future." - R.L. Stine

6. "Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience." - Robert McKee

7. "A great story can lead to great success." - Steve Jobs

8. "The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon." - Brandon Sanderson

9. "To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music the words make." - Truman Capote

10. "Storytelling is the most human art form." - Terry Pratchett

11. "The stories we tell literally make the world. If you want to change the world, you need to change your story." - Michael Margolis

12. "A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way." - Flannery O'Connor

13. "We are all storytellers. We all live in a network of stories. There isn't a stronger connection between people than storytelling." - Jimmy Neil Smith

14. "People don't want more information. They want faith, faith in you, your goals, your success, in the story you tell." - Annette Simmons

15. "Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving." - Madeleine L'Engle

16. "The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller." - Steve Jobs

17. "The stories we love best live in us forever." - J.K. Rowling

18. "Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it." - Hannah Arendt

19. "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." - Joan Didion

20. "A good story can travel, and it can carry the seeds of a new culture." - Adela Rogers St. Johns

21. "The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out." - Walter Benjamin

22. "Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself." - Octavia E. Butler

23. "A story is not only a part of the writer, but also a part of the reader." - Vladmir Nabokov

24. "There is no greater power on this earth than story." - Libba Bray

25. "The world is shaped by two things — stories told and the memories they leave behind." - Vera Nazarian

26. "Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger." - Ben Okri

27. "The story we tell ourselves about our own lives...is always a story about our own power." - Andrea Barrett

28. "Every great love starts with a great story." - Nicholas Sparks

29. "A story is not finished, until it's told." - Marty Rubin

30. "The shortest distance between a human being and truth is a story." - Anthony de Mello

31. "The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them." - Barry Lopez

32. "Stories are the secret reservoir of values: change the stories individuals or nations live by and tell themselves, and you change the individuals and nations." - Ben Okri

33. "There's always room for a story that can transport people to another place." - J.K. Rowling

34. "Great stories happen to those who can tell them." - Ira Glass

35. "A story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise." - Carlos Ruiz Zafón

36. "The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book." - Samuel Johnson

37. "People are hungry for stories. It's part of our very being. Storytelling is a form of history, of immortality too." - Studs Terkel

38. "We live and breathe words. It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone." - Cassandra Clare

39. "The story of your life is not your life. It is your story." - John Barth

40. "A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, but not necessarily in that order." - Jean-Luc Godard

41. "Stories are like children. They grow in their own way." - Madeleine L'Engle

42. "There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges." - Ernest Hemingway

43. "Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures." - Jessamyn West

44. "A storyteller makes up things to help other people; a liar makes up things to help himself." - Daniel Wallace

45. "The only important elements in any society are the artistic and the criminal, because they alone, by questioning the society's values, can force it to change." - Samuel R. Delany

46. "The story of a love is not important - what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity." - Helen Hayes

47. "A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." - Thomas Mann

48. "There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book." - Marcel Proust

49. "The power of a story is that it's never over." - J.T. Butcher

50. "The stories we tell ourselves are, in so many ways, our lives in the making." - Christina Baldwin

51. "Stories can make someone immortal as long as someone remembers them." - Chris Colfer

52. "The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes." - Agatha Christie

53. "The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them." - Stephen King

54. "Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go." - E.L. Doctorow

55. "The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say." - Anaïs Nin

56. "The story is truly finished—and meaning is made—not when the author adds the last period, but when the reader enters." - Celeste Ng

57. "A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way." - Caroline Gordon

58. "The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself." - Albert Camus

59. "To tell a story is sometimes to become a part of it." - Michelle A. Homme

60. "Great stories are those we return to, stories that never lose their wonder." - Lisa Wingate

61. "We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories." - Jonathan Gottschall

62. "The world exists in a story, not a piece of ground." - Sarah Orne Jewett

63. "People don't want more information. They want faith, faith in you, your goals, your success, in the story you tell." - Annette Simmons

64. "A good story can travel, and it can carry the seeds of a new culture." - Adela Rogers St. Johns

65. "Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger." - Ben Okri

66. "The stories we tell literally make the world. If you want to change the world, you need to change your story." - Michael Margolis

67. "A story is not only a part of the writer, but also a part of the reader." - Vladmir Nabokov

68. "The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out." - Walter Benjamin

69. "The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller." - Steve Jobs

70. "Every great love starts with a great story." - Nicholas Sparks

71. "Stories are the secret reservoir of values: change the stories individuals or nations live by and tell themselves, and you change the individuals and nations." - Ben Okri

72. "The world is shaped by two things — stories told and the memories they leave behind." - Vera Nazarian

73. "The story we tell ourselves about our own lives...is always a story about our own power." - Andrea Barrett

74. "Stories are like children. They grow in their own way." - Madeleine L'Engle

75. "The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them." - Barry Lopez