39 Quotes About Storytelling

A good story has certain segments throughout it that are instrumental to making it great. These quotes about storytelling are a key part to being inspired to write your own great story.

“A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.”

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”

“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.”

“Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself.”

“Every age has its storytelling form, and video gaming is a huge part of our culture. You can ignore or embrace video games and imbue them with the best artistic quality. People are enthralled with video games in the same way as other people love the cinema or theatre.”

“Every great love starts with a great story…”

“Great stories happen to those who can tell them.”

“I am a person who believes in asking questions, in not conforming for the sake of conforming. I am deeply dissatisfied – about so many things, about injustice, about the way the world works – and in some ways, my dissatisfaction drives my storytelling.”

“I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read.”

“I think you’re a fairy tale. I think you’re magical, and brave, and exquisite. And I hope you’ll let me be in your story.”

“If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.”

“If you’re going to have a story, have a big story, or none at all.”

“It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”

“Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.”

“Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.”

“Sometimes reality is too complex. Stories give it form.”

“Stories are a communal currency of humanity.”

“Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.”

“Story is a yearning meeting an obstacle.”

“Storytelling is the essential human activity. The harder the situation, the more essential it is.”

“Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.”

“Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.”

“The engineers of the future will be poets.”

“The human species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.”

“The more you leave out, the more you highlight what you leave in.”

“The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.”

“The stories we tell literally make the world. If you want to change the world, you need to change your story. This truth applies both to individuals and institutions.”

“There are books full of great writing that don’t have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story… don’t be like the book-snobs who won’t do that.”

“There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.”

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

“There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored.”

“There’s a great tradition in storytelling that’s thousands of years old, telling stories about kings and their palaces, and that’s really what I wanted to do.”

“There’s always room for a story that can transport people to another place.”

“This is our story to tell. You’d think for all the reading I do, I would have thought about this before, but I haven’t. I’ve never once thought about the interpretative, the story telling aspect of life, of my life.”

“Those who tell the stories rule the world.”

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”

“We’re so complex; we’re mysteries to ourselves; we’re difficult to each other. And then storytelling reminds us we’re all the same.”

“When someone is mean to me, I just make them a victim in my next book.”

“You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone’s soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose.”

There is a certain power to great storytelling and the impact it can make on another’s life.