Words from Storytellers

There are stories within stories, whispered in the quiet of the night, shouted above the roar of the day, and played out between lovers and enemies, strangers and friends. But all, all are fragile things made of just 26 letters arranged and rearranged to form tales and imaginings which will dazzle your senses, haunt your imagination and move you to the very depths of your soul.

~ Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things

Be amusing: never tell unkind stories; above all, never tell long ones.

~ Benjamin Disraeli

You want to tell a story? Grow a heart. Grow two. Now, with the second heart, smash the first one into bits.

~ Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

My father used to say that stories are part of the most precious heritage of mankind.

~ Tahir Shah, In Arabian Nights

I'll tell you a secret. 

Old storytellers never die. 

They disappear into their own story.

~ Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

The human race has been telling stories since it began.

~ Doris Lessing

Storytelling in general is a communal act. Throughout human history, people would gather around, whether by the fire or at a tavern, and tell stories. One person would chime in, then another, maybe someone would repeat a story they heard already but with a different spin. It's a collective process.

~ Joseph Gordon-Levitt

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

~ Philip Pullman

There are just so many stories that are buried on family trees.

~ Henry Louis Gates

I grew up in a place where everybody was a storyteller, but nobody wrote. It was that kind of Celtic, storytelling tradition: everybody would have a story at the pub or at parties, even at the clubs and raves.

~ Irvine Welsh

I will tell you something about stories . . . They aren't just entertainment. Don't be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death.

~ Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony

A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.

~ Lorrie Moore

Thus I rediscovered what writers have always known (and have told us again and again): books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told.

~ Umberto Eco, PostScript to the Name of the Rose