Laura Riding - Story Quotes

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My function as a writer is not story-telling but truth-telling: to make things plain.

Laura Riding
We wait, all, for a story of us that shall reach to where we are. We listen for our own speaking; and we hear much that seems our speaking, yet makes us strange to ourselves.

Laura Riding
To tell one comprehensive story of how it has happened that what is is, one which shall hold true, come what may, now-after — a story that whatever comes shall perfectly continue or confirm: such is the ideal motive of religions.

Laura Riding
Her one serious failing was that she could not write above love. She could not write a story with more than one important character in it, whom she thought of for the moment as herself; with love there had to be at least two important characters.

Laura Riding
You know the story of the famous seer Phineus whom the Argonauts consulted when they stopped in Salmydessos in Thrace on their way to Colchis to get the golden fleece. He was blind, but not entirely blind - he could see just enough to see that he could not see. And the little flickering spots of light that forced themselves on him were wind-harpies trying to steal from him his prophetic power. So he would beg everyone to make him blind, to rid him of the harpies. But people laughed at him because, so far as they could tell, he was as blind as any man needed to be. Only Hercules understood, because his spirit extended into the divine shadows. Only Hercules had the courage to make the blind Phineus blind.

Laura Riding
Until the missing story of ourselves is told, nothing besides told can suffice us: we shall go on quietly craving it.

Laura Riding