Story Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

John Locke

L. Frank Baum

Agatha Christie

Orson Welles

Margaret Thatcher

Stephen King

Roberto Bolaño

Of course it's the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story.

Margaret Thatcher

"The road to the City of Emeralds is paved with yellow brick," said the Witch, "so you cannot miss it. When you get to Oz do not be afraid of him, but tell your story and ask him to help you".

There cannot be a greater rudeness, than to interrupt another in the current of his discourse... To which, if there be added, as is usual, a correcting of any mistake, or a contradiction of what has been said, it is a mark of yet greater pride and self-conceitedness, when we thus intrude our selves for teachers, and take upon us either to set another right in his story, or shew the mistakes of his judgement.

No, it's not a very good story - its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.

It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story.

Agatha Christie

If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.

Friend Monkey is really my favorite of all my books because the Hindu myth on which it is based is my favorite — the myth of the Monkey Lord who loved so much that he created chaos wherever he went. … when you read the Ramayana you'll come across the story of Hanuman on which I built my version of that very old myth.

Nothing ever begins. There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this or any other story springs.

Moral of the story: A government is the only known vessel that leaks from the top. Moral No. 2: Nobody is immune to the diseases of politics, not even the Crusaders.

But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world.

When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own.

The difference between mad people and sane people... is that sane people have variety when they talk-story. Mad people have only one story that they talk over and over.

Maxine Hong Kingston

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that.... Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more.

A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth. For example: Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast, but it's a killer grenade and everybody dies anyway. Before they die, though, one of the dead guys says, "The fuck you do that for?" and the jumper says, "Story of my life, man" and other guys start to smile but he's dead. That's a true story that never happened.

The truth [is] that there is only one terminal dignity — love. And the story of 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.

You may glory in a team triumphant, but you will fall in love with a team in defeat. Losing after great striving is the story of man, who was born to sorrow, whose sweetest songs tell of saddest thought, and who, if he was a hero, does nothing in life as becomingly as leaving it.

And now, without having wearied my friends, I hope, with detailed scientific accounts, theories, or deductions, I will only say that I have endeavoured to tell just the story of the adventure itself.

Wouldn't you like to see a positive LSD story on the news? To base your decision on information rather than scare tactics and superstition? Perhaps? Wouldn't that be interesting? Just for once? "Today, a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration – that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather."

A novel, in the end, is a container, a shape which you are trying to pour your story into.

I am thankful, of course, for the prize and thankful to God for each story, each idea, each word, each day.

Isaac Bashevis Singer

I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one.

Flannery O'Connor

Why should not I call my works 'symphonies', 'arrangements', 'harmonies', and 'nocturnes'?... The vast majority of English folk cannot and will not consider a picture as a picture, apart from any story which it may be supposed to tell. My picture of 'Harmony in Grey and Gold' is an illustration of my meaning – as snow scene with a single black figure and lighted tavern. I care nothing for the past, present, or future of the black figure, placed there because the black was wanted at that spot. All that I know is that my combination of grey and gold is the basis of the picture, Now this is precisely what my friends cannot grasp.

James McNeill Whistler

The story of Americans is the story of arrested metamorphoses. Those who achieve success come to a halt and accept themselves as they are. Those who fail become resigned and accept themselves as they are.

Harold Rosenberg

The secret story is the one we'll never know, although we're living it from day to day, thinking we're alive, thinking we've got it all under control and the stuff we overlook doesn't matter. But every single damn thing matters! Only we don't realize. We just tell ourselves that art runs on one track and life, our lives, on another, and we don't realize that's a lie.

Roberto Bolaño

What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is little enough: for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.

Pedro Calderón de la Barca