Inspirational storytelling quotes will challenge the way you think, and help guide you through any life experience.
Famous Storytelling Quotes
‘The future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: artists, inventors, storytellers-creative and holistic ‘right-brain’ thinkers.” -Daniel Pink
Tell me the facts and I’ll learn. Tell me the truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in heart forever. – Native American Proverb
No story lives unless someone wants to listen. The stories we love best do live in us forever. So whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home. – J.K. Rowling
Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world. – Robert McKee
If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten. – Rudyard Kipling
There is no friend as loyal as a book – Ernest Hemingway
Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell. – Seth Godin
Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue. – Andrew Davis
I’m obsessed with giving the audience something they don’t see coming. – Jordan Peele
We cannot create a world we can’t imagine and stories are the engines of our imaginations. – Josh Stearns
That’s what storytellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instill hope again and again. – Walt Disney
Storytelling is the mother of all ‘pull’ marketing strategies. It encourages dialogue, engagement and interaction among equals – an exchange of meaning between people. Yet many companies and brands are still relentlessly pushing messages out, hoping that with enough repetition, something will stick. – Bill Baker
You’re never going to kill storytelling, because it’s built in the human plan. We come with it. – Margaret Atwood
We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories. – John Gottschall
The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell. – Ben Okri
The most amazing thing for me is that every single person who sees a movie, not necessarily one of my movies, brings a whole set of unique experiences, but through careful manipulation and good storytelling, you can get everybody to clap at the same time, to hopefully laugh at the same time, and to be afraid at the same time. – Steven Spielberg
After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world. – Philip Pullman, best-selling British author
Every great love starts with a great story… – Nicholas Sparks
Words are how we think; stories are how we link.” Christina Baldwin
The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon. – Brandon Sanderson
To hell with facts! We need stories! – Ken Kesey
Story telling is about connecting to other people and helping people to see what you see. – Michael Margolis
I’m writing my story so that others might see fragments of themselves. – Lena Waithe
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. – Patrick Rothfuss
Stories are memory aids, instruction manuals and moral compasses. – Aleks Krotoski
I’ll tell you a secret. Old storytellers never die. They disappear into their own story. – Vera Nazarian
Drama is anticipation mingled with uncertainty. – William Archer
Well, if storytelling is important, then your narrative ability or your ability to put into words or use what someone else has put into words effectively, is important too. – Howard Gardner
Great stories happen to those who can tell them. – Ira Glass
The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life. – Zadie Smith
The story-making process enables us to simplify complex information into the core essence of understanding. – Y. Gabriel
Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity. – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic slice of truth, wisdom, is dying out. – Walter Benjamin
Storytelling is the essential human activity. The harder the situation, the more essential it is. – Tim O’BrienFor me, the drive is storytelling. To be a part of an art that tells a story and to be a catalyst, a color in that, is very exciting. – Alden Ehrenreich
The storytelling gift is innate: one has it or one doesn’t. But style is at least partly a learned thing: one refines it by looking and listening and reading and practice – by work. – Donna Tartt
Think about the word destroy. Do you know what it is? De-story. Destroy. Destory. You see. And restore. That’s re-story. Do you know that only two things have been proven to help survivors of the Holocaust? Massage is one. Telling their story is another. Being touched and touching. Telling your story is touching. It sets you free. – Francesca Lia Block
If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen. And here I made a rule – a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last. – John Steinbeck in East of Eden
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
Storytelling captures an aspect of childhood experience when being told a story was a common ritual. It’s a warm place for most of us and in some ways represents our first listening experience in really listening. – Paul Lansky
Essentially, a story expresses how and why life changes. – Robert McKee
People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact it’s the other way around… – Terry Pratchett
The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of all kinds. – Dalai Lama
There are ways to share knowledge. You can push information out. You can pull them in with a story. – Unknown
Story, as it turns out, was crucial to our evolution — more so than opposable thumbs. Opposable thumbs let us hang on; story told us what to hang on to. – Lisa Cron
You have to understand that the shortest distance between a human being and truth is a story. – Anthony de Mello
To be a person is to have a story to tell. – Isak Dinesen
Good stories surprise us. They make us think and feel. They stick in our minds and help us remember ideas and concepts in a way that a PowerPoint crammed with bar graphs never can. – Joe Lazauskas and Shane Snow
You’re never going to kill storytelling, because it’s built into the human plan. We come with it. – Margaret Atwood
There’s always room for a story that can transport people to another place. – J.K. Rowling
I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one. – Flannery O’Connor
percent of what we do involves staring into space and trying to figure out what the hell happens next. – Robert Gregory Browne
People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don’t have a middle or an end any more. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning. – Steven Spielberg
Whether you know it or not, your desire to write comes from the urge to not just be creative, it’s a need (one every human being on earth has) to help others. A well-told Story is a gift to the reader/listener/viewer because it teaches them how to confront their own discomforts. – Shawn Coyne
If you wish to influence an individual or a group to embrace a particular value in their daily lives, tell them a compelling story. – Annette Simmons
Tell a relevant, targeted, transparent story, and the whole world will share it. – Randall Lane
I realized the importance of having a story today is what really separates companies. People don’t just wear our shoes, they tell our story. – Blake Mycoskie
When you’ve got , people trying to do the same thing, why would you want to be number ,? – Mark Cuban
The power of storytelling is exactly this: to bridge the gaps where everything else has crumbled. – Paulo Coelho
Create those things where human protagonists relate to us, where the stakes and conflict grip us, and where the emotions move us. Craft those simple things, those glorious things, those things so often forgotten but so desperately needed. There’s no hidden or corporate meaning behind the word ‘story.’ We know what they are. And we need to start telling them. – Jay Acunzo
If you’re going to have a story, have a big story, or none at all. – Joseph Campbell
Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact. – Robert McKee
If you’re sitting in your minivan, playing our computer animated films for your children in the back seat, is it the animation that’s entertaining you as you drive and listen? No, it’s the storytelling. That’s why we put so much importance on story. No amount of great animation will save a bad story. – John Lasseter
The public has an appetite for anything about imagination: anything that is far away from reality as is creatively possible. – Steven Spielberg
Sometimes reality is too complex. Stories give it form. – Jean Luc Godard
Drama is real life with the dull bits cut out. – Alfred Hitchcock
The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in. – Harold Goddard
The human species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories. – Mary Catherine Bateson
The universe is made of stories, not atoms. – Muriel Rukeyser
Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it. – Hannah Arendt
People are hungry for stories. It’s part of our very being. Storytelling is a form of history, of immortality too. It goes from one generation to another. – Studs Terkel
We live in story like a fish lives in water. We swim through words and images siphoning story through our minds the way a fish siphons water through its gills. We cannot think without language. – Christina Baldwin
The stronger the dialog, the stronger the brand; the weaker the dialog, the weaker the brand. – Larry Webber
Facts don’t persuade, feelings do. And stories are the best way to get at those feelings. – Tom Asacker
Stories have power. They delight, enchant, touch, teach, recall, inspire, motivate, challenge. They help us understand. They imprint a picture on our minds. Consequently, stories often pack more punch than sermons. Want to make a point or raise an issue? Tell a story. – Janet Litherland
At its very core, marketing is storytelling. The best advertising campaigns take us on an emotional journey – appealing to our wants, needs and desires – while at the same time telling us about a product or service. – Melinda Partin
Stories are the single most powerful weapon in a leader’s arsenal. – Howard Gardner
Story is the vehicle we use to make sense of our lives in a world that often defies logic. – Jim Trelease
Drama comes from contrast, showing the difference between ‘what was’ and ‘what is’. The greater the difference, the greater the drama. – Lou Hoffman
Storytelling is the calculated release of information. – Alex Garland
Stories are our primary tools of learning and teaching, the repositories of our lore and legends. They bring order into our confusing world. Think about how many times a day you use stories to pass along data, insights, memories or common-sense advice. – Edward Miller
In order to win a man to your cause, you must first reach his heart, the great high road to his reason. – Abraham Lincoln
Visual storytelling of one kind or another has been around since cavemen were drawing on the walls. – Frank Darabont
Listening is the secret to discover great stories. – Fyrefly London
Science is not opposed to storytelling. Science is a genre of storytelling. Stories of the real world, inspired by observations thereof. – Sean Carroll
You can’t be a good storyteller without a good story, yet how something is communicated is often as important as that which is being communicated.” David Paull
Traveling – it leaves you speechless and then turns you into a storyteller. – Ibn Battuta
I am a story teller. If I wanted to send a message I would have written a sermon. – Phillip Pullman
If you don’t’ like what is being said, then change the conversation. – Don Draper
The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words. – William H. Gass
I’m a storyteller. I love to tell stories about brands. I love to tell stories, period. I like painting pictures through the words, and that’s what I do. – Gary Vaynerchuk
Stories are powerful. They are the emotional glue that connects the storyteller with his audience and, more importantly, the audience with the idea the storyteller is trying to convey. – Jon Thomas
Brands are built around stories. And stories of identity – who we are, where we’ve come from – are the most effective stories of all. This storytelling is a powerful way to bring brands to life. – Bill Dauphinais
For me, the drive is storytelling. To be a part of an art that tells a story and to be a catalyst, a color in that, is very exciting. – Alden Ehrenreich
One thing hasn’t changed much in thousands of years…there’s still not better way to stir emotions that a good story. – Boxer Creative
A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another. – Seth Godin
You can’t sell anything if you can’t tell anything. – Beth Comstock
The most powerful person in the world is the story teller. The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come. – Steve Jobs
Part of telling a new story has to be telling it in new ways. – Josh Stearns
Stories tell us of what we already knew and forgot, and remind us of what we haven’t yet imagined. – Anne L. Watson
A great lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting – only the deeply personal and familiar. – John Steinbeck
I’m a storyteller – that’s the chief function of a director. And they’re moving pictures, let’s make ’em move! – Howard Hawks
The role of the storyteller is to awaken the storyteller in others. – Jack Zipes
If a nation loses its storyteller, it loses its childhood. – Peter Handke
Our narratives transcend fact, for they are formed from the delicious emotional nuances of sensation: sound, smell, moods, sensuality, taste, color, shadow, texture, rhythm, cadence, tears, laughter, warmth, and coolness all experienced here, at a place on this earth. – Robert Archibald
Facts, opinions, and value statements push people apart, stories bring people together. – Chuck Matthei
Stories create community, enable us to see through the eyes of other people, and open us to the claims of others. – Peter Forbes
Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives-the power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change – truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts. – Salmon Rushdie
Leaders lead by telling stories that give others permission to lead, not follow. – Michael Margolis
