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
Don’t plunge into the middle of it as you did before and mix everything all up!
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 your heart forever. Native American Proverb
He hopes that the hand which stokes his forehead will never stop will never die. He hopes that there will never come a time when the old folks won’t be sitting around the living room, talking about where they’ve come from, and what they’ve seen, and what’s happened to them and their kinfolk.
Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world. Robert McKee
I tried to tell her all that had happened, all that I’d come to understand: the meaningless objectness of the world, the universal bruteness. She only stared, troubled at my noise. She’d forgotten all language long ago, or maybe had never known any.
If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten. Rudyard Kipling, English short story writer, poet and novelist
The world isn’t just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn’t that make life a story?
Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell. Seth Godin
It can tell you the incredible story of Georges Méliès, his wife, their goddaughter, and a beloved clock maker whose son grew up to be a magician.
Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue. Andrew Davis, speaker and best-selling author of Brandscaping and Town, Inc.
We tell ourselves there are reasons for the things that happen, but we’re just telling ourselves stories. We make them up. They don’t mean anything.
We cannot create a world we can’t imagine and stories are the engines of our imaginations. Josh Stearns
You have to be a bit of a liar to tell a story the right way.
That’s what storytellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instill hope again and again. Walt Disney in Saving Mr. Banks
Before Laura finished talking, I had already decided that I would take her workshop. She said she would teach us how to tell our stories in a more compelling way. I was curious to find out how this white woman, born in New York City, had become a storyteller.
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, principal of BB&Co Strategic Storytelling
The prime motive was the desire of a tale teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them.
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, author, in The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human
There are a lot of things you can do with film, but you don’t have unlimited access to your audience. In other words, keep it simple. You tell the story; you don’t look for the camera technician to tell the story for you. When you see a filmmaker getting too fancy, you can bet he’s worried either about his story or about his ability to tell it.
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, Nigerian poet and novelist
Sharing tales of those we’ve lost is how we keep from really losing them.
After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world. Philip Pullman, best selling British author
Because you’re like a story that hasn’t happened yet. Because I want to see what you will do. I want to be part of the unfolding of the tale.
Every great love starts with a great story Nicholas Sparks, American writer and novelist, in The Notebook
Nice things don’t happen in storybooks, Taryn says. Or when they do happen, something bad happens next. Because otherwise the story would be boring, and no one would read it.
The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon. Brandon Sanderson, American fantasy and science fiction writer, in The Way of Kings
It was on that day that I knew I wanted to tell the story of my family. Because horror on Earth is real and it is every day. It is like a flower or the sun; it cannot be contained.
To hell with facts! We need stories! Ken Kesey, American novelist, essayist, and countercultural figure
I could see an old and beautiful olive tree just up ahead.
Storytelling is about connecting to other people and helping people to see what you see. Michael Margolis
If we don’t tell strange stories, when something strange happens we won’t believe it.
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, American writer and college lecturer, in The Name of the Wind
So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can’t prove the question either way, which story do you prefer?
Stories are memory aids, instruction manuals and moral compasses. Aleks Krotoski, The Guardian
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
Drama is anticipation mingled with uncertainty. William Archer, Scottish critic and writer
Don’t adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on the story.
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, American psychologist
Every great love starts with a great story
Great stories happen to those who can tell them. Ira Glass
A story can be new and yet tell about olden times. The past comes into existence with the story.
The story making process enables us to simplify complex information into the core essence of understanding. Y. Gabriel, Storytelling in Organizations
Sometimes the right person tells the right story at the right moment, and through a combination of luck and design, a creative expression gains new force.
The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic slice of truth, wisdom, is dying out. Walter Benjamin
Mount Eskel feels the boots of outsiders. They paused, and then now even Bena stayed silent for the final line. ‘Mount Eskel won’t bear their weight.
Storytelling is the essential human activity. The harder the situation, the more essential it is. Tim O’Brien
If a person wanted to get to the moon, there was a way; it all depended on whether you knew the directions exactly which way to go and what to do to get there; it depended on whether you knew the story of how others before you had gone.
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
I could tell more, but I cannot see what help it will be to the world. As for me, I am past human help or hope.
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
Where there is an absence of story, or perhaps a bad story, a good storyteller walks in and changes reality. He doesn’t critique the existing story, or lament about his boredom, like a critic. He just tells something different and invites other people into the new story he is telling.
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
I wish that you will have children together, and I wish that once or twice you will tell them about their Uncle Carlo that they never saw.
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. Paul Lansky
I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.
Essentially, a story expresses how and why life changes. Robert McKee
It is the story of all life that is holy and good to tell, and of us two leggeds sharing in it with the four leggeds and the wings of the air and of green things; for these are children of one mother and their father is one Spirit.
The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of all kinds. Dalai Lama
One day one of their number would write a book about all this, but none of them would believe it, because none of them would remember it that way.
There are 2 ways to share knowledge. You can push information out. You can pull them in with a story
So you’ll read to him from one of your books, and he’ll ask to see the pictures. When he looks at the pictures, he’ll get so excited he’ll want to draw one of his own.
You have to understand that the shortest distance between a human being and truth is a story. Anthony de Mello
By the time they woke up in the morning, breakfast was coming down. After a brief shower of orange juice, low clouds of sunny side eggs moved in followed by pieces of toast. Butter and jelly sprinkled down for the toast. And most of the time it rained milk afterwards.
To be a person is to have a story to tell. Isak Dinesen
Many houses had been damaged by giant meatballs, stores were boarded up and there was no more school for the children.
You’re never going to kill storytelling, because it’s built into the human plan. We come with it. Margaret Atwood
But it never rained rain. It never snowed snow. And it never blew just wind.
There’s always room for a story that can transport people to another place. J.K. Rowling
It’s funny, but even as we were sliding down the hill we thought we saw a giant pat of butter at the top, and we could almost smell the mashed potatoes.
I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one. Flannery O’Connor
The story falls flat on the scare factor as the wolves are only perceived as the usual unwelcome guests in the family’s home and the story is slow paced as it took time for the family to decide to rush back to their home.
70 percent of what we do involves staring into space and trying to figure out what the hell happens next. Robert Gregory Browne
Mustafa rode on the donkey’s back, and Nasreddine walked behind. The path was still muddy from the last rainfall, so the young boy took oof his slippers to keep them from getting dirty.
