Shirley Jackson Quotes

I don't know that movies are important. But I know that stories are important. Movies may disappear. They've only been around, for God's sake, for the last hundred years... I think that it's the need to tell stories, and that people need to be told stories. It's the old sitting around the fire, you know.

Humanity's legacy of stories and storytelling is the most precious we have. All wisdom is in our stories and songs. A story is how we construct our experiences. At the very simplest, it can be: 'He/she was born, lived, died.' Probably that is the template of our stories - a beginning, middle, and end. This structure is in our minds.

There is something in human beings that loves stories.

We are made of the stories we have heard and read all through our lives.

Humankind has been telling stories forever and will be telling stories forever.

The great thing is to have been surrounded by stories all my life.

I grew up in Sierra Leone, in a small village where as a boy my imagination was sparked by the oral tradition of storytelling. At a very young age I learned the importance of telling stories - I saw that stories are the most potent way of seeing anything we encounter in our lives, and how we can deal with living.

The truth is, my folk-lore friends and my Saturday Reviewer differ with me on the important problem of the origin of folk-tales. They think that a tale probably originated where it was found.

It is an ancient need to be told stories. But the story needs a great storyteller. Thanks for all of it, Jo.

I've tried to show in my most recent book, the 'Irresistible Fairytale', that in order to talk about any genre, particularly what we call simple genre - a myth, a legend, an anecdote, a tall tale, and so on - we really have to understand something about the origin of stories all together.

Humans are kind of story-propagating creatures. If you think of how we spend our days, think of all the time you spend on entertainment. How much of your entertainment centers around stories? Most pieces of music tell stories. Even hanging out with your friends, you talk, you tell stories to each other. They're all stories. We live in stories.

Time is what allows stories to spread into people's consciousness.

People love stories. They need stories.

I come from a big family of storytellers and, growing up, I liked hearing about the years before I was born.

I think there is a human instinct to tell stories, no matter who you are or where you live.

I love stories. When I'm writing, what I pretend subconsciously is that we're cavemen, we're sitting around the fire, and I'm telling you stories. If I bore you, you're probably going to pick up a big club and hit me over the head.

We are the only animal that tells stories.

Stories are one of the means by which a culture preserves its identity.

People need stories; they want stories. They always will.

It's important to tell stories, and it's a worthwhile thing to do.

Stories are told over time, and so they naturally accrue meanings.

Fairy tales and folk tales are part of the DNA of all stories and great fun to write.

I come from a family of storytellers.

My mother was an oral storyteller. She would tell stories over and over again.

I appreciate hearing different stories. It inspires me.