Nancy Willard Quotes

I want to be remembered as a storyteller more than someone who had something meaningful to say.

I appreciate hearing different stories. It inspires me.

I've always been fascinated by the grassroots folktale level of a culture, and as a storyteller, I have to follow what seems to be leading me on.

I didn't write this song. Someone was talking in a room. I just wrote down everything they said.

I don't want to be remembered as a writer. I would rather be remembered as a storyteller.

I am a storyteller, and I take great pride in the storytelling and a great joy.

George Clinton is the best storyteller in the world.

I always wanted to tell stories. From the time I had 20 cents or a quarter in my pocket, I could peddle my old Rambler 500 down to the corner store and buy comic books.

I sort of love reading the scripts and going, 'Oh wow, what a great idea. I never would have thought of that.'

He just kind of talks them through, and then I get the fun part cause I get to make up the stories.

Everyone seems quite good at stories and making them up.

I love hearing other people's stories, and I freely admit I'm scavenging for material through their conversations, but really, at the same time, I'm living an ordinary life.

There is something in human beings that loves stories.

Even the worst book can give us something to think about.

I want to work with anyone who's passionate about telling a story. I obviously have a list of people I really love, but it's a really long list.

When my sister and I were very young, my father used to tell us fairy stories that he'd made up. My mother was always telling him that he should write them down, but he would say, 'Well, they've all been done before. There are so many blooming books in the world - why should I write another one?'

I don't have a great imagination to share something with you that you don't know, so it's about interpreting things - a dialogue.

I don't think there's a shortage of material in the world. Or in my head. I just pray for continued good health, because I've got other stories to tell.

A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze of the past.

I don't believe that anything's totally invented... If you're completely inventing a story, there wouldn't be an urge to tell it.

I really enjoy listening to stories. I remember them and keep them in my mind.

My life is storytelling. I believe in stories, in their incredible power to keep people alive, to keep the living alive, and the dead.

Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.

I tell stories. That's what I do. I've always told stories.

I'm not a natural storyteller at all. If anything, I'm a natural interviewer, a natural listener, but I'm not a natural storyteller.