John Lanchester Quotes

I think statistics go in one ear and out the other. All of us respond to stories more than numbers.

Stories change people while statistics give them something to argue about.

I do truly believe that the smallest stories can wind up being the biggest because it's through the specific that a writer can best access the universal.

My work is focused on using data to tell stories and explore our common humanity.

Stories are the single most powerful tool in a leader's toolkit.

You want people to feel something when you tell a story, whether they feel happy or whether they feel sad.

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

I want to earn a reader's capacity to be moved.

The best way to get people to connect with an issue is to humanize it. You can do so much more powerfully with music and touch the heart.

My primary goal is always to tell a story that will resonate with people on a deeply emotional level.

There is no greater power on this earth than story.

You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul

I believe that stories are incredibly important, possibly in ways we don't understand, in allowing us to make sense of our lives, in allowing us to escape our lives, in giving us empathy and in creating the world that we live in.

I've done a lot of theater, and I know that it's a different audience each time who doesn't know the story, and we have to tell it.

To share our stories is not only a worthwhile endeavor for the storyteller, but for those who hear our stories and feel less alone because of it.

Every kid has a story to tell!

Every story I do is about people. It's my survival instinct - one person, one story.

I am not interested in entertaining people. I think being an actor provides an opportunity to give people an experience they can connect to, reflect on, learn from, laugh at.

I tell stories. Because I believe you can do things that joke tellers can't do, and that is, bring your audience along.

The funny thing about writing is, although you are writing about an experience which only you have had, you are trying to welcome other people into it, and there are ways I think of doing this, and one of them is through the senses, through the sounds and the smells.

As a writer and as a reader, I really believe in the power of narrative to allow us ways to experience life beyond our own, ways to reflect on things that have happened to us and a chance to engage with the world in ways that transcend time and gender and all sorts of things.

In any situation that calls for you to persuade, convince or manage someone or a group of people to do something, the ability to tell a purposeful story will be your secret sauce. Telling to win through purposeful stories is situation, industry, gender, demographic, and psychographic-agnostic. It's an all-purpose, everyone wins tool.

The thing about storytelling is it's very stripped down; it's very much at the core of 'I'm a person and I'm just telling you this thing, and I need you to trust me and believe that what I'm saying is true, and if you believe that what I'm saying is true then we are connected to each other.' I think there's something really beautiful about that.

Stories always seem to get better with age.

The magic happens when you take facts and figures, features and benefits, decks and PowerPoints - relatively soulless information - and embed them in the telling of a purposeful story. Your 'tell' renders an experience to your audience, making the information inside the story memorable, resonant and actionable.