Shailene Woodley Quotes

If one loves stories, then one would naturally love the story of the story. Or the story behind the story, pick your preposition. It does seem to me to be a kind of animal impulse almost, a mammalian curiosity. For a reader to wonder about the autobiography in a fiction may be completely unavoidable and in fact may speak to the success of a particular narrative, though it may also speak to its failure.

When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one.

A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.

The way I sometimes approach my work, when I look at a script for the first time, is to identify what the archetypes are and what the writing is trying to do in that context.

He who reads a story only once is condemned to read the same story his whole life.

I think the way you become a good storyteller is to read a lot of stories and evaluate them in your own mind.

It's so pretentious, but I believe that with comedy, if you have a good story, 90% of it is casting. Once you get the guys and gals in there, it's pretty easy to make a funny movie.

To create anything — whether a short story or a magazine profile or a film or a sitcom — is to believe, if only momentarily, you are capable of magic. These essays are about that magic — which is sometimes perilous, sometimes infectious, sometimes fragile, sometimes failed, sometimes infuriating, sometimes triumphant, and sometimes tragic. I went up there. I wrote. I tried to see.

I write what needs to be written the way that seems genuinely right. If what comes out of it are stories, then it is my vocation to believe in them and in the fact that they'll interest people and maybe affect their lives.

I wrote a novel because I had a yen to do it. I believe this is sufficient reason to set out to tell a story.

Directing made me realise what I do as an actor that's extraneous, it focuses your mind on story, story, story.

Stories are our attempts to share our values & beliefs with the hopes that we may attract those who believe what we believe. This is the basis of forming a trusting relationship. Story telling, therefor, is only worthwhile when it tells what you stand for, not what you do.

When you’re focused outside and believe that your problem is caused by someone else, rather than by your attachment to the story you’re believing in the moment, then you are your own victim, and the situation appears to be hopeless.

If the point of life is the same as the point of a story, the point of life is character transformation.

It is not usually possible in a poem or a story to make the relationship between particular and universal fully explicit. Those who try to do so end up writing parables.

But there was more to it than that. As the Amazing Maurice said, it was just a story about people and rats. And the difficult part of it was deciding who the people were, and who were the rats.

I never plan. I never know what the next page is going to be..... But that's the fun of writing a novel or a story, because I don't know what's going to happen next.

I like directing much better. It's more fun, that's all there is to it. It's essentially the same job, which is storytelling, but you have more control over the way you want to tell the story. It's a high. I love it.

Ezra clapped his hands. "all right," he said. "In addition to the books we're reading as a class, I want to do an extra side project on unreliable narrators." Devon Arliss raised her hand. "what does that mean?" Ezra strode around the room. "well, the narrator tells us the story in the book, right? But what if... the narrator isn't telling us the truth? Maybe he's telling us his skewed version of the story to get you on his side. Or to scare you. Or maybe he's crazy!

You're always looking for some new way to tell the same story, but it's how they get to the happy end that is the challenge and the fun for a writer.

I really believe that we all have the ability to come out of our story. But you have to tell your story first in order to come out of it.

Once you told yourself a story enough times, it was so easy to keep on believing it.

Probably a good idea, let me know how it ends" "I already know how it ends" "You read the ending first?" "I always read the ending before I commit to the whole book." "If you know how it ends, why read the book?" "I don't read for the ending. I read for the story".

Who are we but the stories we tell about ourselves, particularly if we accept them?

Every picture tells a story, don't it?