Michael Frayn Quotes

Well, anything can happen and it happened to me. I learned everybody has a story.

I see all art as a complement to telling people's stories. I'm in the storytelling business. I believe that the humanity that all of us share is the stories of our lives, and everybody has a story. Your story is as important as the next person's story.

I believe that every life is a collection of individual 'journey stories.'

The truth is that History, with its imposing capital H, is simply the amalgamation of many quotidian lives lived in very ordinary ways. History is always personal. If you read Holocaust survivor or American slavery survivor narratives, you realize all too well that these great Historical moments were personal to someone at some time.

Human beings. People's stories. That's really what gets me excited.

Are people drawn to each other because of the stories they carry inside?

But how could you live and have no story to tell?

Stories are people. I'm a story, you're a story ... your father is a story. Our stories go in every direction, but sometimes, if we're lucky, our stories join into one, and for a while, we're less alone.

I call [ordinary people] real people, because they have in themselves an incredible treasure - stories, a way of speaking, a way of sharing, an innocence and a perversity which I find very interesting to discover little by little.

I remember reading [ Studs Terkel's] "Working" when it first came out and just finding that very powerful. I was going into community organizing. What stuck was to reveal the sacredness of ordinary people's lives. That everybody has a story. And I think Studs is terrific at drawing out that shimmering quality of people's everyday struggles.

We all have different narratives; all of our narratives are at different stages of development.

It's not just that everyone has a story. It's that everyone has a thousand stories. Everyone is infinite.

I like to read everything, really, especially autobiographies.

We just write about the stuff that happens to us.

I write about my experiences, so a lot of times, I do write about people.

All human stories are interesting. You don't put a kid in a show because you need a device. They have a story, too.

Usually the most interesting stories are written not on paper but hearts.

All my life I've been interested in other people's stories. I wanted to know them, understand them, feel them.

But I live an interesting life and I can tell a pretty good story and it has helped my career. But the downside is people know everything.

I'm always interested in people being able to share stories that allow us to see the landscape of human foibles, challenges, and ultimately triumph.

People who live great stories know failure isn’t a judgment, it’s an education.

I really do like listening to stuff that's happened to other people. I guess that's why I like to read.

Everybody has a story. It's like families. You might not know who they are, might have lost them, but they exist all the same. You might drift apart or you might turn your back on them, but you can't say you haven't got them. Same goes for stories.

Few of us write great novels; all of us live them.

That story about the two women in my life is - a lot of people get upset, a lot of people question it. Steven Soderbergh said to me, "The story of your life is incredible. The real story of your life that's interesting, more interesting than all the other stuff - the franchises, the movies, the songs, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra - the real thing that's interesting and unbelievable is the relationship with these two women. And if you're willing to put that out there, you know then, you're going to have a great movie. Because that's the movie."