Peter Hedges Quotes

I think I'm always drawn to a good story.

I don't think we'll ever lose the desire for people to tell stories or to hear stories or to be entrapped in a beautiful story.

I can be so blown away by story lines.

My first duty to write a gripping yarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel. Only third comes the idea.

I'm a fan of great storytelling.

A story invites both writer and reader into a kind of superficial ease: we want to slide along, pleasingly entertained, lost in the fictional dream.

We are all like Scheherazade's husband, in that we want to know what happens next.

I have never forgotten the almost mystical power over an audience a storyteller has, when the story is deep and links you.

People still love a good story, and I don't think that will change.

Great theater continues to bind us, one to the other, and most of us will travel far and wide to see a good story told well.

People just love stories.

We're moved by emotions and characters and stories. We love that.

You have to tell a super story that has some fantastical element, but the human element is what's going to keep people watching.

A good story isn't preachy; a good story is always entertaining.

You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author's world.

Stories have always been the things that entertain me and make me feel happy and sad and move me and give me the experience of being able to live many lives in one lifetime. It's the best thing about being alive.

I'm writing for my ideal reader, for somebody who's willing to take the time, who's willing to get lost in a new world, who's willing to do their part. But then I have to do my part and give them a sound and a voice that they believe in enough to keep going.

People love to be told stories, but it's the sugar that draws you into the theater.

Stories have a special way of putting us inside the people, inside the boots of the soldiers. You're absorbed in a way a documentary or nonfiction can't do for you.

If work isn't rooted in comedy, people will turn from it, or they'll use it like soap opera.

When I give myself over to a good novel, I surrender to the truths fashioned from one writer's heart, mind and soul. I do not waste a nanosecond wondering whether what I'm reading 'really happened.'

Oh yeah, I grew up with comics. You know, I always like to describe myself as a 'narrative junkie.' I love novels, I love comics, movies, TV. If it's a good story, I'm hooked.

You think about taking audiences on a journey.

Hack fiction exploits curiosity without really satisfying it or making connections between it and anything else in the world.

I try to write stories that are thrilling and full of mystery and funny all at the same time, stories that raise moral questions but come up with very few moral answers, stories that emotionally touch readers through the characters.