David Maraniss Quotes

Obviously when it comes to the question of telling stories about other people's lives in a situation as political as South Africa, you get to be political.

A story can be new and yet tell about olden times. The past comes into existence with the story.

I grew up in Sierra Leone, in a small village where as a boy my imagination was sparked by the oral tradition of storytelling. At a very young age I learned the importance of telling stories - I saw that stories are the most potent way of seeing anything we encounter in our lives, and how we can deal with living.

Stories can bring alive the moral universe in a very vivid, useful, engaging way.

History is not just a story related by a fool.

The one who tells the stories rules.

A story is much more effective than a statistic.

The word “History” is mostly made up of the word “Story”.

Stories are told over time, and so they naturally accrue meanings.

We have privilege in our hands as storytellers. We need to tell stories that reflect our world.

A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth.

The most powerful words in English are, 'Tell me a story.'

But if we have people who have the power to tell a story, there will always be readers.

How [stories] are told, who tells them, when they’re told, how many stories are told — are really dependent on power.

The real story of Detroit [...] can be summed up in seven words. Private enterprise built it, government destroyed it.

But in a story I can steal her soul.

But this too is true: stories can save us.

Know something, sugar? Stories only happen to people who can tell them.

There is no greater power on this earth than story.

Always remember: In the end, the surviver gets to tell the story.

The problem with every story is you tell it after the fact.

The industrial powerhouse of 1950 [Detroit] is now a crime-ridden wasteland with a functioning literacy rate equivalent to West African basket-cases.

Facts interest me less than the trailing smoke of stories.

People tend to forget that the word "history" contains the word "story".

For every once upon a time there must be a story to follow, because if a story doesn't, something else will, and it might not be as harmless as a story.