Alan Garner Quotes

I grew up in a society with a very ancient and strong oral storytelling tradition. I was told stories, as a child, by my grandmother, and my father as well.

It's good to pass on stories.

Storytelling was a way to see the world bigger than the one you were looking at, and that had great appeal for me. I think, since that was part of my upbringing, it became part of me, and I wanted to pass it along to my kids and my grandkids.

My mother was an oral storyteller. She would tell stories over and over again.

Storytelling is the oldest form of entertainment there is. From campfires and pictograms - the Lascaux cave paintings may be as much as twenty thousand years old - to tribal songs and epic ballads passed down from generation to generation, it is one of the most fundamental ways humans have of making sense of the world.

I'm a storyteller. I do this for the next generations. They have to know what traditional alpinism is all about.

The earliest voice listened to by the nations in their infancy was the voice of the storyteller.

Storytelling is the oldest form of education.

I'm one of these children who grew up at the knee of my grandmother and her elder sister, listening to very old people talk about their memories.

Passed down from generation to generation, storytelling was an art in my family.

In the ancient times, bards went around singing the epics, which were storehouses of philosophy.

Storytelling is an ancient and honorable act. An essential role to play in the community or tribe. It's one that I embrace wholeheartedly and have been fortunate enough to be rewarded for.

My mother is the best storyteller. And her mother was too.

Each time, storytellers clothed the naked body of the myth in their own traditions, so that listeners could relate more easily to its deeper meaning.

I grew up in a family where the love of stories is very strong. And there's also a love of performance. I think one reason stories were so important in my family was that we moved around a lot.

Myths are part of our DNA. We're a civilisation with a continuous culture. The effort to modernize it keeps it alive. Readers connect with it.

I think the story is the most ancient form of human entertainment.

Before we were born, a whole society of storytellers was already here. The storytellers who were here before us taught us how to be human.

It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.

The dead and past stories that I have told again in divers fashions, are not set down without authority.

My grandparents told endless stories about the town they were from. It became an almost mythic place.

Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.

In my family, telling stories is just a way of life.

Storytelling is important. Part of human continuity.

I didn't learn stories, I just absorbed them.