Aaron Koblin Quotes

The - the sort of thing that I want to do is to strike a resonant chord of universality in other people, which is best done by fiction.

What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people with their own humanity.

The thing about storytelling is it's very stripped down; it's very much at the core of 'I'm a person and I'm just telling you this thing, and I need you to trust me and believe that what I'm saying is true, and if you believe that what I'm saying is true then we are connected to each other.' I think there's something really beautiful about that.

I've always been interested in listening to people's stories.

There was no short answer to this; like so much else, it was a long story. But what really makes any story real is knowing someone will hear it. And understand.

My passion is to tell stories that reflect humanity.

Data loses to story. Every time. Your statistics don’t trump my experience.

I'm a conduit for telling people's stories. It's a privilege.

I think statistics go in one ear and out the other. All of us respond to stories more than numbers.

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.

To share our stories is not only a worthwhile endeavor for the storyteller, but for those who hear our stories and feel less alone because of it.

I've found that the common humanity of people is the most relatable thing, and even if your stories are very specific about a different place, if you have a relatable core of humanity, people will go along with it.

Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it's far removed from your situation. This is what I try to tell my students: this is one great thing that literature can do - it can make us identify with situations and people far away.

There is something in human beings that loves stories.

At the end of the day, stories connect us, not politics. And there's so many stories out there waiting to be told. It's just a matter of who's out there listening.

I do truly believe that the smallest stories can wind up being the biggest because it's through the specific that a writer can best access the universal.

As a writer and as a reader, I really believe in the power of narrative to allow us ways to experience life beyond our own, ways to reflect on things that have happened to us and a chance to engage with the world in ways that transcend time and gender and all sorts of things.

Stories are the common ground that allow people to connect, despite all our defences and all our differences.

There are so many people in the world with so many different perspectives. But ultimately, at the heart of it, they're people.

I love relatable stories.

I love theater. I love sitting in an audience and having the actors right there, playing out what it means to be a human being.

I hope that doing truthful portrayals of people in a variety of circumstances gives people a kind of subterranean link to those characters.

My search is always to find ways to chronicle, to share and to document stories about people, just everyday people. Stories that offer transformation, that lean into transcendence, but that are never sentimental, that never look away from the darkest things about us.

I think that emotion and good stories can cross the times.

So for me, it can be theatre or being in L.A. or in some other part of the world, as long as I can explore storytelling and human connection through storytelling, I'm quite content.