Kathi Appelt Quotes

It's important to tell your story. It's important to listen.

Storytelling is about listening in any media.

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.

It's populated by people who, by and large, have terrific communication skills. Every day is an extraordinary day. For me, it was just a great area for storytelling.

I love sharing my stories and experiences with people and connecting to them on both a humorous and emotional level.

I love telling people's stories.

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

I always encourage other people to share a story and voices. That is so important.

You have to understand, my dears, that the shortest distance between truth and a human being is a story.

That’s how people live, by telling stories. What’s the first thing a kid says when he learns how to talk? “Tell me a story.” That’s how we understand who we are, where we come from. Stories are everything.

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.

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

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.

Good dialogue is very important.

I wanted to be the conduit for somebody else's experiences, filtered through me, and passed on to other people. Which is the job description, really.

Most people - and particularly people whose lives have nothing to do with books at all - are intrigued by the idea that somebody wants to listen to them and get it right.

The real business of life is trying to understand each other.

I love meeting new people; I think everyone has a story to tell. We should all listen sometimes.

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.

You have to figure out who the right person is to tell the story. And often, people who are very self-aware will only sound as if they are pontificating if they tell the story.

This is important: to get to know people, listen, expand the circle of ideas. The world is crisscrossed by roads that come closer together and move apart, but the important thing is that they lead towards the Good.

My life is storytelling. I believe in stories, in their incredible power to keep people alive, to keep the living alive, and the dead.

I love how a story can help someone discuss something they otherwise would not.

The human race has been telling stories since it began.

My only job is to write in such a way that the reader gets a new handle on humanity.