Hans-Ulrich Obrist Quotes

Long before we created libraries, or even books, poetry was the way we humans remembered who we were, a primary means of documenting and contemplating our lives.

Most of our writers tend to be recorders.

People have always been recording what's going on around them in one form or another.

The fact is that the learning process goes on, and so long as the voices are not stilled and the singers go on singing some of it gets through.

Read the folklore masters. Go to galleries. Walk in the woods. That's what you need to be an artist or storyteller.

We're trying to let people see what their grandfather told them about.

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

I think writing is an act of remembrance, I think that Instagram is an act of remembrance, and I think curating a show is an act of memory, too.

We need the expressive arts, the ancient scribes, the storytellers, the priests.

If you don't tell your stories, other people will tell their story about you. It's important that we nurture and protect these memories. Things change. Existence means change.

The most powerful words in English are 'Tell me a story,' words that are intimately related to the complexity of history, the origins of language, the continuity of the species, the taproot of our humanity, our singularity, and art itself. I was born into the century in which novels lost their stories, poems their rhymes, paintings their form, and music its beauty, but that does not mean I had to like that trend or go along with it. I fight against these movements with every book I write.

For the storyteller, for the arrowmaker, language does indeed represent the only chance for survival.

There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.

Take a step, breathe in the world, give it out again in story, poem, song, art.

A lot of artists use memories. A lot of prose writers, a lot of poets, a lot of songwriters, refer back to something. Generally it's all you've got, unless you're brilliant and can write totally in the now.

Remember Old Nan's stories, Bran. Remember the way she told them, the sound of her voice. So long as you do that, part of her will always be alive in you.

Stories live in your blood and bones, follow the seasons and light candles on the darkest night-every storyteller knows she or he is also a teacher.

Storytelling is our oldest form of remembering the promises we have made to one another and to our various gods, and the promises given in return; it is a way of recording our human emotions and desires and taboos.

All good novelists have bad memories. What you remember comes out as journalism; what you forget goes into the compost of the imagination.

I write and film history; I don't make it.

That's what it's all about - making art is making something live forever. Human beings especially - we can't hold on to them in any way. Painting and art is a way of holding onto things and making things go on through time.

I guess storytelling's always been in my blood. My mom said I was always dressing up and jumping in front of the camera and putting on plays. There must be a part of me that has to express that. If we were living in prehistoric clans, I'd probably be sitting by the campfire taking two stones and showing you how dinosaurs were chasing us. I'd be the one finding a way to communicate and perform.

Humanity's legacy of stories and storytelling is the most precious we have. All wisdom is in our stories and songs. A story is how we construct our experiences.

Our stories are what we have,” Our Good Mother says. “Our stories preserve us. we give them to one another. Our stories have value. Do you understand?

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.