John P. Kotter Quotes

Over the years I have become convinced that we learn best - and change - from hearing stories that strike a chord within us.

If you care about the characters, then whatever scary thing happens to them, you feel it even more.

I think people will discover themselves in 'Ankahee.'

It's so easy to call something a Jewish story or a gay story or a woman's story. Aesthetically, if a story is not universal, it has failed. Your obligation is to the story. One rule creatively, and emotionally, is its universality.

Humanity has this need to hear stories because they connect us with other people, they teach us about our own feelings. We feel less lonely when we see other people going through the same things, even if they're fictional characters.

I don't do films because they tell a particular kind of story, I do films with stories that touch me.

Sometimes hearing the stories is going to change people's lives much more than if they read it.

Personal stories are the emotional glue that connects your audience to your message.

Are people drawn to each other because of the stories they carry inside?

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

For me a film is at its best when you can start filling in the story with your own life experience.

To connect to people at the deepest level, you need stories.

We all know to feel sympathy for those who've suffered from drug addiction, child abuse, and terminal illness, so the set up elicits an emotional response that the story itself very well may not earn. Energy generated by the fiction itself is likely to produce more light.

I think everybody wants to connect. There is nothing worse than feeling disconnected. And stories that really move people and make people care are the ones where they feel some sort of connection.

I believe that everybody needs to tell their story - to be heard, to be seen, to be acknowledged, to be understood. We all want that, deep down inside - and writing a book is a great way to make sense of your own experience and to share it with others.

Your movie should lull people into a place of openness and vulnerability. If it is just a diatribe, it's never going to work.

My favorite stories are human, so I'm always looking for...

The heart of change is in the emotions.

A good movie humanizes people.

I could imagine myself becoming one of Marla's stories.

In all my work, I try to tell great stories that people want to go to the movie theater to watch, or want to turn on, and are compelled to watch it, over and over and over again, and will make a mark when they grow up.

I did not know if the story was factually true or not, but it was emotionally true [...].

The only way for us to help ourselves is to help others and to listen to each other's stories.

You have to find your tone and work within that to make it as real so the audience can really engage in the story you're telling.

We're all strangers connected by what we reveal, what we share, what we take away--our stories. I guess that's what I love about books--they are thin strands of humanity that tether us to one another for a small bit of time, that make us feel less alone or even more comfortable with our aloneness, if need be.