Storytelling Value Quotes

At the end of the day, you don't remember 'Mother India' or 'Pyaasa' for the business it did, you remember them because they had a good story to tell.

Cinema which is well-made, for any kind of audience, is worthy of being watched by just about anybody who would like to watch a good story being told.

We need narrative; it feeds us in a particular way, and deconstructing it completely before you've actually experienced it, I think it leaves us unfed.

Art is created to make us, to make our passage through the world better, fruitful - and I would say that every story in the end, if it is good, tells us something. This is actually what I meant when I said a novelist is a teacher. Which is why I am constantly dealing with "didactic". Now a teacher in the sense I use it is not somebody who has the profession of standing in front of children, with a piece of chalk in his hand scribbling on the blackboard. That is not the teacher I have in mind. The teacher I have in mind is something less tangible.

It seems to me that good novels celebrate the mystery in ordinary life, and summing it all up in psychological terms strips the mystery away.

A novelist has mad a fictional representation of life. I doing so, he has revealed to us more significance, it may be, than he could find in life itself.

Right now I just want to play good roles, and if the role happens to be a gay man, that's not of any import other than, 'Is it a good story? Does it say something that's interesting?'

I don't trust novels with points, do you? If a novel is only about a point, the writer should just say it in as few words as possible so we can take it in and go back to watching 'The Bachelor' on television.

I'm really not interested in writing about science at all. I mean, I try to get the information right, the details right. But fiction isn't good at conveying information: It's good at telling stories about people in interesting situations.

Put simply the novel stands between us and the hardening concept of statistical man. There is no other medium in which we can live for so long and so intimately with a character. That is the service a novel renders.

If he can give his readers no reason why they should read his book, except that the events happened to him, it is not a valid book.

...Don't let me ever hear you say, 'I can't read fiction. I only have time for the truth.' Fiction is the truth, fool! Ever hear of 'literature'? That means fiction, too, stupid.

Anyone can have a once-upon-a-time or a happily-ever-after, but it's the journey between that makes the story worth telling.

All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. And then there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.

After we air the call, it's gone. I always thought, 'What a waste.' That's such a powerful story, and there's no way to revisit it or share it.

If I am offered a biopic on a person people know almost everything about, what is the point doing it? A film on someone about whom very less is known is something that would interest me.

Fiction is a lie that is told in the service of truth.

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 felt that there was a beautiful story [ in "All We Had"] to be told and one that was valuable and also one that was a size that I could do as my first.

When I walk into a room, I know my storytelling has value and I have to sell my idea. I have to help people see the financial value and gain in my work.

I never saw fairy tales as an escape or a cop-out... On the contrary, speaking for myself, it is the way to understand reality.

I like telling stories of imperfect people because most people are imperfect.

I feel like there's something interesting to learn from anyone's story, no matter their place in society. I think we've gotten really far away from that - we're in such a celebrity-obsessed culture.

Narratives are very important to me.

Comics could use more creators with something worthwhile to say.