I always have to remember that I am the narrator, but it doesn’t have to be about me. A lot of songwriting is about trying to use what part of me is valid in telling the story. I don’t want to overcook it, you know? Sometimes it seems that’s really where the work is.
Soon as the evening shades prevail, The moon takes up the wondrous tale, And nightly to the listening earth Repeats the story of her birth.
A man improves more by reading the story of a person eminent for prudence and virtue, than by the finest rules and precepts of morality.
There is nobody so weak of invention that cannot make some little stories to villify his enemy.
I have nothing to do with the selection of stories. I’m the reporter.
The story of a poor man’s life is written on his body, in a sharp pen.
Most of my lyrics are little stories about my experiences or those of my friends.
Really, I have to laugh because there was a whole set of stories that made me sound like the Dragon Lady, you know, ‘tough this and tough that.’ Then there is this business about ‘gooey.’ The bottom line is I am a pragmatic idealist.
It’s not an epitaph. I felt I could look back at my life and get a good story out of it. It’s a picture of somebody trying to figure things out. I’m not trying to create some impression about myself. That doesn’t interest me.
History gets reinterpreted as time goes on. Many times, the participants are lost in the retelling of the story.
Story, finally, is humanity ’s autobiography .
A human being is nothing but a story with skin around it.
Be wary of listening to stories secondhand.
I am the only one who can tell the story of my life and say what it means.
Write the story that you were always afraid to tell. I swear to you that there is magic in it, and if you show yourself naked for me, I’ll be naked for you. It will be our covenant.
Two or three things I know, two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that to go on living I have to tell stories, that stories are the one sure way I know to touch the heart and change the world.
Why write stories? To join the conversation.
If I had not been successful as a director, then I’m sure I would still be telling stories. I would have continued on 16mm or found a different medium through which to tell them. Maybe they would have been less glamorous than films, but I would continue to tell stories.
When I was very young, I was already a fabulador. I loved to give my own version of stories that everybody already knew. When I got out of a movie with my sisters, I retold them the whole story. In general they liked my version better than the one they had seen.
And one thing that I always believed and that I knew for certain was that I could never have sustained a personal relationship while I worked this hard, or while I was that driven this intensely by the story.