No one’s going to go see the story of Othello going to get a peaceful divorce.
What you cut out becomes part of the story you tell.
As if there could be true stories: things happen in one way, and we retell them in the opposite way.
A man is always a teller of tales, he lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his life as if he were recounting it.
Growing food was the first activity that gave us enough prosperity to stay in one place, form complex social groups, tell our stories, and build our cities.
There’s always more to a story than a body can see from the fenceline.
This story about good food begins in a quick-stop convenience market.
No reporter worth his buttons will let the facts intrude on a good story.
That’s how it is: some people are content to wait till you ask, while others jump right in with the whole story.
The artist lives to have stories to tell and to learn to tell them well.
Music is not my life. My life is music.
In a society where dirt sells, for every good story told as it is, you will hear the whole of that day’s 10 bad stories sensationalized; although in reality, it could be that 100 good deeds happened that day which went unsung.
There is a master way with words that cannot be learned but instead developed: a deaf man develops exceptional vision, a blind man exceptional hearing, a silent man, when given a piece of paper...
Doubt is a question mark; faith is an exclamation point. The most compelling, believable, realistic stories have included them both.
Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.
Don’t forget this, too: Rumors aren’t interested in the unsensational story; rumors don’t care what’s true.
When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it – rather, I am remembering a story that has already happened.
Sometimes that’s a year, sometimes it’s 18 months, where all I’m doing is taking notes. I’m reconstructing the story from the back to the front so that I know where the front is.
I’m a worst-case scenario person. I’m only interested in a story because I kind of go, like a magnet, to the worst thing that can happen.
Images are probably the most important part of the poem. First of all you want to tell a story, but images are what are going to shore it up and get to the heart of the matter.