Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.
Give me a story that just makes me unreasonably vigilant. Keep me up till five only because all your stars are out, and for no other reason.
To finish is a sadness to a writer – a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isn’t really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done.
I have written a great many stories and I still don’t know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.
If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.
No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us.
If a story is not about the hearer, he will not listen. And here I make a rule – a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last.
We only have one story. All novels, all poetry are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil.
And, of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen.
Somewhere, there, is an analogy, in a small way, if you have the patience for it. But I guess it isn’t a very good anecdote. I’m better at animal stories.
The affair between Margot Asquinth and Margot Asquinth will live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature.
Just begin a story with such a phrase as ‘I remember Disraeli – poor old Dizz! – once saying to me, in answer to my poke in the eye,’ and you will find me and Morpheus off in a corner, necking.
All of my favourite albums have this incredible amount of conceptual glue to them, even if they are not telling a story.
I began plotting novels at about the time I learned to read. The story of my childhood is the usual bleak fantasy, and we can dismiss it with the restrained observation that I certainly would not consider living it again.
No one can tell you what your life is goin to be, can they? No. It’s never like what you expected. Quijada nodded. If people knew the story of their lives how many would then elect to live them?
If people knew the story of their lives, how many would then elect to live them?
Stories were wild, wild animals and went off in directions you couldn’t expect.
Stories don’t end with the writers, however many started the race.
It is a true story, the monster said. Many things that are true feel like a cheat.
Stories are the wildest things of all. Stories chase and bite and hunt.