Doing graphic novels is cool! It’s fun! You get to write something, and then see it visually page by page, panel by panel, working with the artist, you get to see it fleshed out.
Anthony BourdainAnd all who told it added something new, and all who heard it, made enlargements too.
Alexander PopeI really haven’t had that exciting of a life. There are a lot of things I wish I would have done, instead of just sitting around and complaining about having a boring life. So I pretty much like to make it up. I’d rather tell a story about somebody else.
Kurt CobainEventually, it came to this place like, ‚I’d like to direct, but I need to find the story to tell.‘ ‚Man of Tai Chi‘ became the story to tell.
Keanu ReevesStorytelling is a very old human skill that gives us an evolutionary advantage. If you can tell young people how you kill an emu, acted out in song or dance, or that Uncle George was eaten by a croc over there, don’t go there to swim, then those young people don’t have to find out by trial and error.
Margaret AtwoodI now possess the tools as a producer and a songwriter to really just go out and make smashes all day long. I could make an album full of smash records that got pop appeal. But my heart is in hip-hop. My heart is in telling stories. And it’s like therapy for me.
J. ColeI’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.
Maya AngelouI hoped to be able to write a novel which would enable me to live on it while I wrote the next.
Harper LeeAll cartoon characters and fables must be exaggeration, caricatures. It is the very nature of fantasy and fable.
Walt DisneyI was enjoying myself writing, because I don’t know what’s going to happen when I take a ride around that corner. You don’t know at all what you’re going to find there. That can be thrilling when you read a book, especially when you’re a kid and you’re reading stories.
Haruki MurakamiI’ve learned a lot since I was a new mother. My approach to struggle and shame now is to talk to yourself like you’d talk to someone you love and reach out to tell your story.
Brene BrownWhat I see, what I went through, what a friend of mine may have went through, whatever – I rap about it.
Kevin GatesJust be a cool grandpa who’s creative, and hang out and tell stories and read a book in the library.
Angelina JolieThe technology keeps moving forward, which makes it easier for the artists to tell their stories and paint the pictures they want.
George LucasStories lie deep in our souls. Stories lie so deep at the bottom of our hearts that they can bring people together on the deepest level. When I write a novel, I go into such depths.
Haruki MurakamiIt’s about the stories. If I write 14 stories that I love, then the next step is to get the environment of music around it to best envelop the story, and all kinds of sonic goodness – sonic goodies.
Frank OceanObjects in pictures should so be arranged as by their very position to tell their own story.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheMy shows are not narratives.
Brian EnoI’ve read a lot of really great characters in some really crappy stories, where I said, like, ‚Boy I could shine here, but the story sucks.‘ I don’t want to be part of that.
Matthew McConaugheyA properly balanced story provides an equal representation of the negative and positive attributes of, I could say the world, but it’s actually a being. ‚Harry Potter“s a good example. So Harry’s the hero, right. But he’s tainted with evil. There’s a dark and a light in every bit of that narrative. It’s well balanced.
Jordan PetersonIn my career as a director, there’s always been some point where you get halfway through it, or three-quarters, and you go: ‚What is this thing all about, and why am I telling the story? Does anybody really care about seeing this?‘ At that time you have to say: ‚OK, forget that and just go ahead.‘
Clint EastwoodHistory is present in all my novels. And whether I am directly talking about the sociological moment or just immersing my character in the environment, I am very aware of it.
Paul AusterYou know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That’s what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.
Steven WrightWhy do I like to write short stories? Well, I certainly didn’t intend to. I was going to write a novel. And still! I still come up with ideas for novels. And I even start novels. But something happens to them. They break up. I look at what I really want to do with the material, and it never turns out to be a novel.
Alice MunroIn fairy tales the bad guy is very easy to spot. The bad guy is always wearing a black cape so you always know who he is.
Taylor SwiftLove is the answer to everything. It’s the only reason to do anything. If you don’t write stories you love, you’ll never make it. If you don’t write stories that other people love, you’ll never make it.
Ray BradburyThe way I define ‚intelligent design‘ is that when people started out, we wanted to make sense of the world we lived in, so we created stories about how things worked.
George LucasI just do the best I can and write something interesting, to tell stories in an interesting way and move forward from there.
Anthony BourdainThere is creative reading as well as creative writing.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThis was life in the ’30s. This is the way it was with children in the South. I tried to make it general, the kind of things that might happen to any child.
Harper LeeI’m working on my life story. I’m not decided if it’s going to be a musical or a movie with music in it.
Dolly PartonA good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
Gilbert K. ChestertonYou’re never going to kill storytelling, because it’s built into the human plan. We come with it.
Margaret AtwoodI like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it’s a better way of telling the stories.
Taylor SwiftIf you don’t know your full-throttle history, the whole story of how you came to where you are, it’s kind of hard to put things together.
Nipsey HussleTruth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.
Francis BaconIn my father’s generation, the product was 80 percent of what you were putting into the world, and your personal life was 20 percent. It now seems that 80 percent of the product I put out is silly, made-up stories and what I’m wearing.
Angelina JolieThe idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.
Maya AngelouJournalism makes you think fast. You have to speak to people in all walks of life. Especially local journalism.
Terry PratchettIt’s probably not an accident that the films that I care about happen to be about issues that matter to me, stories that I want to tell.
Angelina JolieMaybe I should say that memory interests me a great deal, because I think we all tell stories of our lives to ourselves as well as to other people. Well, women do, anyway. Women do this a lot. And I think when men get older, they do this too, but maybe in slightly different terms.
Alice MunroMy own books drive themselves. I know roughly where a book is going to end, but essentially the story develops under my fingers. It’s just a matter of joining the dots.
Terry PratchettHomer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.
AristotleAs a writer, as a creator, I’m giving you my experiences. But just take what I give you. You ain’t got to pry beyond that.
Frank OceanJournalism keeps you planted in the earth.
Ray BradburyOne of the things that I tell beginning writers is this: If you describe a landscape, or a cityscape, or a seascape, always be sure to put a human figure somewhere in the scene. Why? Because readers are human beings, mostly interested in human beings. People are humanists. Most of them are humanists, that is.
Kurt VonnegutI’m half-black, half-white, so I basically put it like this: I can fit in anywhere. That’s why I write so many stories from so many different perspectives, because I’ve seen so many.
J. ColeIf you’ve heard this story before, don’t stop me, because I’d like to hear it again.
Groucho MarxI’m not interested in cutting the feet off my characters or stretching them to make them fit my certain political view.
Margaret AtwoodEven in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
C. S. LewisI guess I’m just inspired to tell stories.
Frank OceanWhen I start to write, I don’t have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.
Haruki MurakamiI’m a pretty decent writer. It comes easy to me. I don’t agonize over sentences. I write like I talk. I try to make them good books.
Anthony BourdainAs I got older, my pops tried to keep me involved with the culture by telling me the stories of the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, how he came to America, and about our family back home, because all that side of my family – my aunties, grandparents – is in Africa.
Nipsey HussleI got interested in reading very early, because a story was read to me, by Hans Christian Andersen, which was ‚The Little Mermaid,‘ and I don’t know if you remember ‚The Little Mermaid,‘ but it’s dreadfully sad. The little mermaid falls in love with this prince, but she cannot marry him because she is a mermaid.
Alice MunroThere are only two ways of telling the complete truth – anonymously and posthumously.
Thomas SowellA novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.
Jim RohnWhat is history but a fable agreed upon?
Napoleon BonaparteI wrote a few children’s books… not on purpose.
Steven WrightI recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross-out. I’m not proud.
Stephen King