You do get certain publications in the States where, if things don’t go according to plan, they flip the story and it becomes very negative.

I 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.

Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.

Learning to make films is very easy. Learning what to make films about is very hard.

Facebook is really about communicating and telling stories… We think that people can really help spread awareness of organ donation and that they want to participate in this to their friends. And that can be a big part of helping solve the crisis that’s out there.

I 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.

Truthfully, without over-egging it, as I often do, the library and journalism, those things made me who I am.

The first story I finished was when I was six years old.

I think a lot of people, including me, clammed up when a civilian asked about battle, about war. It was fashionable. One of the most impressive ways to tell your war story is to refuse to tell it, you know. Civilians would then have to imagine all kinds of deeds of derring-do.

People hear about stuff from their friends or a magazine or a newspaper.

You’re never going to kill storytelling, because it’s built into the human plan. We come with it.

I don’t listen to a lot of new stuff. I just like the old stuff. It’s all quite dramatic and atmospheric. You’d have an entire story in song. I never listen to, like, white music – I couldn’t sing you a Zeppelin or Floyd song.

I am completely fascinated by the differences and comparisons between real life and fairy tales because we’re raised as little girls to think that we’re a princess and that Prince Charming is going to sweep us off our feet.

The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you’re opposed to it. But when you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that.

The influence of ‚Hidden Fortress‘ comes up a lot because it was printed in a book once. The truth is, the only thing I was inspired by was the fact that it’s told from the point of view of two peasants, who get mixed up with a samurai and princess and a lot of very high-level people.

Animation offers a medium of story telling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world.

People like Frank Zappa and Bryan Ferry knew we could pick and choose from the history of music, stick things together looking for friction and energy. They were more like playwrights; they invented characters and wrote a life around them.

Don’t say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.

I’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.

In the normal flow of a conversation, our attention is divided. We hear parts of what other people are saying, in order to follow and keep the conversation going. At the same time, we’re planning what we’ll say next, some exciting story of our own.

Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

Storytelling is about two things; it’s about character and plot.

I never saw any of my dad’s stories. My mother said he had piles and piles of manuscripts.

Green Eggs and Ham was the story of my life. I wouldn’t eat a thing when I was a kid, but Dr. Seuss inspired me to try cauliflower!

Our most tragic error may have been our inability to establish a rapport and a confidence with the press and television with the communication media. I don’t think the press has understood me.

In karting, in the European races, you have the cameras and the film crews and you do interviews. At around 13 I’d already started doing bit of media and it just increases more and more with every level you take, especially when you get into cars – and when you hit F1 it’s an even higher step up. It’s something you get used to over time.

Love 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.

I have always enjoyed watching my songs make people cry.

I seem to turn out stories that violate the discipline of the short story form and don’t obey the rules of progression for novels. I don’t think about a particular form: I think more about fiction, let’s say a chunk of fiction.

Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.

The stories are not autobiographical, but they’re personal in that way. I seem to know only the things that I’ve learned. Probably some things through observation, but what I feel I know surely is personal.

America is a country of inventors, and the greatest of inventors are the newspaper men.

I’m sticking to the script, I’m putting that organic feeling back in the game.

Why 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.

A writer of fiction is really… a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of other men.

I have such respect for ‚Democracy Now!‘

Sometimes I get the start of a story from a memory, an anecdote, but that gets lost and is usually unrecognizable in the final story.

It is necessary to look at the results of observation objectively, because you, the experimenter, might like one result better than another.

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

The 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.

Tell the truth, but tell it slant.

My stories run up and bite me on the leg – I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

If you’ve heard this story before, don’t stop me, because I’d like to hear it again.

In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.

The most violent show on TV is the six o’clock news.

I’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.

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

Here’s what I think about music and journalism: The most important thing is to just press play.

One 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.

I think television has had a vast, unbelievable impact on us.

You 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.

I’m not searching for hard news; I’m not a journalist, but I’m interested in pushing to boundaries of where we can do the kind of stories that we want to do. I mean, it’s a big world and CNN has made it a lot bigger and they haven’t flinched.

Of course it’s the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story.

I like gaps; all my stories have gaps. It seems this is the way people’s lives present themselves.

I make pop culture.

Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.

His father is governor of Media, and though he has the greatest command given him of all the rest of my generals, he still covetously desires more, and my being without issue spurs him on to this wicked design. But Philotas takes wrong measures.

I would love to sign on to do a movie if it was the right role and if it was the right script, because I would be taking time away from music to tell a big grand story, and spend all of my time and pouring all of my emotions into being someone else. So for me to do that, it would have to be a story worth telling.

The press is the hired agent of a monied system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where their interests are involved. One can trust nobody and nothing.

The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. For to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves – and the better the teacher, the better the student body.

I no longer feel attracted to the well-made novel. I want to write the story that will zero in and give you intense, but not connected, moments of experience. I guess that’s the way I see life. People remake themselves bit by bit and do things they don’t understand.