Friday Forays in Fiction: Quotes on Storytelling

Recite after me...

There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you. —Maya Angelou

There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories. —Ursula K. LeGuin

Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, the power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts. —Salman Rushdie

A writer’s brain is like a magician’s hat. If you’re going to get anything out of it, you have to put something in it first. —Louis L’Amour

Life itself is the most wonderful fairytale of all. —Hans Christian Andersen

I will tell you something about stories, (he said) They aren’t just entertainment. Don’t be fooled. They are all we have, you see, All we have to fight off illness and death —Leslie Marmon Silko

Story is far older than the art of science and psychology, and will always be the elder in the equation no matter how much time passes. —Clarissa Pinkola Estes

If you keep telling the same sad small story, you will keep living the same sad small life. —Jean Houston

Our species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories. —Mary Catherine Bateson