Story Quotes (page 125)
I’ve always been able to tell a lot about people by whether they ask me about my scar. Most people never ask, but if it comes up naturally somehow and I offer up the story, they are quite interested. Some people are just dumb: 'Did a cat scratch you?' God bless. Those sweet dumdums I never mind. Sometimes it is a fun sociology litmus test, like when my friend Ricky asked me, 'Did they ever catch the black guy that did that to you?' Hmmm. It was not a black guy, Ricky, and I never said it was.
Tina Fey
St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in instructing catechumens, wrote: “The dragon sits by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon.” No matter what form the dragon may take, it is of this mysterious passage past him, or into his jaws, that stories of any depth will always be concerned to tell, and this being the case, it requires considerable courage at any time, in any country, not to turn away from...
Flannery O'Connor
So you're thinking you'd rather not hand me a pistol?'
'They're dangerous. And illegal. And Chekov is qa writer you can trust.'
'But this is not a story. We're talking about the real word.'
Tamaru narrowed his eyes and looked hard at Aomame. Then, slowly opening his mouth, he said 'Who knows?
Haruki Murakami
I didn't get fired."
"You didn't punch your boss and get fired from the Tribune? That's what I heard."
"I punched what could loosely be called a colleague for cribbing my notes on a story and since the editor–who happened to be the asshole's uncle–took his word over mine, I quit."
"To write books. Is it fun?"
"I guess it is."
"I bet you killed the asshole in the first one you wrote."
"You'd be right. Beat him to death with a shovel. Very satisfying.
Nora Roberts
A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment from which to look back or from which to look ahead. I say 'one chooses' with the inaccurate pride of a professional writer who? when he has been seriously noted at all? has been praised for his technical ability, but do I in fact of my own will choose that black wet January night on the Common, in 1946, the sight of Henry Miles slanting across the wide river of rain, or did these images choose me?
Graham Greene
There is a theory going around that the U.S.A. was and still is a gigantic Masonic plot under the ultimate control of the group known as the Illuminati. It is difficult to look for long at the strange single eye crowning the pyramid which is found on every dollar bill and not begin to believe the story, a little. Too many anarchists in 19th-century Europe—Bakunin, Proudhon, Salverio Friscia—were Masons for it to be pure chance. Lovers of global conspiracy, not all of them Catholic, can...
Thomas Pynchon
Peeta, you said at the interview you’d had a crush on me forever. When did forever start?
Oh, let’s see. I guess the first day of school. We were five. You had on a red plaid dress and your hair...it was in two braids instead of one. My father pointed you out when we were waiting to line up."
Your father? Why?"
He said, ‘See that little girl? I wanted to marry her mother, but she ran off with a coal miner.'"
What? You’re making that up!"
No, true story. And I said, 'A coal miner? Why did...
Suzanne Collins
With a novel, which takes perhaps years to write, the author is not the same man he was at the end of the book as he was at the beginning. It is not only that his characters have developed--he has developed with them, and this nearly always gives a sense of roughness to the work: a novel can seldom have the sense of perfection which you find in Chekhov's story, The Lady with the Dog.
Graham Greene
I think we should sometimes read stories where everything's different from our world, don't you agree? There's nothing's like it for teaching us to wonder why trees are green and not red, and why we have five fingers rather than six.'--spoken by The Bluejay, aka Mo the Bookbinder, from 'Inkdeath
Cornelia Funke