Top 133 Good Story Quotes

You look at the part in ’12 Years A Slave,’ you finish that script – I mean, it’s a powerful story. You go, ‘Man, I have to play a bad character in this.’ And then you go, ‘Well, do I want to play a bad character and contribute to a good story?’

I love intricate plotting and exciting twists, but I realize more that people enjoy a good story in a simple, focused way.

I think in telling a good story there has to be ups and downs with any character, and you can’t just have everything go swimmingly and you can’t just have characters who are supposed to be in a romantic relationship just getting into an argument every episode.

I walk away from writing what I consider to be a good song – with a good character, a good story in it – with all I’m gonna really get out of that song. My greatest pleasure is to create it, not to record it, not to hear anyone else play it, though that can be nice too.

It’s not an epitaph. I felt I could look back at my life and get a good story out of it. It’s a picture of somebody trying to figure things out. I’m not trying to create some impression about myself. That doesn’t interest me.

Octavia Butler was more interested in writing a good story than in worrying about where to slot it.

Sometimes the facts can get in the way of the telling of a good story. But they don’t get in the way of the truth.

Writing historical novels can be dangerous. We need to be as accurate and as fair about the historical record as we can be, at the same time as creating our fictional characters and, hopefully, telling a good story. The challenge is weaving the fiction into the history.

As for the method of making films, I would say that there are no rules as such. The only thing important is that you should have the confidence to do it and have a good story.

I’ve been reading tabloids since I was nine. I love a good story.

I always set out to tell a good story, to create a character that young people can relate to, place them in a situation that will be interesting, intriguing, eventually suspenseful. But what I find is that after I do that, then there are themes that emerge, which teachers can then use to provoke discussion and debate.

If I had to choose between a relative and a good story, I would take the story.

This is a wrong notion that I work in big budget films. Infact, usually low budget films are offered to me, they come and say it’s a good story but they don’t have the money.

I’m just trying to write a good story, strictly from imagination. People just think it’s random, they don’t see the rewriting, phrasing of characters, choosing the words, bringing the world to light in which the characters live in. That creates an illusion that this is real.

I am the old story. L’histoire ancienne. But an old story can still be a good story, no?

Amateur wrestling, you can go by instinct. Pro wrestling, you have to memorize, and you have to go by what moves you said you were going to do. Sometimes you have to feel the crowd and do the moves at the right time and know the timing and tell a good story.

That’s what was so amazing about ‘Mulan.’ Here is this story with all Chinese characters, and yet so many people related to her character and loved the story. So I really think as long as you have a good story that relates to a lot of people, it doesn’t matter what ethnicity it is.

Any good story can galvanize a person, make him/her think about things a different way, reassess their own motives and needs, but that’s never my intent. That’s an unintended consequence of me just trying to entertain, to write what we used to call ‘ripping yarns.’

I am not interested in doing a film on the basis of a good story. I want a proper screenplay.

I grew up reading 19th-century novels and late Victorian children’s books, so I try for a good story full of coincidence and error, landscape and weather. However, the world was radically changed during my lifetime, and I tell of that battering as best I can.

You set out to tell a good story. You don’t do it because there is a deep message involved because the movie is almost always bad when you do that.

With any good story, you need the adversary, the heroes and villains. You need a good mixture to make it work.

‘Social Network’ is a good story with human experience connective tissue that makes it ageless.

Mellow doesn’t always make for a good story, but it makes for a good life.

I’m a storyteller, not a prophet. I’m just interested in a good story.

I think a good story can do as much as a novel; not the exact same thing, of course, but just as much artistically. They’re different beasts, but to tackle an expansive country like the United States, you’re either going to write a big novel, or go in to various points on the map and write stories or poems.

If you have a good story idea, don’t assume it must form a prose narrative. It may work better as a play, a screenplay or a poem. Be flexible.

In theory I know that if you have a universal theme and a good story told well, it will work everywhere.

I think I’m always drawn to a good story.

Both types of books – fiction and nonfiction – are a search for story. As a writer and a reader, there’s nothing I crave more than a good story!

A good story will keep you wondering about what’s happening, what’s going on, where does this go? Now it’s going to go that way, now it’s going to go that way. It has to do that. If it’s predictable, it’s just boring.

I’m not a purist – I like films that are narrated and films that aren’t, films that are beautiful and films that are clumsy but heartfelt. Mostly, I just like a good story and good characters.

As a songwriter, we’re looking for a good story, and we’re always looking to push the limits.

If you find a story that everybody likes and everybody relates to in some way, then you know you have a good story. But if you’re telling a story and all the women are going, ‘I’m checked out of this, I just don’t really care,’ then you’re going to have some problems.

I always believe that a good story will find its audience and that it will attract different kinds of elements of creative people who will make it more compelling.

I did ‘Padman’ not only because of its social message. I did it because it was a good story.

I won’t say no to projects I believe in if there’s a good story there.

The trouble with telling a good story is that it invariably reminds the other fellow of a dull one.

I love songs, and I love to tell stories, and so a lot of times, if you really want a good story, you got to flip the radio dial over to country.

It is the consistency of the information that matters for a good story, not its completeness. Indeed, you will often find that knowing little makes it easier to fit everything you know into a coherent pattern.

People still love a good story, and I don’t think that will change.

All great scripts need not reach silver screen, and every good story can’t be narrated in a 2-hour film.

People in America think of it as a sad and downtrodden place, and I guess it could be, but it’s not because that’s not who Cubans are. In Cuba, you get a good story every day you go out walking. People are so funny.

I really want to do film, but I want to do the right film. The truth for me is that I’m really driven by stories. So there are stories I want to tell, and if it’s a good story then I want to do it, whatever genre it is.

What you realize hanging out with investigative reporters is that, while they may be personally liberal, they don’t let that get in the way of a good story.

I aspire to be a part of a good story, because then, the actor will automatically shine through.

I just want to tell a good story, so I always ask myself, ‘Are these people real to me?’

The way the films look will never entertain an audience alone. It has to be in the service of a good story with great characters.

Right now I just want to play good roles, and if the role happens to be a gay man, that’s not of any import other than, ‘Is it a good story? Does it say something that’s interesting?’

I do feel that if you can write one good sentence and then another good sentence and then another, you end up with a good story.

I want a body of work; I want a good story after a good story.

I probably get a deeper satisfaction of having taken a very good photograph than of having written something very good, a very good story. Maybe it’s because the element of magic is so present in a good photograph – luck and magic, but also hard work and being ready and all that.

I don’t look at stories in genres. A good story is a good story, no matter what planet it happens on, whether the characters are mice or human or whatever. That’s how I look at it.

You set out to tell a good story. You don’t do it because there is a deep message involved, because the movie is almost always bad when you do that. Your job No. 1 is for it to be entertaining, and if it’s inspiring, that is great, too.

You have to tell a good story first. If it’s a good story, people will be interested. It doesn’t matter about the content.

I was a better writer when I was teaching. I was constantly going over the basics and constantly reminding myself, as I reminded my students, what made a good story, a good poem.