I love coming of age stories that have struggle.
I’m interested in Native American and African American stories, and LGBTQ stories and stories of persons of mixed heritage. These are the stories I want to see onscreen and on the pages.
Give, give, give – what is the point of having experience, knowledge or talent if I don’t give it away? Of having stories if I don’t tell them to others? Of having wealth if I don’t share it? I don’t intend to be cremated with any of it! It is in giving that I connect with others, with the world and with the divine.
I believe that stories are incredibly important, possibly in ways we don’t understand, in allowing us to make sense of our lives, in allowing us to escape our lives, in giving us empathy and in creating the world that we live in.
But to me, ‘Worlds’ is meant as kind of an appreciation of fiction and stories and escapism and fantasy.
I like discovering stories where I’m laughing and I’m learning. It’s like, ‘How was I never taught that in school?’
Yes, Barack Obama had his clashes with the press. I witnessed those first-hand covering the second term of his administration. But we did not have Barack Obama on almost a weekly basis referring to the press as the enemy of the people and accusing reporters of treason and calling legitimate stories fake news.
Apart from being motivation for themselves, I think big givers should also talk about their philanthropy so that their work and their success stories prove inspirational enough for many others to follow.
That Hollywood ‘LotR’ movie really sucked, and was a true turn-off. That’s what Hollywood always does, even to good stories.
Writing is powerful. Whether it’s a little girl hiding from the Nazis in an attic, or Amnesty International writing letters on behalf of political prisoners, the power of telling stories is usually what causes change.
Stories hold conflict and contrast, highs and lows, life and death, and the human struggle and all kinds of things.
I have respect for therapists in general, because they hear so many stories. It’s a lot to hold and take in.
I used to love Andre The Giant. I could sit around all day and listen to Andre stories. He was such a wonderful, unique guy who everyone loved being around. The thing about Andre, he just had this magical mystique about him.
We need to look marginalized people in our community in the eye and listen to their stories of struggle, heartache and impossibility.
I would not know how I am supposed to feel about many stories if not for the fact that the TV news personalities make sad faces for sad stories and happy faces for happy stories.
Solomon Northup is one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever encountered in my life; one of the most amazing stories I have ever been in any kind of contact with. To not tell that story would have been disgraceful, in my opinion.
Tattoos are like stories – they’re symbolic of the important moments in your life. Sitting down, talking about where you got each tattoo and what it symbolizes, is really beautiful.
Most religious stories and mythologies have some sort of similar root, some sort of global archetypes.
Within the realm of fiction, it is always tempting to set one’s stories in a dystopian future, where all our misgivings about state power can be shown in full force.
My life is storytelling. I believe in stories, in their incredible power to keep people alive, to keep the living alive, and the dead.
When I approach my music and my music videos, obviously all of the subjects and stories that I tell come from an honest, truthful place and the experiences that I’ve had.
As an African-American actor, a lot of our stories haven’t been told.
I didn’t know I was doing film noir, I thought they were detective stories with low lighting!
It is important to tell good stories. You can tell stories even if they are not huge, epic, and wonderful. You can still take the responsibility for being a scribe of your tribe.
I don’t want to tell your story because you’re a insensitive, self-centered moron. I’ve told a lot of stories about young people, and I always feel there’s hope.
I can remember being home from school with tonsillitis and writing stories in bed to pass the time.
I love the idea of the teachings of Jesus Christ and the beautiful stories about it, which I loved in Sunday school and I collected all the little stickers and put them in my book. But the reality is that organised religion doesn’t seem to work. It turns people into hateful lemmings and it’s not really compassionate.
The work I did on ‘Killing Kennedy’ was very meticulous and, in some ways, actually tedious. It was hard work because there is so much known about John F. Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald. To try to distill that into a clear narrative that’s interesting and tells two great stories was a real challenge.
An obsession with untold stories is a source of energy.
I don’t want to do stories that don’t have a heart. I’m just not going to be satisfied with stories where I can’t be passionate about the subject, where I can’t make a difference.
We all have stories we’re living and telling ourselves.
I actually admire the Indian artiste ‘Lost Stories.’ He made a remix of my song ‘Faded.’ That is really good and cool because it actually represented Indian music. I just loved the song; it so unique.
People love to be told stories, but it’s the sugar that draws you into the theater.
The public doesn’t know what to believe anymore. We don’t know what stories are supposedly true, this idea of ‘fake news.’ We watch it on what I guess you would call a split-focus. It’s half entertainment and half mystery.
On the sets of the movie ‘Manto,’ I found that one of the challenges of embodying real-life stories is the mixed medium of facts and imagination, and how one’s collage of experiences colour ones representation on celluloid.
Speaking as a mixed-race woman, there aren’t many historical stories about people like me.
I probably get more inspiration for human stories and idiosyncrasies than I do animal stories.
Many people told me such convincing ghost stories that I felt that there really were ghosts, though I hadn’t seen any. And though I still haven’t seen a ghost, I feel that they are all around us; we are just not aware of them being there.
If I were to believe in the stories of the of the gods, then the gods do not need mortals to defend them, do they?
I think if everyone would write down the funny stories from their own childhoods, the world would be a better place.
The best leaders… almost without exception and at every level, are master users of stories and symbols.
In all love stories the theme is love and tragedy, so by writing these types of stories, I have to include tragedy.
Nature is full of drama. I know nothing about biology, about birds, about insects, about the details of politics. I just make movies about human interest stories.
I live in constant anticipation of good stuff. It’s not being ‘Pollyanna’ about things, but most stories don’t have the ending we would give them right away. The better endings come later.
People think they have a perfect idea of who you are from a four-second Snapchat video… and fake blogs, stories, magazine covers. In reality, that’s not the case. Nobody knows who I am except family and my close friends.
Poetry, fiction as novels or short stories – these are autonomous as created by their authors. They should stand on their own, like pieces of furniture that should be judged as to their usefulness, elegance.
I was very fortunate that all my holidays I’d spend with my grandfather, experiencing a much more traditional way of life and listening to these wonderful stories, which I now feel are such an important part of Indian thinking.
Each day has a story to – deserves to be told, because we are made of stories. I mean, scientists say that human beings are made of atoms, but a little bird told me that we are also made of stories.
During my younger days, we didn’t have digital media or electronic gadgets the way we do now. So the best part of my day was the one I spent either in listening to stories from my elders or reading them.
I made ‘Saving Private Ryan’ for my father. He’s the one who filled my head with war stories when I was growing up.
The challenge of the unknown future is so much more exciting than the stories of the accomplished past.
The more we’re governed by idiots and have no control over our destinies, the more we need to tell stories to each other about who we are, why we are, where we come from, and what might be possible. Or, what’s impossible? What’s a fantasy?
God, newspapers have been making up stories forever. This kind of trifling and fooling around is not a function of the New Journalism.
Really, I have to laugh because there was a whole set of stories that made me sound like the Dragon Lady, you know, ‘tough this and tough that.’ Then there is this business about ‘gooey.’ The bottom line is I am a pragmatic idealist.
I’ve been blessed with so many opportunities and so many amazing things throughout this process. But all the while, I remember that the reason that I’m here and the reason that I do music and tell these stories is that people come to know the love, the God that I know.
If you look at the best-seller list for American fiction, they’re all sequels to detective stories or stories about hunting serial killers. That’s what’s called American fiction these days.
