#stories

Humans like stories. Humans need stories. Stories are good. Stories work. Story clarifies and captures the essence of the human spirit. Story, in all its forms—of life, of love, of knowledge—has traced the upward surge of mankind. And story, you mark my words, will be with the last human to draw breath. ↗

— Jasper Fforde

#fiction #human-nature #stories #life

Goblins burrowed in the earth, elves sang songs in the trees: Those were the obvious wonders of reading, but behind them lay the fundamental marvel that, in stories, words could command things to be. ↗

— Francis Spufford

#life

By nature, a storyteller is a plagiarist. Everything one comes across--each incident, book, novel, life episode, story, person, news clip--is a coffee bean that will be crushed, ground up, mixed with a touch of cardamom, sometimes a tiny pinch of salt, boiled thrice with sugar, and served as a piping-hot tale. ↗

— Rabih Alameddine

#storytellers #life

. . .because we had survived sisters and brothers, daughters and sons, we discovered bones that rose from the dark earth and sang as white birds in the trees Because the story of our life becomes our life Because each of us tells the same story but tells it differently and none of us tells it the same way twice . . (from, Why We Tell Stories) ↗

— Lisel Mueller

#poetry #why-we-tell-stories #life

Think of all the stories you've heard, Bast. You have a young boy, the hero. His parents are killed he sets out for vengeance. What next?" Bast hesitated, his expression puzzled. Chronicler answered the question instead. "He finds help. A clever talking squirrel. An old drunken swordsman. A mad hermit in the woods. That sort of thing." Kvothe nodded. "Exactly! He finds the mad hermit in the woods, proves himself worthy, and learns the names of all things, just like Taborlin the Great. Then with these powerful magics at his beck and call, what does he do?" Chronicler shrugged. "He finds the villains and kills them." "Of course," Kvothe said grandly. "Clean, quick, and easy as lying. We know how it ends practically before it starts. That's why stories appeal to us. They give is the clarity and simplicity our real lives lack. ↗

— Patrick Rothfuss

#mentors #stories #simplicity

A daydreamer is a writer just waiting for pen and paper. ↗

— Richelle E. Goodrich

#daydreaming #fantasies #richelle #richelle-goodrich #stories

I approach writing stories as a recorder. I think of my role as some kind of reporting device - recording and projecting. ↗

— Jhumpa Lahiri

#device #i #i think #kind #projecting

I can't tell you exactly how I found it. It was just a process of writing a lot of stories and reading a lot of stories that I admired and just working and working until the sentences sounded right and I was satisfied with them. ↗

— Jhumpa Lahiri

#exactly #found #how #i #just

I've seen novels that have grown out of one story in a collection. But it hasn't occurred to me to take any of those stories and build on them. They seem very finished for me, so I don't feel like going back and dredging them up. ↗

— Jhumpa Lahiri

#back #build #collection #feel #finished

Interpreter of Maladies is the title of one of the stories in the book. And the phrase itself was something I thought of before I even wrote that story. ↗

— Jhumpa Lahiri

#book #even #i #interpreter #itself