#stories

A writer doesn't dream of riches and fame, though those things are nice. A true writer longs to leave behind a piece of themselves, something that withstands the test of time and is passed down for generations. ↗

— C.K. Webb

#fame-and-fortune #legacy #stories-imortality #writing #dreams

I glance into the faces of all these people out for a Sunday stroll, but I'm not seeing eyes and noses and mouths. I'm seeing stories. Every person has a story. All the hopes and dreams. And fears. And secrets. In every face. ↗

— Andrew Clements

#dreams

It’s in our nature to want to watch our human frailties played out on a huge, epic canvas. Ancient societies had anthropomorphic gods: a huge pantheon expanding into centuries of dynastic drama: fathers and sons, star-crossed lovers, warring brothers, martyred heroes. Tales that taught us the danger of hubris and the primacy of humility. It’s the everyday stuff of everyman’s life, but it’s writ large, and we love it. ↗

— Tom Hiddleston

#human-nature #stories #tradition #life

A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong. ↗

— Edgar Allan Poe

#poe #short-stories #the-cask-of-amontillado #equality

Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact. ↗

— Anthony de Mello

#experience

When we tell our stories, the gods hear our sorrows. ↗

— Cathy Ostlere

#karma #sorrow #stories #karma

Stories--individual stories, family stories, national stories--are what stitch together the disparate elements of human existence into a coherent whole. We are story animals. ↗

— Yann Martel

#family

I always wondered why the makers leave housekeeping and cooking out of their tales. Isn't it what all the great wars and battles are fought for -- so that at day's end a family may eat together in a peaceful house? ↗

— Ursula K. Le Guin

#glory #home #stories #family

That evening he plays with the children, cleans the hamster's cage with them, gets them into their pyjamas, and reads to them three times over, once together, then to Jake on his own, then to Naomi. It is at times like these that his life makes sense. How soothing it is, the scent of clean bedlinen and minty toothpaste breath, and his children's eagerness to hear the adventures of imaginary beings, and how touching, to watch the children's eyes grow heavy as they struggle to hang on to the priceless last minutes of their day, and finally fail. ↗

— Ian Mcewan

#children #family #fatherhood #family

We are shaped by stories from the first moments of life, and even before. Stories tell us who we are, why we are here, and what will become of us. Whenever humans try to make sense of their experience, they create a story, and we use those stories to answer all the big questions of life. The stories come from everywhere--from family, church, school, and the culture at large. They so surround and inhabit us that we often don't recognize that they are stories at all, breathing them in and out as a fish breathes water. ↗

— Daniel Taylor

#experience