Quotes about stories

You think you know what I am, she thought, but all you’ve got is stories.

Even during the days and nights when she was dazed and only half awake the stories must have insinuated themselves into her torn and bruised body like draughts and ointments with healing powers beyond all explanation. (There is no pain and no badness,) she still hears the dry voice of old Taras in her ear, that a story cannot cure.

[t]hrough perceiving the world as a story to be told and endlessly reshaped, I would argue, the reader is actually encouraged to act upon the world (..) literature becomes more, not less, potent

“Sure, but real life’s not actually like that,” Quentin went on, fumbling after what he was sure was an important insight. “You don’t just go on fun adventures for good causes and have happy endings. You’re not going to be a character in a story, there’s nobody arranging everything for you. The real world just doesn’t work like that.”

Pain is pain. Speak up. Tell your story. (Author's Note)

People tell stories all the time: the stories they want told, where any story could be changed or warped this way or that. (p84)

She remembered Aunty Bella Donna of the Champions once saying that no story was worth telling if no one could remember the lesson in it. These were stories that have made no difference to anyone. Old Aunty was fading away forever. But... even true stories have to be invented sometimes to be remembered. Ah! The truth was always forgotten. (p210)

‘Don’t you think those netsuke should stay in Japan?’ said a stern neighbour of mine in London. And I find I am shaking as I answer, because this matters. …

No, I answer. Objects have always been carried, sold, bartered, stolen, retrieved and lost. People have always given gifts. It is how you tell their stories that matters.

Everything we need is here, but for some years we had had little contact with other people as we struggled for our lives and our land. It was good now to know new people and to feel their strength. It was good to have new skills and new ideas, and to listen to all the new stories told by all the people who came. It was good to have others to tell our own stories to, and to have them there sharing our land and our lives. Good had followed what was not good, on the circle of our days. (Toko, chapter 21 p145)

The stories had changed. It was as [he] had said, the stories had changed. And our lives had changed. We were living under the machines, and under a changing landscape, which can change you, shift the insides of you. (Roimata, ch23 p151)

although the stories all had different voices, and came from different times and places and understandings, though some were shown, enacted or written rather than told, each one was like a puzzle piece which tongued or grooved neatly to another. And this train of stories defined our lives, curving out from points on the spiral in ever-widening circles from which neither beginnings nor endings could be defined. (Roimata, chapter 5 p41)

We could not afford books so we made our own. In this way we were able to find ourselves in book It is rare for us to find ourselves in books, but in our own books we were able to find and define our lives. But our main book was the wharenui which is itself a story, a history, a gallery, a study, a design structure and a conga. And we are part of that book along with family past and family yet to come. The land and the sea and the shores are a book too, and we found ourselves there. They were our science and our sustenance. And they are our own universe about which there are stories of great deeds and relationships and mage and imaginings, love and terror, heroes heroines, villas and fools. Enough for a lifetime of selling. (Roimata, ch23 p104)