94 Storytelling Quotes

In a world where stories shape our understanding of life, ignite our imagination, and connect us across time and culture, the art of storytelling remains as vital as ever. Whether you're a writer, teacher, entrepreneur, or simply someone who appreciates a well-told tale, there's magic to be found in the wisdom of those who have mastered this craft. In this post, we've curated a collection of the top 94 storytelling quotes that will inspire you, provoke thought, and perhaps even transform the way you share your own stories. Dive in and rediscover the timeless power of storytelling through the words of the greats.

1. “Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.” - Willa Cather

2. “It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.” - Patrick Rothfuss

3. “I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read.” - Philip Pullman

4. “My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? When the lightning strikes shadows on the bedroom wall and the rain taps at the window with its long fingernails? No. When fear and cold make a statue of you in your bed, don't expect hard-boned and fleshless truth to come running to your aid. What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie.” - Diane Setterfield

5. “It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they come from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them -- with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself. Still illiterate, I was ready for them, committed to all the reading I could give them ...” - Eudora Welty

6. “Storytelling is among the oldest forms of communication. Storytelling is the commonality of all human beings, in allplaces, in all times. ” - Rives Collins

7. “After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” - Philip Pullman

8. “There are books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story... don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words--the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers who won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book.” - Stephen King

9. “A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can he accept wonders.” - John Steinbeck

10. “If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.” - Rudyard Kipling

11. “I'll go to the south of Sicily in the winter, and paint memories of Arles – I'll buy a piano and Mozart me that – I'll write long sad tales about people in the legend of my life – This part is my part of the movie, let's hear yours” - Jack Kerouac

12. “A story has its purpose and its path. It must be told correctly for it to be understood.” - Marcus Sedgwick

13. “There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.” - Doris May Lessing

14. “In Paris, where raillery is so quick to throw emotion out the window, silence, in a roomful of clever people after a story, is the most flattering of all marks of success” - Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly

15. “Luz's manner of speaking made it clear that she had no idea what she might say next. It wasn't that she made things up, strictly speaking--only that facts were merely a point of departure for her.” - Daniel Alarcon

16. “Power consists to a large extent in deciding what stories will be told.” - Carolyn Heilbrun

17. “The world is shaped by two things — stories told and the memories they leave behind.” - Vera Nazarian

18. “The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.” - Brandon Sanderson

19. “Every story needs to be worth telling.” - Vera Nazarian

20. “Serena has spent her life fighting fiction the way good soldiers fight—intent on detecting its presence, harassing it, suppressing it—but I have to find a way to show her she’s mistaken her enemy, to explain to her that whoever suppresses fiction destroys life, and that everything disappears with it, all love, all desire. If the past is an invention, it’s not such a big deal. After all, the future’s an invention, and no one finds that hard to accept.” - Enrique de Hériz

21. “There is no society that does not highly value fictional storytelling. Ever.” - Orson Scott Card

22. “Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.” - William Shakespeare

23. “The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.” - Stephen King

24. “I think it's a shame that something as creative and vital to the nature of the human species as story-telling is largely controlled by the soulless cretins known as publishers.” - Piers Anthony

25. “I write for the kid in me. . . . Often when I’m working on a story, I’ll find myself laughing at something my characters have done, or even being surprised at where they’ve taken the story. It’s as if they have a life all their own. What I do is create them and then let them go on to entertain me. . . .” - Elvira Woodruff

26. “He knew how to say many false things that were like true sayings.” - Homer

27. “The Gingerbread House has four walls, a roof, a door, a window, and a chimney. It is decorated with many sweet culinary delights on the outside.But on the inside there is nothing—only the bare gingerbread walls.It is not a real house—not until you decide to add a Gingerbread Room.That’s when the stories can move in.They will stay in residence for as long as you abstain from taking the first gingerbread bite.” - Vera Nazarian

28. “[I]t is the wine that leads me on,the wild winethat sets the wisest man to singat the top of his lungs,laugh like a fool – it drives theman to dancing... it eventempts him to blurt out storiesbetter never told.” - Homer

29. “ Confession time: I doubt I would ever have picked up one of Marjorie’s books, had I not met her in person. The reason is they’re categorized as Romances, which is where they are shelved in bookstores. Though I have no justification for avoiding it, the romance section is an area in bookstores I seldom wander into. Her novels also have traditional-looking romance book covers, which are occasionally a bit off-putting to us mighty manly men. Then again, who knows? I don’t carry many biases where good storytelling is concerned. I’m willing to find it anywhere, as too many of my friends will attest, when I try to drag them to wonderful movies that they aren’t eager to go to, simply because they fall under the chick-flick rubric. So, in any case, I’m glad I did meet Marjorie Liu in person, because it would have been a shame to miss out on the work of an author this talented due to whatever degree of cultural prejudices I might still possess. I trust you who read this won’t make the same mistake. ” - Bill Willingham

30. “I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.” - Ernest Hemingway

31. “When someone is mean to me, I just make them a victim in my next book.” - Mary Higgins Clark

32. “The story hangs in the night air between them. It is very latem, and if father or daugther stepped to the window, tehyw ould see the Suktara, star of the impending dawn, hanging low in the sky. But they keep sitting at the table, each thinking of the story differently, as teller and listener always must. In the mind of each, different images swirl up and fall away, and each holds on to a different part of the story, thinking it the most important. And if each were to speak what it meant, they would say things so different you would not know it wa sthe same story they were speaking of.” - Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

33. “Any fool can tell a story. Take a few odds and ends of things that happen to you, dress them up, shuffle them about, add a dash of excitement, a little color, and there you have it.” - Lloyd Alexander

34. “These were our bedtime stories. Tales that haunted our parents and made them laugh at the same time. We never understood them until we were fully grown and they became our sole inheritance.” - Edwidge Danticat

35. “The drinking dens are spilling outThere's staggering in the squareThere's lads and lasses falling aboutAnd a crackling in the airDown around the dungeon doorsThe shelters and the queuesEverybody's looking forSomebody's arms to fall intoAnd it's what it isIt's what it is nowThere's frost on the graves and the monumentsBut the taverns are warm in townPeople curse the governmentAnd shovel hot food downThe lights are out in the city hallThe castle and the keepThe moon shines down upon it allThe legless and asleepAnd it's cold on the tollgateWith the wagons creeping throughCold on the tollgateGod knows what I could do with youAnd it's what it isIt's what it is nowThe garrison sleeps in the citadelWith the ghosts and the ancient stonesHigh up on the parapetA Scottish piper stands aloneAnd high on the windThe highland drums begin to rollAnd something from the past just comesAnd stares into my soulAnd it's cold on the tollgateWith the Caledonian BluesCold on the tollgateGod knows what I could do with youAnd it's what it isIt's what it is nowWhat it isIt's what it is nowThere's a chink of light, there's a burning wickThere's a lantern in the towerWee Willie Winkie with a candlestickStill writing songs in the wee wee hoursOn Charlotte Street I takeA walking stick from my hotelThe ghost of Dirty DickIs still in search of Little NellAnd it's what it isIt's what it is nowOh what it isWhat it is now” - Mark Knopfler

36. “Storytellers have as profound a purpose as any who are charged to guide and transform human lives. I knew it as an ancient discipline and vocation to which everyone is called.” - Nancy Mellon

37. “A story must be judged according to whether it makes sense. And 'making sense' must be here understood in its most direct meaning: to make sense is to enliven the senses. A story that makes sense is one that stirs the senses from their slumber, one that opens the eyes and the ears to their real surroundings, tuning the tongue to the actual tastes in the air and sending chills of recognition along the surface of the skin. To make sense is to release the body from the constraints imposed by outworn ways of speaking, and hence to renew and rejuvenate one's felt awareness of the world. It is to make the senses wake up to where they are.” - David Abram

38. “People take on the shapes of the songs and the stories that surround them, especially if they don't have their own song.” - Neil Gaiman

39. “You know what a storyteller is, don't you? It's a person that has a good memory who hopes other people don't.” - Sandra Dallas

40. “A story begins with this nebulous feeling that’s hard to get a hold of and you’re testing your feelings and assumptions, testing what you believe. They end up turning into keepsakes and mementos—like amber in which a memory gets trapped.” - Michael Chabon

41. “The boy thought, How powerful a story is, and how by a kind of magic it compels the imagination; there was nothing in the world, it seemed to him, so mysteriously strong; and he began to wonder if he would ever have anything as beautiful to tell.” - Glenway Wescott

42. “You want to tell a story? Grow a heart. Grow two. Now, with the second heart, smash the first one into bits.” - Charles Yu

43. “It is the nature of stories to leave out far more than they include.” - Marion Dane Bauer

44. “Roger left the cricket stumps and they went into the drawing room. Grandpapa, at the first suggestion of reading aloud, had disappeared, taking Patch with him. Grandmama had cleared away the tea. She found her spectacles and the book. It was Black Beauty. Grandmama kept no modern children's books, and this made common ground for the three of them. She read the terrible chapter where the stable lad lets Beauty get overheated and gives him a cold drink and does not put on his blanket. The story was suited to the day. Even Roger listened entranced. And Deborah, watching her grandmother's calm face and hearing her careful voice reading the sentences, thought how strange it was that Grandmama could turn herself into Beauty with such ease. She was a horse, suffering there with pneumonia in the stable, being saved by the wise coachman. After the reading, cricket was anticlimax, but Deborah must keep her bargain. She kept thinking of Black Beauty writing the book. It showed how good the story was, Grandmama said, because no child had ever yet questioned the practical side of it, or posed the picture of a horse with a pen in its hoof. "A modern horse would have a typewriter," thought Deborah, and she began to bowl to Roger, smiling to herself as she did so because of the twentieth-century Beauty clacking with both hoofs at a machine. ("The Pool")” - Daphne du Maurier

45. “All stories have a curious and even dangerous power. They are manifestations of truth -- yours and mine. And truth is all at once the most wonderful yet terrifying thing in the world, which makes it nearly impossible to handle. It is such a great responsibility that it's best not to tell a story at all unless you know you can do it right. You must be very careful, or without knowing it you can change the world.” - Vera Nazarian

46. “I tell the story to you now, but in each telling the story itself changes a little, changes direction, and that in turn changes you and me. So be very careful not only in how you repeat it but in how you remember it, goslings. More often than you realize it, the world is shaped by two things -- stories told and the memories they leave behind.” - Vera Nazarian

47. “it was all I had, all I've ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. Memory." p 380” - Abraham Verghese

48. “Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.” - Lisa See

49. “I was starting to believe I was a character in a greater story, which is why the elements of story made sense in the first place.” - Donald Miller

50. “Stories. Character. Dialouge. Entire worlds created on the page. Worlds that could sweep you away or frighten you, make you laugh or cry. Worlds that allowed you to escape to another country or time. Worlds built piece by piece of ink and punctuation.” - Jamie Michaels

51. “My father never told us how the stories worked. He didn't reveal the layers, the nuggets of information, the fragments of truth and fantasy. He didn't need to -- because, given the right conditions, the stories activated, sowing themselves.” - Tahir Shah

52. “Stories are not like the real world; they aren't held back by what we know is false or true. What's important is how a story makes you feel inside.” - Tahir Shah

53. “My father used to say that stories are part of the most precious heritage of mankind.” - Tahir Shah

54. “When I get tired of new clunky writing, I resort to old fashioned story tellers, like Wilkie Collins.” - Sonia Rumzi

55. “Children played at those stories; they dreamed about them. They took them to heart and acted as if to live inside them.” - Gregory Maguire

56. “Writing is something you do alone. Its a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don't want to make eye contact while doing it."[Thoughts from Places: The Tour, Nerdfighteria Wiki, January 17, 2012]” - John Green

57. “When telling the story of your life, it is of great value to recognize and focus on the details that reveal or inspire an empowered unfolding of your being. Much like rewriting your own DNA, every aspect of your life and growth will emanate from the building blocks of your history—however you choose to tell it. This is not to suggest that you should deny or bury your mistakes, traumas or misfortunes, but rather, recognize and reveal them within an empowered context of a bigger picture.” - Scott Edmund Miller

58. “Whoever tells the best story shapes the culture.” - Erwin McManus

59. “What if things happened to you—special, magic things—because you’d been preparing for them?” - Jennifer McMahon

60. “Storytelling--that's not the future. The future, I'm afraid, is flashes and impulses. It's mode up of moments and fragments, and stories won't survive.” - Dexter Palmer

61. “I think the best stories always end up being about the people rather than the event, which is to say character-driven.” - Stephen King

62. “The principles of storytelling do not change. Going home. Coming of age. Sin and redemption. The hero. The journey, The power of love. They are hardwired into us, just like our taste buds process sweet, sour, bitter, and salt. Can a new voice come up with something startling and creative and unprecedented? Absolutely. Can they invent a fifth taste? No. No, they can’t. Can they make it so we don’t like sweet anymore? No, no they can’t.” - Chris Dee

63. “Storytellers seldom let facts get in the way of perpetuating a legend, although a few facts add seasoning and make the legend more believable.” - John Alexander

64. “I recalled the afternoon when the two of us stood beating erasers, and Camille confided that she'd done penance for stories - stories that I'll never know if she wrote or only imagined writing. She'd wanted me to tell her a secret from my dreams, a secret from my dreams I hadn't had as yet, and so I didn't quite understand what she was after."It's about feeling," Camille had insisted.I didn't understand then that she was talking about risk.” - Stuart Dybek

65. “You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift.” - Erin Morgenstern

66. “[Janco] paused. His eyes held a distant gleam as if seeing into his past. 'My first practice was a shock. I was a cocky smart aleck--'[Opal] 'Was?'[J] 'Be quiet. I'm telling a story here.” - Maria V. Snyder

67. “Statements make sense for somebody who needs advice. I’m not giving advice. I don’t instruct. At my best, I delight. That’s my job.” - Ron Koertge

68. “people don't really want original stories. they want different versions of the same story. this is called meta-narrative.” - Chester Elijah Branch

69. “During an especially noisy elementary school assembly I witnessed a common marvel.  Someone spoke,"Once upon a time..." into the mic, and the room hushed.  Such magic never ceases to amaze me.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

70. “There were good places and bad places to tell stories and there were of course stories that could not be told in any place on earth and these were reserved for heaven. ” - Gerald Hausman

71. “There is an Anglo-Saxon form of riddling that plays with the polarities of words like bright and dark, cold and warm, throwing them against one another and crafting lines of rich, humorous nonsense like this poem that has been around for so many hundreds of years that you just have to sit back and, with nothing else in mind, laugh out loud. ” - Gerald Hausman

72. “Mythology can be defined as the sacred history of humankind. This is different from what we call "history." Mythical stories, when you trace them back to their origin, often have a sacredness, a holy quality that comes from the bedrock of lore from which they emerged.” - Gerald Hausman

73. “When we're in the story, when we're part of it, we can't know the outcome. It's only later that we think we can see what the story was. But do we ever really know? And does anybody else, perhaps, coming along a little later, does anybody else really care? ... History is written by the survivors, but what is that history? That's the point I was trying to make just now. We don't know what the story is when we're in it, and even after we tell it we're not sure. Because the story doesn't end.” - James Robertson

74. “Good story' means something worth telling that the world wants to hear. Finding this is your lonely task...But the love of a good story, of terrific characters and a world driven by your passion, courage, and creative gifts is still not enough. Your goal must be a good story well told.” - Robert McKee

75. “Given the choice between trivial material brilliantly told versus profound material badly told, an audience will always choose the trivial told brilliantly.” - Robert McKee

76. “When we want mood experiences, we go to concerts or museums. When we want meaningful emotional experience, we go to the storyteller.” - Robert McKee

77. “Art is a captured emotion. When I say this I mean all artists, whether you are a photographer, a writer, or sculptor, you are trying to capture the way someone or something made you feel. As a story teller I am trying to captivate the audience and allow them to feel just a small portion of the emotion I am desperately trying to preserve.” - Tommy Tran

78. “Entertain, yes. That goes without saying. But a good writer does that automatically, it's built into the machine. Telling a thumpingly good, mesmerizing story is what one does without question. But beyond that, any writer worth his/her hire knows that all writing, one way or another, is subversive. It is guerrilla warfare against the status quo.” - Harlan Ellison

79. “The ability to see our lives as stories and share those stories with others is at the core of what it means to be human. We use stories to order and make sense of our lives, to define who we are, even to construct our realities: this happened, then this happened, then this. I was, I am, I will be. We recount our dreams, narrate our days and organize our memories into stories we tell others and ourselves. As natural-born storytellers, we respond to others’ stories because they are deeply, intimately familiar.” - John Capecci and Timothy Cage

80. “The enormity of problems like hunger and social injustice can certainly motivate us to act. We can be convinced logically of the need for intervention and change. But it is the story of one individual that ultimately makes the difference—by offeringliving proof.” - John Capecci and Timothy Cage

81. “The more stories I study, the more I begin to suspect that there is only one story, and that we are, all of us, engaged in telling it.” - J. Aleksandr Wootton

82. “Art is the bridge across the gap between peoples and cultures. Writing is one of the arts that can help link people.” - Charles Ray

83. “Every story is a ride to some place and time other than here and now. Buried in an armchair, reclined on a couch, prostrate on your bed, or glued to your desk, you can go places and travel through time.” - A.A. Patawaran

84. “Truly, there is magic in fairy tales.For it takes but a simply-uttered 'Once upon a time...' to allure and spellbind an audience.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

85. “Toy is talking and this is why I love her. She can go on about herself ceaselessly and like the scratching of a branch against the window at night, the steady insistence of it is comforting. She has stories without beginnings, stories that trail off, stories that crisscross and contradict and dead end.Toy is the star of her stories. Events orbit her like a constellation.” - Erica Lorraine Scheidt

86. “I do believe that some humans have more amazing lives than others–above all, those who don’t sit down in a chair like mere spectators letting their lives happen in front of them, but they take risks as heroes do, experiencing, living, becoming the main character—but no matter what, we all have at least one story to tell.” - Merce Cardus

87. “Whether this tale be true or false, none can tell, for none were there to witness it themselves.” - Marjane Satrapi

88. “I think that's the way people absorb television. All the explanations in Doctor Who are there if that's your bag, but they're not essential to your enjoyment of it. An awful lot of storytelling isn't really about making people understand — it's about making people care.” - Steven Moffat

89. “When I got home, I seemed in a dream. My windows looked upon hers; I remained all the day looking at them, and all the day they were closed and dark. I forgot everything for this woman; I slept not, I eat nothing. That evening I fell into a fever, the next morning I was delirious, and the next evening I was DEAD!' 'Dead!' cried his hearers. 'Dead!' answered the narrator, with a conviction in his voice which words alone cannot give; 'dead as Fabian, the cast of whose dead face hangs from that wall!' 'Go on,' whispered the others, holding their breath. The hail still rattled against the windows, and the fire had so nearly died out, that they threw more wood on the feeble flame which penetrated the darkness of the studio and cast a faint light upon the pale face of him who told the story. ("The Dead Man's Story” - Hain Friswell

90. “You can do more with a castle in a story than with the best cardboard castle that ever stood on a nursery table.” - C.S. Lewis

91. “This process of assimilation, which takes place in depth, requires a state of relaxation that is becoming rarer and rarer. If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away. His nesting places - the activities that are intimately associated with boredom - are already extinct in the cities and are declining in the country as well. With this the gift for listening is lost and the community of listeners disappears. For storytelling is always the art of repeated stories, and this art is lost when the stories are no longer retained.” - Walter Benjamin

92. “Storytelling? God started that. Discovery. Lust. Murder. Revenge. Power. Sin. Redemption. Forgiveness. Miracles. We simply retell the stories in the language of our generation.” - Dennis R. Miller

93. “Storytelling was the most honored of all talents, for it benefited everyone.” - Stephenie Meyer

94. “The role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a single problem into another form. ... It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell.” - Haruki Murakami