When modern writers gave up telling stories, they gave up the greatest thing we had.
Someone remarked that the newspapers or the news magazines are the same as the psalms except that the names changed in the stories. Maybe you can't understand the psalms without understanding the newspaper and the other way around.
Even the pictures I was doing at college - a little narrative based on a butterfly catcher, or a chimney sweep - the images were always telling stories. They were all scenarios and moods which I storyboarded and worked through - it's exactly what I do now.
There's a glorious sense of freedom in comedy, just allowing myself to tell jokes, allowing myself to interrupt myself and tell old African folk stories that I made up - or didn't - and Jamaican stories.
Mr. Disney and his staff were constantly scouting for great stories to bring to life on film.
When we read stories of heroes, we identify with them. We take the journey with them. We see how the obstacles almost overcome them. We see how they grow as human beings or gain qualities or show great qualities of strength and courage and with them, we grow in some small way.
I hate the way market forces try to separate us out in to the appropriate demographic - basically in order to sell us things. We need to find stories that we can enjoy together, not separately.
It's hard for me to get interested in stories that ignore death, which is what American marketing culture would like to do: pretend that death doesn't exist, that you can buy immortality; just buy these products, and you'll be forever young and happy.
First, I would find an object which I would think is suitable for my characters and stories, then write about it, and in the end, I ended up with a house full of thousands of objects.
The book came after the fall of the Taliban, it says something about Afghan family life. Those kind of stories - what happens behind the scenes on a TV screen - are important.
We learned a verse of this and that and we were having fun with the songs. Tommy would make up stories to go along with them and I would yell at him, 'Hey, stupid, that's not right,' and he was like a silly kid trying to impress.
There were all us baby boomers who had a grammar school education, started to learn, then went on the pill, the whole thing, and so there are today a lot more women writers, editors, producers, and so a lot more women's stories. God, the BBC's practically run by women.
I know the difference between someone coming up to you on the street and saying, 'Hey, you're that dude, right. Yes, that's what I thought,' and somebody coming up and saying, 'Big fan of the show. Big fan of that character.' And that's nice. You're out there telling stories, you're hoping to find an audience, and it's very appreciated.
I think, for an actor, the whole world is a place of work because if you focus on characters and on stories, they are everywhere, so yeah, I feel very privileged to have had this great opportunities in the international cinema and especially in the American cinema.
I think of something quite different from a snapshot. I know of a lot of poems, some very fine ones, that are like snapshots, but I'm more interested in poetry that is like an endless film, long stories, things that weave together many different strands, like a big piece of cloth, not like a photograph.
For me, if its television, if it's theater, if it's film, and it's good, I don't make much of distinction between the 3. I think there's only so many great stories out there. If you get the chance to be a part of one, it doesn't matter what it is.
But in the right-wing media, they do have a right-wing bias. And they also have an agenda. So their agenda is: we're an adjunct of the Republican Party, and we're going push that agenda every day, and, as you say, brand these stories that help further the right-wing cause.
I like good stories above all else... and kickin' art really goes the final stretch to ensure a comic is good.
The best leaders... almost without exception and at every level, are master users of stories and symbols.
It always amazes me to think that every house on every street is full of so many stories; so many triumphs and tragedies, and all we see are yards and driveways.
We have the crime of the century every six months. So for people like me who enjoy, you know, taking these stories and writing about them, the material is endless.
I've read stories that are set in a celebrity's house, and you know where it is and what it looks like and what's inside it, and that's not something I want anyone to know.
Mick Jagger has produced some great films and brought us stories about the music industry that have changed the way we think about how music is made. I never thought I would actually call him my boss, let alone meet Mick Jagger or have any reason to say my name in the same sentence as his.
I've tried to show in my most recent book, the 'Irresistible Fairytale', that in order to talk about any genre, particularly what we call simple genre - a myth, a legend, an anecdote, a tall tale, and so on - we really have to understand something about the origin of stories all together.
I had developed this habit of writing scenarios as a hobby. I would find out which stories had been sold to be made into films and I would write my own treatment and then compare it.
We must have song and dance in our lives; we've had it ever since the inception of cinema in India. Our stories are very social-based, very human-based. We are a very emotional nation.
I'm definitely drawn to stories of just regular folks, just generally in some kind of horrific situation. I keep saying I want to do a love story in the south of France with a boy and girl and some wine. Then I always end up in an oil rig with four hundred guys or on a mountain with guys shooting at each other.
It's a really important thing for Aboriginal people to remember how stories are told and the power of stories, and make it an important feature in our world again.
Orlando's a part of me. The next guy's a part of me. And the next guy's a part of me. That's all I'm trying to do, is tell cool stories that people can relate to.
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.
I do think that even with entertainment and telling stories, people in the entertainment industry have such a beautiful position in the world to speak about things that they're passionate about in a way that can grab people more than just sitting and telling someone about something, because you can show it visually.
It's not like some movies where you're following a bunch of different stories you can cut around. There was nowhere to cut to. It's these guys. We're not cutting back to anybody else.
Some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end.
I've always been drawn to dark stories. I enjoy reading Flannery O'Connor, Patricia Highsmith, and Margaret Mitchell.
I didn't think of myself as writing 'cli-fi,' but I'll take the label. I'll take any label that makes someone think they might be interested in my stories.
I was always inventing characters and making up stories.
