I am a storyteller from a personal viewpoint. When I run out of people I invent ghosts. I don't believe in ghosts. Never saw one. — Ruskin Bond
That's what a writer does; they make things up and that makes for good reading. — Debbie Reynolds
Fiction writing is great. You can make up almost anything. — Ivana Trump
In the early stages of creation of both art and science, everything in the mind is a story. — E. O. Wilson
Humans are, by nature, pattern-seeking, storytelling animals, and we are quite adept at telling stories about patterns whether they exist or not. — Michael Shermer
Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact. — Robert McKee
The world is full of fictional characters looking for their stories — Diane Arbus
Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true. — Ulysses S. Grant
Sometime reality is too complex. Stories give it form. — Jean-Luc Godard
A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled. — Raymond Chandler
Storytelling comes naturally to humans, but since we live in an unnatural world, we sometimes need a little help doing what we'd naturally do. — Dan Harmon
Myths are made for the imagination to breath life into them. — Albert Camus
Why ruin a good story with the truth? — Woody Allen
Sometimes reality is too complex. Stories give it form. — Jean Luc Godard
We tell ourselves stories in order to live. — Joan Didion
Children have real understanding only of that which they invent themselves, and each time that we try to teach them too quickly, we keep them from reinventing it themselves. — Jean Piaget
The role of the teacher is to create the conditions for invention rather than provide ready-made knowledge. — Seymour Papert
You have the power to say - This is not how my story will end.
The idiot who invented instant grits also thought of frozen fried chicken, and they ought to lock him up before he tries to freeze-dry collards. — Lewis Grizzard
There is no god, there is no god, there is no god at all. He who invented god is a fool. He who propagates god is a scoundrel. He who worships god is a barbarian. — Periyar E. V. Ramasamy
It is difficult to maintain the illusion that we are interpreting a Constitution, rather than inventing one. — Antonin Scalia
Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple — Gene Wilder
Africa’s story has been written by others; we need to own our problems and solutions and write our story. — Paul Kagame
If someone writes a great story, people praise the author, not the pen. People don't say, 'Oh what an incredible pen...where can I get a pen like this so I can write great stories?' Well, I am just a pen in the hands of the Lord. He is the author. All praise should go to him. — Keith Green
Behind every girl's favorite song there is an untold story.
All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town. — Leo Tolstoy
You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves in your heart--your stories, visions, memories, songs: your truth, your version of things, in your voice. That is really all you have to offer us, and it's why you were born. — Anne Lamott
It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things—a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring—with immense, even startling power. — Raymond Carver
One bad chapter does not mean your story is over.
There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories. — Ursula K. Le Guin
I don't have ugly ducklings turning into swans in my stories. I have ugly ducklings turning into confident ducks. — Maeve Binchy
First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice. — Octavia Butler
There's a story everywhere. Being bored to death someplace is basically a funny proposition. What you have to watch out for is you don't write a boring story about a boring place. — Tim Cahill
Inventing Things Quotes
There is no such thing as permanence at all. Everything is constantly changing. Everything is in a flux. Because you cannot face the impermanence of all relationships, you invent sentiments, romance, and dramatic emotions to give them certainty. Therefore you are always in conflict. — U.G. Krishnamurti
I was playing when I invented the aqualung. I think play is the most serious thing in the world. — Jacques Yves Cousteau
The inventor is a man who looks around upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees, he wants to benefit the world; he is haunted by an idea. The spirit of invention possesses him, seeking materialization. — Alexander Graham Bell
Do not judge my story by the chapter you walked in on.
The business and design of the Royal Society is: To improve the knowledge of naturall things, and all useful Arts, Manufactures, Mechanic practices, Engines and Inventions by Experiments-(not meddling with Divinity, Metaphysics, Moralls, Politicks, Grammar, Rhetoric or Logick). — Robert Hooke
Bitcoin is the most difficult property that the human race possesses or has yet invented to confiscate…I literally have to crack your head open and read your mind to take it…It’s harder to take than every other thing you might own. In fact, it’s exponentially harder. — Michael Saylor
It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary. — David Bailey
You Can, end of story !
God was invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand. — Richard P. Feynman
The only thing useful banks have invented in 20 years is the ATM. — Paul Volcker
A scarf has to be the most beautiful thing ever invented to wear! It's a winding, a continuity, an infinity! I love things that are endless, I hate them to stop. It's like order and disorder: I rather love disorder and things that move, it's a state where one gets more things done! — Sonia Rykiel
An innovation is one of those things that society looks at and says, if we make this part of the way we live and work, it will change the way we live and work. — Dean Kamen
Made Up Stories Quotes
The Ivermectin story completes a picture of the racket our system has become. The media, government, academy, Pharma and Tech teamed up against the people—exacerbating a man-made disaster and demonizing resisters in order to mass-administer a deadly, ineffective, unnecessary shot. — Bret Weinstein
If you did not know at age five that the gods are made up beings and the myths made up stories, you are a fool. — Suetonius
A lie was something you told because you were mean or a coward. A story was something you made up out of something that might have happened. Only you didn't tell it like it was, you told it like you thought it should have been. — Betty Smith
Travel and tell no one, live a true love story and tell no one, live happily and tell no one, people ruin beautiful things.
Stories," he'd said, his voice low and almost husky, "we are made up of stories. And even the one's that seem the most like lies can be our deepest hidden truths. — Jane Yolen
I've thought a lot about the power of empathy. In my work, it's the current that connects me and my actual pulse to a fictional character in a made up story, it allows me to feel, pretend feelings and sorrows and imagined pain. — Meryl Streep
The universe is not made up of atoms; it’s made up of tiny stories. — Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Your past is just a story, and once you realise this, It has not power over you.
We must risk the journey to a higher ground where there
is freedom from the gravitational pull of our stories,
the pull that comes from years of trying to prove that
the stories we tell ourselves, the ones we've made up,
are the truth. — Debbie Ford
There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who want to know the facts, and those who want to make up a nice story to feel better. I wish I was the kind who made up stories. — Adriana Trigiani
All of us are made up of the stories that we listen to, the ones we disagree with and the ones that we agree with. — Stanley Crouch
A first novel of astonishing force, craft and beauty, The Headmaster's Wager conjures up a dizzyingly evocative wartime Saigon in the story of Percival Chen, a Chinese schoolmaster in Vietnam. This extraordinary book made me weep. Read it. — Janice Y. K. Lee
You see things and you say, 'Why?'. But I dream things and I say, 'Why not?'. — George Bernard Shaw
A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding. — Isaac Newton
Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter.
Imagination is the only key to the future. Without it none exists - with it all things are possible. — Ida Tarbell
The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. — William Blake
There are a lot of good books around. People don't read any more. It's a sad state of affairs. Reading's the only thing that allows you to use your imagination. When you watch films it's someone else's vision, isn't it? — Lemmy Kilmister
You know my name. Not my story.
He who knows nothing loves nothing. He who can do nothing understands nothing. He who understands nothing is worthless. But he who understands also loves, notices, sees. The more knowledge is inherent in a thing, the greater the love. — Paracelsus
Fear is not real. The only place that fear can exist is in our thoughts of the future. It is a product of our imagination, causing us to fear things that do not at present and may not ever exist. That is near insanity Kitai. Do not misunderstand me, danger is very real, but fear is a choice. — Will Smith
The Bohemian Grove, which I attend from time to time - it is the most faggy goddamned thing you could ever imagine. — Richard M. Nixon
People are always selling the idea that people with mental illness are suffering. I think madness can be an escape. If things are not so good, you maybe want to imagine something better. — John Forbes Nash
We invented this story that Russia was bent on aggression in Eastern Europe.... This is a story that we invented so that we could blame him Vladimir Putin. My argument is that the West, especially the United States, is principally responsible for this disaster. But no American policymaker, and hardly anywhere in the American foreign-policy establishment, is going to want to acknowledge that line of argument, and they will say that the Russians are responsible. — John Mearsheimer
My argument is that Vladimir Putin is not going to re-create the Soviet Union or try to build a greater Russia, that he’s not interested in conquering and integrating Ukraine into Russia. It’s very important to understand that we invented this story that Putin is highly aggressive and he’s principally responsible for this crisis in Ukraine. — John Mearsheimer
How often do we stand convinced of the truth of our early memories, forgetting that they are assessments made by a child? We can replace the narratives that hold us back by inventing wiser stories, free from childish fears, and, in doing so, disperse long-held psychological stumbling blocks. — Benjamin Zander
People do not buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories and magic.
My father used to tell me stories before I fell asleep. When the children would gather, at a certain point, I had a tendency to make up my own elementary variations on stories I had heard, or to invent totally new ones. — Wole Soyinka
One of the ways that your project, your personal healing, or your social invention can change the world is through story. But even if no one ever learns of it, even if it is invisible to every human on Earth, it will have no less of an effect. — Charles Eisenstein
The theme you choose may change or simply elude you, but being your own story means you can always choose the tone. It also means that you can invent the language to say who are you and what you mean. — Toni Morrison
If the story-tellers could ha' got decency and good morals from true stories, who'd have troubled to invent parables? — Thomas Hardy
I don't like captions. I prefer people to look at my pictures and invent their own stories. — Josef Koudelka
Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth. — Vladimir Nabokov
In perhaps 50 years, 60 years, we can finish completely this civilization, and offer to our children the possibility to invent a new story, a new poetry, a new romanticism. — Philippe Starck
The very act of story-telling, of arranging memory and invention according to the structure of the narrative, is by definition holy. We tell stories because we can't help it. We tell stories because we love to entertain and hope to edify. We tell stories because they fill the silence death imposes. We tell stories because they save us. — James Carroll
Ture stories can't be told forward, only backward. We invent them from the vantage point of an ever-changing present and tell ourselves how they unfolded. — Siri Hustvedt
I was always inventing characters and making up stories. — Suzanne Vega
As a child, my mother told me lots of fairy stories, many her own invention. She, too, tended to reverse the norm. — Tanith Lee
Stories, like conjuring tricks, are invented because history is inadequate for our dreams. — Steven Millhauser
Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange believe that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies. — Thomas Paine
There is nobody so weak of invention that cannot make some little stories to villify his enemy. — Joseph Addison
In the first World War British propaganda had to invent the stories of German soldiers bayoneting Belgian babies, because there were too few real atrocities to feed the hatred against the enemy. — Erich Fromm
Telling our stories is what saves us. The story is enough... The very act of storytelling, of arranging memory and invention according to the structure of narrative is, by definition, holy. — James Carroll
In Tharoor's hands [the story of modern India] is transformed into Mahabharata magic.... Endlessly inventive, irreverent, wise, ingenious,... it takes on at one level or another the entire panorama of modern India....Energetic and eventful. — M. G. Vassanji
It is a skill we learn early, the art of inventing stories to explain away the fearful scared strangeness of the world. Storytelling and make-believe, like war and agriculture, are among the arts of self-defense, and all of them are ways of enclosing otherness and claiming ownership. — William Kittredge
She liked books more than anything else, and was, in fact, always inventing stories of beautiful things and telling them to herself. — Frances Hodgson Burnett
For me, the pleasure of writing comes with inventing stories. — Roald Dahl
We all have a thirst for wonder. It's a deeply human quality. Science and religion are both bound up with it. What I'm saying is, you don't have to make stories up, you don't have to exaggerate. There's wonder and awe enough in the real world. Nature's a lot better at inventing wonders than we are. — Carl Sagan
I'm just giving you some spiel, the ludicrous plot of a novel, a story I invented to touch your heart—one-third bullshit, one-third booze, and one-third genuine tenderness, you know the kind of thing. — Antonio Lobo Antunes
My definition of fake news is a content-like object that is a story, an article, a video, a tweet that has been fabricated, completely invented out of thin air, intentionally for the purpose of misleading. — Vivian Schiller
James Lovelock is one of the great thinkers of our time. His ideas and inventions have opened up new insights into our planet and the way it works, and the story behind them will appeal to a very wide audience. I am pleased to recommend this book. — Chris Rapley
A big, sweeping, and rapturous Hollywood love story that could turn out to be the most revolutionary movie of the year! A film in which love feels almost as if it were being invented. It is also a rare crowd-pleaser with the potential to change hearts and minds. — Owen Gleiberman
This story is about the Baudelaires. And they are the sort of people who know that there’s always something. Something to invent, something to read, something to bite, and something to do, to make a sanctuary, no matter how small. And for this reason, I am happy to say, the Baudelaires were very fortunate indeed. — Daniel Handler
We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming 'sub-creator' and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil. — J. R. R. Tolkien
God invented mankind because he loved silly stories. — Ralph Steadman
I've never wanted to be a witch, but an alchemist, now that's a different matter. To invent this wizard world, I've learned a ridiculous amount about alchemy. Perhaps much of it I'll never use in the books, but I have to know in detail what magic can and cannot do in order to set the parameters and establish the stories' internal logic. — J. K. Rowling
Rian Johnson's 'Looper' is inventive, entertaining, and thought-provoking in every way a movie can be. It is in fact the kind of movie that reminds us why we watch them and make them, a beautifully told story that deserves to be not only remembered, but acknowledged for its writing. — Jason Reitman
The story - from Rumplestiltskin to War and Peace - is one of the basic tools invented by the human mind, for the purpose of gaining understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories. — Ursula K. LeGuin
The liquid metal battery story is more than an account of inventing technology. It's a blueprint for inventing inventors. — Donald Sadoway
At the same time, it's a family story and more of an epic. I needed the third-person. I tried to give a sense that Cal, in writing his story, is perhaps inventing his past as much as recalling it. — Jeffrey Eugenides
He invented this idea of telling the life story of a great writer through becoming his characters and becoming him. It was such a pleasure and I thought we must find another writer. — Simon Callow
We hunger to understand, so we invent myths about how we imagine the world is constructed - and they're, of course, based upon what we know, which is ourselves and other animals. So we make up stories about how the world was hatched from a cosmic egg or created after the mating of cosmic deities or by some fiat of a powerful being. — Carl Sagan
Sometimes I think I'm a one-trick pony because I'm not very inventive about new ways of telling stories. — Sara Paretsky
Like most filmmakers and writers, there are roots in my own life, but they are stories that I invent. There was a period of time in my life when I made directly autobiographical films where I truly told what happened to me. But, now, I don't make directly autobiographical films anymore. I am more for renouncing that and being in front of history. The large part of my work tells about something I know. It's close. — Philippe Garrel
Characters work really well when they're reflective of the times that they're operating in. To keep these characters static - like Superman was invented in the '30s, Wonder Woman in the '40s - if they were still operating under those kinds of constraints, they'd die. These pop cultures, just like Greek myths, they have to reflect the time their stories are being told. That's what makes them relevant. — Brian Azzarello
Science fiction is a weird category, because it's the only area of fiction I can think of where the story is not of primary importance. Science fiction tends to be more about the science, or the invention of the fantasy world, or the political allegory. When I left science fiction, I said "They're more interested in planets, and I'm interested in people." — Donald E. Westlake
When one part of the brain makes a choice, other parts can quickly invent a story to explain why. If you show the command "Walk" to the right hemisphere (the one without language), the patient will get up and start walking. If you stop him and ask why he's leaving, his left hemisphere, cooking up an answer, will say something like "I was going to get a drink of water." — David Eagleman
All our stories are part invention - the way we've decided to make sense of what has happened. — Melissa Febos
I'm just worried that the technology I invented in that story ["The Pyramid and the Ass" ] will become real, and George W. Bush will be able to clone into a new body and be "re-elected" due to a clone-bill passed by him and his cronies. God forbid! — Alexander Weinstein
In Conclusion
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