Keanan Brand > Keanan's Quotes

“Live the life that unfolds before you- love goodness more than you fear evil.”
― Jonathan Rogers, The Bark of the Bog Owl

“The music in his laughter had a way of rounding off the missing notes in her soul.”
― Gloria Naylor, Linden Hills

“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

“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, The Night Circus

“Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself.”
― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

“No, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

“There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.”
― Doris May Lessing, Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949

“The 3 types of terror: The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it's when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm. The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it's when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It's when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there's nothing there...”
― Stephen King

“You can fix anything but a blank page.”
― Nora Roberts

“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

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

“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

“If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Collected Works of Rudyard Kipling: Captains Courageous - Kim

“There either is or is not, that’s the way things are. The colour of the day. The way it felt to be a child. The saltwater on your sunburnt legs. Sometimes the water is yellow, sometimes it’s red. But what colour it may be in memory, depends on the day. I’m not going to tell you the story the way it happened. I’m going to tell it the way I remember it.

— Great Expectations (1998) directed by Alfonso Cuarón”
― Mitch Glazer

“Look. (Grown-ups skip this paragraph) I'm not about to tell you this book has a tragic ending. I already said in the very first line how it was my favorite in all the world. But there's a lot of bad stuff coming. ”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“But silence is not a natural environment for stories. They need words. Without them they grown pale, sicken and die. And then they haunt you.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“Thus I rediscovered what writers have always known (and have told us again and again): books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told.”
― Umberto Eco, Postscript to the Name of the Rose

“I could not stop talking because now I had started my story, it wanted to be finished. We cannot choose where to start and stop. Our stories are the tellers of us. ”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.”
― Eudora Welty, One Writer's Beginnings

“The more you leave out, the more you highlight what you leave in.”
― Henry Green

“It is my opinion that a story worth reading only in childhood is not worth reading even then.”
― C.S. Lewis

“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, Anansi Boys

“I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White

“Once upon a time there was what there was, and if nothing had happened there would be nothing to tell.”
― Charles de Lint, Dreams Underfoot

“All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, 'Sir, write me, I am beautiful.”
― Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before

“Things worth telling - take time”
― Nicholas Denmon

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

“I think the best stories always end up being about the people rather than the event, which is to say character-driven.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Doubt is a question mark; faith is an exclamation point. The most compelling, believable, realistic stories have included them both.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy