We tell stories to talk out the trouble in our lives, trouble otherwise so often so unspeakable. It is one of our main ways of making our lives sensible. Trying to live without stories can make us crazy. They help us recognize what we believe to be most valuable in the world, and help us identify what we hold demonic. William Kittredge
Some Similar Quotes
  1. There are many different stories to tell. It's never the same. Every day weather blows in and out, alters the surface. Sometimes it is stripped down to a single essential truth, the thing that is always believed, no matter what. The seeds from which the... - Helen Humphreys
  2. All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel. All of them? Sure, he says. <span style="margin:15px; display:block"></span>Think about it. There's escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves,... - Margaret Atwood
  3. It's impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because of what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many gestures, which could mean this or that, too... - Margaret Atwood
  4. Writing's funny, it's like walking down a hall in the dark looking for the light switch, and suddenly you find it, flip it on, and then you discover the hallway you passed through is papered with the novel you've written. - Jonathan Safran Foer
  5. Why write stories? To join the conversation. - Dorothy Allison
More Quotes By William Kittredge
  1. Sometimes there is no choice but to walk into your own house. Far away, you think, and you do not want to see. You come home and you say do not tell me. You say, I have hunted the elk all over the snowfields of...
  2. How do you go to your own house when something has gone bad on the inside, when it doesn't seem like your place to live anymore, when you almost cannot recall living there although it was the place you mostly ate and slept for all...
  3. Don't worry about meaning. If a story's any good, it can't help but have meaning. Let the PhDs tell you what your story means.
  4. We tell stories to talk out the trouble in our lives, trouble otherwise so often so unspeakable. It is one of our main ways of making our lives sensible. Trying to live without stories can make us crazy. They help us recognize what we believe...
  5. We must define a story which encourages us to make use of the place where we live without killing it, and we must understand that the living world cannot be replicated.
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