quotes

“Our stories matter… Your stories matter… For you never know how much of a difference they make and to whom.”
~ Caroline Joy Adams, Power to Write

“The healing that can grow out of the simple act of telling our stories is often quite remarkable.”
~ Susan Wittig Albert

“Wherever a story comes from, whether it is a familiar myth or a private memory, the retelling exemplifies the making of a connection from one pattern to another: a potential translation in which narrative becomes parable and the once upon a time comes to stand for some renascent truth. This approach applies to all the incidents of everyday life: the phrase in the newspaper, the endearing or infuriating game of a toddler, the misunderstanding at the office. Our species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.”
~ Mary Catherine Bates

“When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story’s voice makes everything its own.”
– John Berger, British Actor, Critic

“Storytelling strengthens the imagination. To imagine is to envision, to see with the inward eye. This ability to imagine is the basis of all creativity. Creativity is being able to see beyond what is readily apparent. It is seeing a new answer to an old problem.”
~ Carol Birch, award-winning recording artist, children’s librarian

“Their story, yours, mine — it’s what we all carry with us on this trip we take, and we owe it to each other to respect our stories and learn from them.”
~ Robert Coles, author of The Call of Stories

“Storytelling is the way we learn naturally. It’s the way lessons and information get transmitted. I can’t imagine how we’d communicate without it.”
~ Gay Ducey, storyteller, college teacher

“Stories are medicine. They have such power; they do not require that we do, be, act anything —we need only listen.”
~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

“Everywhere, every place on the planet, people have told stories. The kind of cultural wisdom that has passed down over the generations can inform, enlighten, entertain, and uplift the spirit of modern day listeners, just as these tales did in ancient times.”
~ Heather Forest, folk guitarist, poet, author

“We understand ourselves through stories, by making stories out of our lives. Storytellers give people structure with which they can begin to look at their own lives and try to make sense of them.”
~ Bill Harley, author, commentator, storyteller

“Tell me a fact and I’ll learn. Tell me a truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.”
~ Indian Proverb

“Whether or not the stories are “true” is not the problem. The only question is whether what I tell is my fable, my truth.”
~ C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

“Having worked in arts education settings, we are experienced with people telling us that they have no story to tell. …as humans most of us carry around a little voice, the editor, that tells us that what we have to say is not entertaining or substantial enough to be heard. That editor is a composite figure of everyone in our lives who has diminished our sense of creative ability, from family members, to teachers, to employers, to the society as a whole. We live in a culture where expert story making is a highly valued and rewarded craft. Once we fall behind in developing our natural storytelling abilities to their fullest extent, it takes a much longer commitment and concentration to reclaim those abilities.”
~ Joe Lambert, Digital Storytelling Cookbook

“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

“Telling a true story about personal experience is not just a matter of being oneself, or even or finding oneself. It is also a matter of choosing oneself.”
~ Harriet Goldhor Lerner

“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

“Some tribal cultures feel that when you lose the ability to dream, you are no longer a human; you cease to be a human being. Storytelling is what makes us most essentially human. Birds fly; fish swim; human beings dream and imagine.”
~ Robin Moore, Storyteller, former Journalist

“Listening to stories is essential to the development of human imagination, creativity, and abstract thought processes. Diverse and even antagonistic communities come to understand and respect one another through listening to each other’s stories, and therefore storytelling is an essential tool for peacemaking.”
~ National Storytelling Network

“The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.”
~ Ben Okri

“Along with personal meaning, stories also convey cultural meaning in the form of values, ideas, and feelings. We all belong to many cultures. Stories that are part of our civic culture influence how we understand ourselves as citizens of a nation and of the world. Stories from our religious culture convey religious and moral values and give us a context for our religious beliefs. Our individual family cultures, in the form of our family stories, strongly influence how we understand ourselves and provide models for how to relate to others.”
~ Bruce Rybarczyk, PhD and Albert Bellg, PhD, Listening to Life Stories: A New Approach to Stress Intervention in Health Care

“There is a deep-seated need in the human spirit to tell stories, to hear stories, to share stories.”
~ Steve Sanfield, author, poet, storyteller

“Storytelling connects people. It connects hearts. It helps answer questions like: Who am I? Who are my people? The voice is the messenger of the heart.”
~ Penninah Schram, founding director of the Jewish Storytelling Center, NYC

“We’re all storytellers. We all live in a network of stories. There isn’t a stronger connection between people than storytelling.”
~ Jimmy Neil Smith, executive director of the National Storytelling Association, Jonesborough, TN

“Storytelling is our native language.”
~ Mark Wagler, teacher, folklorist and professional storyteller

“The importance of stories? They give great pleasure. They divert if you’re troubled. They stir memories, Stories make us laugh together. They make us aware of the shared experiences in life. Isn’t that important?”
~ Kathryn Windham, Author, Award-Winning Reporter, Professional Storyteller