Hermann Hess - Boardwalk Empire TV - Orson Welles - Salman Rushdie - Adam Curtis TV - Simon Schama TV - Agatha Christie’s England TV - Ray Bradbury - Richard Dawkins - Anthony Burgess - Ernest Hemingway - The Lord of the Rings 2002 - Dawson Carr - Francis Bacon - Michael Shermer - Akbar Ahmed - Agatha Christie - Lucy Worsley TV - Troy 2004 - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine TV - Shelby Foote - John F Kennedy - II Maccabees 2:32 - Henry David Thoreau - Salman Rushdie - Hilary Mantel - George R R Martin - Albert Camus - Thomas Hardy - Vladimir Nabokov - William Shakespeare - Clive Barker - Revenge of the Green Dragons 2014 - Laurence Sterne - Monty Python’s Flying Circus TV - Stories We Tell 2012 - Game of Thrones 2019 - Akala’s Odyssey TV - Charles Manson TV - Hemingway TV -
My story isn’t pleasant, it’s not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves. Hermann Hess
First rule of politics: Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Boardwalk Empire s1e1, Women’s Temperance League meeting, HBO 2010
If you want a happy ending, that depends of course on where you stop your story. Orson Welles
An attack upon our ability to tell stories is not just censorship – it is a crime against our nature as human beings. Salman Rushdie
Increasingly we live in a world where nothing makes any sense. Events come and go like waves of a fever leaving us confused and uncertain. Those in power tell stories to help us make sense of the complexity of reality. For those stories are increasingly unconvincing and hollow. Adam Curtis, Bitter Lake, BBC 2015
Bede was not just the founding father of English history, arguably he was also the first consummate story teller in all of English literature. Simon Schama, A History of Britain: Beginnings, BBC 2000
There was no more quintessentially English writer than Agatha Christie. Through her sensational murder mysteries she created a literary universe that captured our national spirit like no-one before or since. The magical worlds where she set her stories are in fact drawn from real places. Agatha Christie’s England, Channel 5 2021
Born 1890 in the Devon town of Torquay. The youngest to three children she lived a charmed life thanks to her American father’s large inheritance. ibid.
She introduced the world to Miss Marple when she published The Murder at the Vicarage. ibid.
In 1920 Agatha published her debut novel: The Mysterious Affair at Styles. The lead character was the now iconic Belgium detective Hercules Poirot. ibid.
‘Agatha absolutely abhorred the loss of empire, the changing attitudes to British dominance over the world. This big change in social values, the class system.’ ibid. J C Bernthal, Agatha Christie scholar
Arguably the biggest writer of the Twentieth Century. ibid.
I spent three days a week for ten years educating myself in the public library, and it’s better than college. People should educate themselves – you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of ten years I had read every book in the library and I’d written a thousand stories. Ray Bradbury
What shocks me today about such stories is not that they really happened – they probably didn’t. What makes my jaw drop is that people today should base their lives on such an appalling role model as Yahweh. And even worse, that they should bossily try to force the same evil monster, whether fact or fiction, on the rest of us. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
In a story you had to find a reason, but real life gets on very well without even Freudian motivations. Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers
Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you. Ernest Hemingway
It’s like in the great stories, Mr Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines, it’ll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr Frodo, I do understand, I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going because they were holding on to something ... That there’s some good in the world, Mr Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for. The Lord of the Rings II: Two Towers 2002 starring Elijah Wood & Ian McKellan & Viggo Mortensen & Liv Tyler & Sean Astin & Cate Blanchett & John Rhys-Davies & Bernard Hill & Christopher Lee & Billy Boyd & Dominic Monaghan & Orlando Bloom & Hugo Weaving & Karl Urban & Sean Bean & Andy Serkis et al, director Peter Jackson, Sam
Caravaggio’s revolution was to treat biblical and mythological subjects with realism. He completely eschews idealization. That runs completely counter to the tradition of his day. He is also a very great storyteller. He’s brilliant at digesting the stories and picking the moment that encapsulates the story. Dawson Carr, curator of Caravaggio Retrospective at National Gallery London
I don’t want to tell a story. I’ve no story to tell. Francis Bacon, cited The Art of Francis Bacon
It’s mythic storytelling, nothing more. Michael Shermer, Skeptics Magazine
Cain & Able: The story becomes an allegory. And because it is so powerful in reflecting us ... it becomes so relevant to us in the twenty-first century. Professor Akbar Ahmed
Plots come to one at such odd moments, when you’re walking along the street and examining a hat shop with particular interest, suddenly a splendid idea comes into your head and you think now that would be a very neat way of covering up the crime so that nobody would get it too soon. Of course all the practical details are still to work out. The people have to seep slowly into your consciousness. Agatha Christie
Murder’s the darkest and most despicable crime of all. And yet we’re attracted to it. Grisly crimes like these would appal us if we encountered them in real life. But something happens when they’re turned into stories and safely placed between the covers of a book. A Very British Murder with Lucy Worsley I: The New Taste for Blood, BBC 2013
If they ever tell my story, let them say I walked with giants. Troy 2004 starring Brad Pitt & Eric Bana & Orlando Bloom & Rose Byrne & Peter O'Toole & Diane Kruger & Brian Cox & Sean Bean & Julie Christie & Saffron Burrows et al, director Wolfgang Petersen, commentary
You know what I like about Klingon stories? Nothing. Lots of people die and nobody makes a profit. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s4e9: Sword of Kahless, Quark
I’ve just written the best story of my life. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s6e13: Far Beyond The Stars, Benny
But you know I can’t print it. Oh come on, Benny. Your hero’s a Negro captain. The head of a space station, for Christ’s sake. ibid. Douglas the boss (Odo)
The American Civil War – April to April, Sumter to Appomattox, 1861 to 1865 – pervades the national conscience ... It makes a great story. I know of none since the Iliad that rivals it either in drama or in pathos. Shelby Foote, foreword to The Blue and the Gray
We cannot, under the scrutiny of a free press and public, tell different stories to different audiences, foreign and domestic, friendly and hostile. John F Kennedy, November 1961
It is a foolish thing to make a long prologue, and to be short in the story itself. II Maccabees 2:32
Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short. Henry David Thoreau, letter 16th November 1857
No story comes from nowhere; new stories are born from old – it is the new combinations that make them new. Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, 1990
Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories. Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
Most have been forgotten. Most deserve to be forgotten. The heroes will always be remembered. The best. The best and the worst. And a few who were a bit of both. George R R Martin, A Feast for Crows