Power Of Stories Quotes

“Some years ago I had a conversation with a man who thought that writing and editing fantasy books was a rather frivolous job for a grown woman like me. He wasn’t trying to be contentious, but he himself was a probation officer, working with troubled kids from the Indian reservation where he’d been raised. Day in, day out, he dealt in a concrete way with very concrete problems, well aware that his words and deeds could change young lives for good or ill.
I argued that certain stories are also capable of changing lives, addressing some of the same problems and issues he confronted in his daily work: problems of poverty, violence, and alienation, issues of culture, race, gender, and class...
“Stories aren’t real,” he told me shortly. “They don’t feed a kid left home in an empty house. Or keep an abusive relative at bay. Or prevent an unloved child from finding ‘family’ in the nearest gang.”
Sometimes they do, I tried to argue. The right stories, read at the right time, can be as important as shelter or food. They can help us to escape calamity, and heal us in its aftermath. He frowned, dismissing this foolishness, but his wife was more conciliatory. “Write down the names of some books,” she said. “Maybe we’ll read them.”
I wrote some titles on a scrap of paper, and the top three were by Charles de lint – for these are precisely the kind of tales that Charles tells better than anyone. The vital, necessary stories. The ones that can change and heal young lives. Stories that use the power of myth to speak truth to the human heart.
Charles de Lint creates a magical world that’s not off in a distant Neverland but here and now and accessible, formed by the “magic” of friendship, art, community, and social activism. Although most of his books have not been published specifically for adolescents and young adults, nonetheless young readers find them and embrace them with particular passion. I’ve long lost count of the number of times I’ve heard people from troubled backgrounds say that books by Charles saved them in their youth, and kept them going.
Recently I saw that parole officer again, and I asked after his work. “Gets harder every year,” he said. “Or maybe I’m just getting old.” He stopped me as I turned to go. “That writer? That Charles de Lint? My wife got me to read them books…. Sometimes I pass them to the kids.”
“Do they like them?” I asked him curiously.
“If I can get them to read, they do. I tell them: Stories are important.”
And then he looked at me and smiled.”
― Terri Windling

“And as a writer now, I want to save Linda's life. Not her body--her life.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“We rely upon the poets, the philosophers, and the playwrights to articulate what most of us can only feel, in joy or sorrow. They illuminate the thoughts for which we only grope; they give us the strength and balm we cannot find in ourselves. Whenever I feel my courage wavering, I rush to them. They give me the wisdom of acceptance, the will and resiliance to push on.”
― Helen Hayes

“Stories are not mere flights of fantasy or instruments of political power and control. They link us to our past, provide us with critical insight into the present and enable us to envision our lives not just as they are but as they should be or might become. Imaginative knowledge is not something you have today and discard tomorrow. It is a way of perceiving the world and relating to it.”
― Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

“When we talk today about receptiveness to stories, we tend to contrast that attitude to one governed by reason - we talk about freeing ourselves from the shackles of the rational mind and that sort of thing - but no belief was more central to Lewis's mind than the belief that it is eminently, fully rational to be responsive to the enchanting power of stories.”
― Alan Jacobs, The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis

“You get what you expect in life.
Expect great things in life.
Live your best life.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“All those stories you have told, all those wonderful stories…
They are nothing to OUR STORY. People will tell it in years to come���
And they will say, that was a story about Love.
And about two brave girls who wouldn’t take shit from anyone.”
― Isabel Greenberg, The One Hundred Nights of Hero

“All stories are weapons, and children’s stories are doubly so, for children have not yet learned how to be careful.”
― Seanan McGuire, Juice Like Wounds

“Charles de Lint creates a magical world that’s not off in a distant Neverland but here and now and accessible, formed by the “magic” of friendship, art, community, and social activism. Although most of his books have not been published specifically for adolescents and young adults, nonetheless young readers find them and embrace them with particular passion. I’ve long lost count of the number of times I’ve heard people from troubled backgrounds say that books by Charles saved them in their youth, and kept them going.”
― Terri Windling

“I liked stories. I liked the way they had the power to make sense of life.”
― Candi Sary, Black Crow White Lie

“The thing people don't always want to realize is that stories have great power whether they get told or not.”
― Will Willingham, Adjustments

“The question is what story do you need to tell, in order to give notice to that thing with fangs that keeps chewing through your insides.”
― Will Willingham, Adjustments

“I write to preserve the legends of yesterday in hopes that others to come will record the legends of today.
For tyrants are feared, then reviled, and soon forgotten. Yet, for as long as men and women tell stories, legends will never die!”
― I. Anonymous, Gurzil

“Everything here is true, but it might not be entirely factual.”
― Ruth Reichl, Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table