story

Men have everyadvantage of us in telling their story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands.

—Austen,Jane

He must teach himself that the basest of all things isto be afraid and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop foranything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomedölove and honour and pityand compassion and sacrifice.

—Faulkner,William Harrison

The Victorians expected every building, like every painting, to tell a story, and preferably to point to a moral as well. 199

—Casson, Sir Hugh Maxwell

And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world.

—Frost, Robert Lee

Every fine story must leave in the mind of the sensitive reader an intangible residuum of pleasure, a cadence, a quality of voice that is exclusively the writer's own, individual, unique.

—Cather,Willa Sibert

Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it Macaulay down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till theyare fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learnt to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait for ever.

—1st Baron

The events of life have never fallen into the form of the short story or the form of the poem, or into any other form.Yourown consciousnessisthe only formyouneed.

—Saroyan,William

I'll say, a strangemanisa marvel, with hismighty talk; but what's a squabble in your back-yard, and the blow of a loy, have taught me that there's a great gap between a gallous story and a dirty deed. 834

—Synge,John Millington

A pesar de que la m|¤a es historia, no la empezare¤   por el arca de Noe¤   y la genealog|¤a de sus ascendientes como acostumbraban hacerlo los antiguos historiadores espan‹  oles deAme¤  rica, que deben ser nuestros prototipos. I'm going to tell a true story, but I won't start with Noah's Ark and the genealogy of his forefathers, as is usual among the ancient Spanish historians of America, who we consider our prototypes.

—Echeverr|¤  a, Esteban

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig- tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked.One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet†I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig-tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

—Plath, Sylvia

Here then will we begin the story: onlyadding thus much to that which hath been said, that it is a foolish thing to make a long prologue, and to be short in the story itself.

—Bible (Apocrypha)

He remembered poor Julian and his romantic awe of them and how he had started a story once that began, 'The very rich are different from you and me.'And somebody had said to Julian,'Yes, they have more money.' See Fitzgerald 325:3.

—Hemingway, Ernest Millar

Man kann sehr wohl in einer Geschichte sein, ohne sie zu verstehen. A person can be fully involved in a story without understanding it.

—Mann,Thomas

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.

—Barrie, SirJ(ames) M(atthew)

All you had to do was tell people what they wanted to hear and they would believe you no matter how implausible your story might be.

—Sharpe,Tom (Thomas Ridley)

No story comes from nowhere; new stories are born from oldöit is the new combinations that make them new.

—Rushdie, (Ahmed) Salman

Iam nottrying totell a story.Yet perhapsit might be done in that way. A mind thinking. They might be islands of lightöislands in the stream that I am trying to convey; life itself going on.

—Woolf, (Adeline) Virginia ne¤  e Stephen

Yesöoh dear yesöthe novel tells a story.

—Forster, E(dward) M(organ)

Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists.

—Mailer, Norman Kingsley

On the Beach is a storyabout the end of the world, and Melbourne sure is the right place to film it.

—Gardner, Ava originally Lucy Johnson

It's our own story exactly! He bold as a hawk, she soft as the dawn.

—Thurber,James Grover

Dust in the air suspended Marks the place where a story ended.

—Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)

Those are old patterns, faded and bleached in the glare of the pressing present moments in the story.

—Stuart, Francis

   Farewell (sweet Cooke-ham) where I first obtained Grace from that grace where perfect grace remained; And where the muses gave their full consent, I should have power the virtuous to content; Where princely palace willed me to indite, The sacred story of the soul's delight.

—Lanyer, Aemilia

With weeping and with laughter Still is the story told, How well Horatius kept the bridge In the brave days of old.

—1st Baron

It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had beenwritten by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up themselves like green grass.

—Welty, Eudora

Matilda Briggs†was a ship which is associated with the giant ratof Sumatra, a story for whichtheworld isnot yet prepared.

—Doyle, SirArthur Conan

Story is just just deserts†man in the crucible like jack in the box.

—Elkin, Stanley Lawrence

It is the story of a mountebank and his zany.

—Walpole, Horace, 4th Earl of Orford

It would indeed be the ultimate tragedy if the history of the human race proved to be nothing more noble than the story of an ape playing with a box of matches on a petrol dump.

—Harlech,William David Ormsby Gore, 5th Baron

L'amour est l'histoire de la vie des femmes, c'est un e¤  pisode dans celle des hommes. Love is the story of a woman's life, but onlyan episode in the life of a man.

—Stae«  l, Germaine Necker, Baronne de

The story of Colonel Chapman's adventures is typical of the British way of war, and therefore begins with a complete lack of preparation.

—Wavell, Archibald Percival, 1st Earl

As Michael read the Gaelic scroll It seemed the story of the soul; And those who wrought, lest there should fail From earth the legend of the Gael, Seemed warriors of Eternal Mind Still holding in a world gone blind, From which belief and hope had gone, The lovely magic of its dawn.

—Russell, GeorgeWilliam pseudonym  Ó

This is the story of the unconquerable fortressöthe American home.

—Selznick, David O(liver)

A story with a moral appended is like the bite of a mosquito. It bores you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your conscience.

—O Henry pseudonym of  William Sydney Porter

Ist es schwer und kann es ein AuÞenseiter begreifen,dass man eine Geschichte von ihrem Anfang in sich erlebt, vom fernen Punkt bis zu der heranfahrenden Lokomotive aus Stahl, Kohl und Dampf, sie aber auchjetzt noch nicht verl a« sst, sondern von ihr gejagt wird und aus eigenem Schwung vor ihr l a« uft, wohin sie nur st o« Þt und wohin man sie lockt. It is so difficult and can an outsider understand that you experience a story within yourself from its beginning, fromthe distant point up to theapproaching locomotive of steel, coal and steam, and you don't abandon it even now, but want to be pursued by it and have time for it, therefore are pursued by it and of your own volition run before it wherever it may thrust and wherever you may lure it.

—Kafka, Franz

   The splendour falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story: The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

—Tennyson

Tell me the old, old story, Of unseen things above.

—Hankey, Katherine

   Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.

—Ruskin,John

I don't think there's another person in America that wants to tell this story as much as I do.

—North, Oliver

Porque todo es irreal en este cuento. Nada sucedio¤   como se indica. Hechos y sitios se deformaron por el empen‹  o de tocar la verdad mediante una ficcio¤  n, una mentira. Todo irreal, nada sucedio¤   como aqu |¤ se refiere. Pero fue un pobre intento de contribuir a que el gran crimen nunca se repita. For everything in this story is unreal. Nothing happened the way it was suggested. Facts and places were distorted by that persistent desire to touch the truth by means of fiction, a lie. All of it is unreal; nothing happened the way it istold here.It was a poorattempt to help ensure that the great crime is never repeated.

—Pacheco,Jose¤   Emilio

There is always something of the writer in the work but I don't think Melville had to be swallowed by a whale to write a great novel. If I had lived the lives of all the characters of the songs I've written, that would truly be an extraordinary story.

—Stipe, Michael

Yes, they say, go and write whatever story you want, but don't use whatever language is necessary† By implication those in authority ask the writer to censor and suppressheror his ownwork.Theydemand it.If you don't comply then your work isn't produced.

—Kelman,James

'öd!'said my mother,'what is all this storyabout?'ö'A Cock and a Bull,'said Yorick.

—Sterne, Laurence

What we want is a story that starts with an earthquake and works its way up to a climax.

—Goldwyn, Sam(uel) originally  Schmuel Gelbfisz

Whena scandalousstory isbelieved againstone, thereis certainly no comfort like the conscience of having deserved it.

—Sheridan, Richard Brinsley