Story Quotes - page 87

As Malaparte saw it, Naples was a pagan city with an ancient sense of time. Christianity taught those who were converted to it to think of history as the unfolding of a single plot – a moral drama of sin and redemption. In the ancient world there was no such plot – only a multitude of stories that were forever being repeated. Inhabiting that ancient world, the Neapolitans did not expect any fundamental alteration in human affairs. Not having accepted the Christian story of redemption, they had not been seduced by the myth of progress. Never having believed civilization to be permanent, they were not surprised when it foundered. (John N. Gray)
Contrary to generations of western progressives, it was not Russian backwardness or mistakes in applying Marxian theory that produced the society that Lyons observed. Similar regimes came into being wherever the communist project was attempted. Lenin's Russia, Mao's China, Ceausescu's Romania and many more were variants of a single dictatorial model. From being a movement aiming for universal freedom, communism turned into a system of universal despotism. That is the logic of utopia. If 1984 is such a powerful myth, one reason is that it captures this truth. Yet there is a flaw in Orwell's story, which emerges in his picture of the all-powerful interrogator. The dystopia of perpetual power is a fantasy, and so is O'Brien. Soviet torturers were sweating functionaries living in constant fear. Like their victims, they knew that they were resources that would be used up in the service of power. There was no inner-party elite safe from the contingencies of history. View quote
John N. Gray
I'm sitting in the bus station, minding my own business, reading 'Ta-Da!' magazine; a magazine by and for gay magicians, but that's a different story. View quote
Dave Attell
You see a guy with one leg, he's got a story. "Land mine '69." You see a guy with one arm, he's got a story, too. "Snow blower, bottle of whiskey." You see a guy with one tooth, what would the story be? "Well, uh, I like a lot of taffy." View quote
Dave Attell
Apple! Boy, what a story. No taxes paid, everything made abroad - yet everyone worships them. This new iPhone, there's nothing new in it. Just a golden color. What the hell, right? When people start playing with color, you know they're played out. View quote
Vaclav Smil
Now, gentlemen, there will be a beautiful story: what is the role, in the overall scheme of creation, of some of these little beings who are the agents of fermentation, the agents of putrefaction, of disorganization of everything that life has had in the surface of the globe. This role is immense, marvelous, really moving. Maybe one day maybe I will be given [the opportunity] to explain here some of these results. May God grant it to be still in the presence of such a brilliant assembly! View quote
Louis Pasteur
I wondered which was harder, in the end. The act of telling, or who you told it to. Or maybe if, when you finally got it out, the story was really all that mattered. View quote
Sarah Dessen
So many versions of just one memory, and yet none of them were right or wrong. Instead, they were all pieces. Only when fitted together, edge to edge, could they even begin to tell the whole story. View quote
Sarah Dessen
Pieces and parts were always easier to process. The full picture, the entire story, was another thing entirely. But you just never knew. Sometimes, people could surprise you. View quote
Sarah Dessen
But it was too early to know: there were always more pages to go, more words to be written, before the story was over. View quote
Sarah Dessen
There was no short answer to this; like so much else, it was a long story. But what really makes any story real is knowing someone will hear it. And understand. (Sarah Dessen)
Whether it was a song, a person, or a story, there was a lot you couldn't know from just an excerpt, a glance, or part of a chorus. View quote
Sarah Dessen
Funny how a beautiful song could tell such an ugly story. View quote
Sarah Dessen
You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. View quote
Victor Hugo
Another story must begin! View quote
Victor Hugo
To say that historical conditions made personal life possible, and with it the self-consciousness that allowed psychoanalysis to emerge, is to tell half the story: one also has to consider that the erotic impulse, ever pressing for satisfaction, had something to do with making the history that encouraged its expression. View quote
Ellen Willis
Often, I get the feeling that the story is really happening somewhere and all I'm doing is trying to work out the best way to tell it. View quote
Garth Nix
This is the saddest story I have ever heard. View quote
Ford Madox Ford
Here's the story: There's a terrible crisis affecting the American economy. We have come together on a bill to alleviate the crisis. And because somebody hurt their feelings they decide to punish the country. I mean, I would not have imputed that degree of pettiness and hypersensitivity [...] But think about this: Somebody hurt my feelings so I will punish the country. I mean, that's hardly plausible. And there are 12 Republican members who were ready to stand up for the economic interests of America but not if anybody insulted them. I'll make an offer: Give me those 12 people's names and I will go talk uncharacteristically nicely to them and tell them what wonderful people they are and maybe they'll now think about the country. View quote
Barney Frank
I start with the story, almost in the old campfire sense, and the story leads to both the characters, which actors should best be cast in this story, and the language. The choice of words, more than anything else, creates the feeling that the story gives off. View quote
Donald E. Westlake
[Culture] Jammers are now mobilizing to repeat the tobacco story in many other areas of life. We're going to take on the global automakers, the chemical companies, the food industries, the fashion corporations and the pop-culture marketers in a free-information environment ...We want auto executives to feel just as squeezed and beleaguered as tobacco executives. We want them to have a hard time looking their kids in the eye and explaining exactly what they do for a living. (Kalle Lasn)
The story of my life is about back entrances, side doors, secret elevators and other ways of getting in and out of places so that people won't bother me. View quote
Greta Garbo
What used to be called a Canadian novel was a kind of prairie frontier story, but it was phony. In the plot, people came to the land; the land loved them; they worked and struggled and had lots of children. There was a Frenchman who talked funny and a greenhorn from England who was a fancy-pants but when it came to the crunch he was all courage. Those novels would make you retch. View quote
Robertson Davies
To look forward, to want life, means we have to be willing to look backwards and become more conscious of all those who have hurt us, all that is broken in us and that has brought us inner deaths, hurts that we may have hidden and stifled. It means that we acknowledge the story of our origins, of our own lives, see and accept our brokenness and the times we also have hurt others. When we have accepted who we are and what we need in order to grow in compassion and peacemaking, we can move forward to give life. To forgive is a gift of God that permits us to let go of our past hurts. View quote
Jean Vanier
You must become the producer, director and actor in the unfolding story of your life. View quote
Wayne W. Dyer