William Butler Yeats Quotes

I studied poetry in college and for a year in an MFA program. As time went on, my poems got more and more complicated. What I was really trying to do was tell stories.

When you have an important story to tell, the words you need seem to come of their own accord.

The poets needed to learn to pay greater attention to character and to narrative.

Writing is more about imagination than anything else. I fell in love with words. I fell in love with storytelling.

I've always been jealous of rappers, because they can fit so many words into a song and tell a story with lots of details. But when you're a songwriter, you have to fit the words to the melody and you can't fit as much in. I'm just a big fan of storytelling.

I could come up with 50 stories that I am thinking about.

I've always thought my poems told stories.

One thing I do know is that poetry, to be understood, must be clear.

My stories are sometimes closer to poems or meditations, but often there is at least a little narrative in them.

I think of something quite different from a snapshot. I know of a lot of poems, some very fine ones, that are like snapshots, but I'm more interested in poetry that is like an endless film, long stories, things that weave together many different strands, like a big piece of cloth, not like a photograph.

Acting, music, comedy are all just delivery systems to communicate ideas and stories.

I have always used a great variety of verse forms, especially in my poetry for children. I believe that poetry begins in childhood and that a poet who can remember his own childhood exactly can, and should, communicate to children.

Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.

It is my belief that we as human beings have a need to tell stories - I think it's evolutionary. So you can think of the short story as a literary form, or you can instead think of stories.

I fell in love with poetry through storytelling, so my poetry tends to be fairly narrative. I like characters, I like having a beginning, middle, and ending, though not necessarily in that order.

A little bit of one story joins onto an idea from another, and hey presto, . . . not old tales but new ones. Nothing comes from nothing.

Fiction comes in all shapes and sizes. Secrets,lies,stories. We all tell them. Sometimes,because we hope to entertain. Sometimes,because we need to distract. And sometimes, because we have to.

You know when you're telling these little stories? Here's a good idea: have a point. It makes it so much more interesting for the listener!

I work on words, mostly, toward them being poetry or short stories, and then some of those become songs.

Too many poets write poems which are only difficult on the surface, difficult because the dramatic situation is easily misunderstood. It's not difficult to write poems that are misunderstood. A drunk, a three-year-old-they are easily misunderstood. What is difficult is being clear and mysterious at the same time. The dramatic situation needs to be as clear in a poem as it is in a piece of good journalism. The why is part of the mystery, but the who, what, where, and when should all be understood.

Ideas come and go, stories stay.

Tell them stories. They need the truth you must tell them true stories, and everything will be well, just tell them stories.

A good story's like a door, and you can go through it whenever you need to. After you've read it or seen it or heard it, you can still go back through it. Once it's yours, it's always yours.

Humans like stories. Humans need stories. Stories are good. Stories work. Story clarifies and captures the essence of the human spirit. Story, in all its forms—of life, of love, of knowledge—has traced the upward surge of mankind. And story, you mark my words, will be with the last human to draw breath.

Comic strips introduced me to metaphors. They are pure metaphor, so you learn how to tell a story with symbols, which is a very valuable thing to learn. And I learned that from motion pictures, too, and from poetry. Poetry is mainly metaphor. If it doesn't have a metaphor, it doesn't work.