I certainly knew from an early age... how to tell stories; how to create pictures in other people's heads.
Anything works, as long as you write it properly.
When I was a boy, unconsciously, spontaneously I learned the art of telling ironic stories.
A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.
Writing history takes a great deal of imagination. I don’t mean making things up, but you have to be able to transport yourself to another time.
Most people who seek attention and regard by announcing that they're writing a novel are actually so devoid of narrative talent that they can't hold the attention of a dinner table for thirty seconds, even with a dirty joke.
I think being a singer-songwriter... your job is to tell a story that other people can't really tell themselves.
People always say, "Can writing be taught?" I always think, I can teach you how to write a better sentence, how to do dialogue, how to do character, but I can't teach you how to be a decent person, and I can't teach you how to have something to say.
It's one thing to narrate a story and another thing to execute it.
I had been a storyteller by instinct all my life. I was that boring little kid who made the rest of his friends sit around the campfire and listen to his ghost stories. It's been very much a part of my makeup.
I'm the least confident person in so many ways. But I believed that if somebody gave me the chance to tell a story, I would tell a story [well enough] that the person who gave me the chance would get their money back.
Honestly, I'm the worst storyteller ever. Like, I just take so long.
I am a storyteller, and the stories I tell are, when I'm lucky, really good ones. It's a very exciting thing to do with your life, and that's, I think, what keeps me hopeful.
Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do. Bad manners are better than no manners at all, and because we are losing our customary manners, we are probably overly conscious of them; this seems to be a condition that produces writers.
People have forgotten how to tell a story.
I'm a good storyteller.
I've always said I have one skill. That skill - if I have it at all - is storytelling.
I don't really have the gift of the sustained narrative that you need to write a book. I've tried a couple of times, and it just doesn't work. But I get some good passages, so what I'm going to do is just take sections out of them.
I've always liked telling stories. That probably came from my dad, who definitely had the gift of gab and who wove a kind of personal folklore about his youth - stories full of adventure and ghosts and wild antics.
In descriptions of nature one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes he gets a picture.
I want to do stuff like 'Lady Bird.' I want people to say, 'She told amazing stories.'
The short story is a very natural mode of storytelling; most stories can be told quickly. I always think of them as like a tightrope walk - every sentence is a step along the rope, and you can so easily misplace your step and break your neck.
Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all the tricks and has nothing to say.
Everybody's got one killer story. It doesn't take talent to tell that story, it just takes experience.
There's a difference between telling a story and not providing an explanation because you just don't do it well or pull it off.
