Transformative Storytelling Quotes

When I'm really into a novel, I'm seeing the world differently during that time— not just for the hour or so in the day when I get to read. I'm actually walking around in a haze, spellbound by the book and looking at everything through a different prism.

You start out wanting to change the world through language, and end up thinking it's enough to tell a few good jokes.

A good story should change the way you see the world.

I love telling stories, I love for someone to see something, and go, "Oh, wow, I've never thought of it that way." Because I've had those moments in my life, where I go, "Oh, my God, I've never looked or approached this topic and had that insight or had that idea come to mind," to where it changes your life, it changes the way you see certain things. I love that. I think that's such a cool thing that we get to do by sharing stories, whether they're fiction or nonfiction.

I am so sick of being exhorted, as a writer, to improve the world by representing it in a more hopeful way.

You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift.

These short stories are vast structures existing mostly in the subconscious of our cultural history. They will live with the reader long after the words have been translated into ideas and dreams. That's because a good short story crosses the borders of our nations and our prejudices and our beliefs. A good short story asks a question that can't be answered in simple terms. And even if we come up with some understanding, years later, while glancing out of a window, the story still has the potential to return, to alter right there in our mind and change everything.

Stories change people while statistics give them something to argue about.

Literature is an aspect of story and story is all that exists to make sense of reality. War is a story. Now you begin to see how powerful story is because it informs our worldview and our every action, our every justification is a story. So how can story not be truly transformative? I've seen it happen in real ways, not in sentimental ways or in the jargon of New Age liberal ideology.

Books written out of fire give me a great deal of pleasure. You get the sense that the world for these writers could not have continued if the book hadn't been written. When you come across a book like that it is a privilege.

I think any time you have a show that, after you watch it, it sort of sits with you for a while, and you take pause and you talk about it, yeah, it affects your life.

A good book is an event in my life.