As you’ll see in these quotes about storytelling, it isn’t language per se that separates us from other animals. It’s actually storytelling that’s so intrinsically human that no other species engages in it.
Storytelling is an art. There’s no doubt about it. Something so beautiful and captivating can be nothing less than remarkable artistry. However, the beauty of it is that we’re all capable of creating that art, at least in some way.
You may think that there isn’t a writer inside of you, but there is a storyteller; it’s just waiting to burst out. If you happen to forget that, here are the best quotes about storytelling to remind you that creativity can be everyone’s strong suit.
28 Most Captivating Quotes About Storytelling
Best Quotes About Storytelling That Highlight the Importance of Stories
#1. “You’re never going to kill storytelling because it’s built into the human plan. We come with it.” ― Margaret Atwood
#2. “The future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: artists, inventors, storytellers ― creative and holistic ‘right-brain’ thinkers.” ― Daniel Pink
#3. “I’ll be a story in your head. But that’s OK: we’re all stories, in the end. Just make it a good one, eh?” ― The 11th Doctor
#4. “Authors do not choose a story to write; the story chooses us.” ― Richard P. Denney
#5. “Sometimes, reality is too complex. Stories give it form.” ― Jean Luc Godard
#6. “If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.” ― Rudyard Kipling
#7. “We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories.” ― Jonathan Gottschall
#8. “Storytelling, as it turns out, was crucial to our evolution ― more so than opposable thumbs. Opposable thumbs let us hang on; storytelling told us what to hang on to.” ― Lisa Cron
#9. “The act of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease and hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection, there is no story to tell.” ― Ben Okri
#10. “Why was Solomon recognized as the wisest man in the world? Because he knew more stories than anyone else.” — Alan Kay
#11. “Narrative imagining — story — is the fundamental instrument of thought. Rational capacities depend upon it. It is our chief means of looking into the future, of predicting, of planning, and of explaining.” ― Mark Turner
A True Storyteller Knows How to Move an Audience
#12. “Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.” ― William Shakespeare
#13. “To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the actual world. By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety that attacks us when we try to say something true about the world. This is the consoling function of narrative — the reason people tell stories, and have told stories from the beginning of time.” ― Umberto Eco
#14. “Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world.” ― Robert McKee
#15. “I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story.” ― Wilkie Collins
#16. “Narrative is writing rather than just reporting. A reporter gathers information and regurgitates it — sometimes projectile-vomits it — into the computer. A writer arranges the information in a way that draws pictures, evokes tears, holds the reader’s attention. A good writer does this without emotional manipulation and forced phrasing, but like telling a story over a cup of coffee at the kitchen table.” — Suzy Fleming
#17. “Reports convey information. Stories create experience. Reports transfer knowledge. Stories transport the reader, crossing boundaries of time, space, and imagination. The report points us there. The story puts us there.” — Roy Peter Clark
#18. “The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.” ― Brandon Sanderson
#19. “When we want mood experiences, we go to concerts or museums. When we want meaningful emotional experience, we go to the storyteller.” ― Robert McKee
#20. “Storytelling offers the opportunity to talk with your audience, not at them.” ― Laura Holloway
Quotes About Storytelling and Stories That Will Wake Your Inner Writer
#21. “The story — from Rumplestiltskin to War and Peace — is one of the basic tools invented by the human mind for the purpose of understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.” — Ursula Le Guin
#22. “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” ― Maya Angelou
#23. “I’ll tell you a secret. Old storytellers never die. They disappear into their own story.” ― Vera Nazarian
#24. “We are all storytellers. We all live in a network of stories. There isn’t a stronger connection between people than storytelling.” ― Jimmy Neil Smith
#25. “The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.” — Brandon Sanderson
#26. ”There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence.” ― Flannery O’Connor
#27. “Inside each of us is a natural-born storyteller, waiting to be released.” ― Robin Moore
#28. “Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.” ― Hannah Arendt
To Conclude
Just like everyone loves a good story, everyone has a story to tell. It can be short, long, exciting, or intrinsically ordinary. But either way, it’s yours. So don’t hide your inner storyteller away from the world. Let it burst out in the most beautiful way and tell your tale, whatever it may be. Hopefully, these quotes about storytelling will help or at least inspire you to do so.
