Attention Quote by Edward Gibbon

Every good story needs a complication. We learn this fiction-writing fundamental in courses and workshops, by reading a lot or, most painfully, through our…

— Monica Wood

In the short stories - if I can make a very lumpy contrast - in the short stories I feel like the lives of…

— Charles D'Ambrosio

Wherever a story comes from, whether it is a familiar myth or a private memory, the retelling exemplifies the making of a connection from…

— Mary Catherine Bateson

Sadly, for those who are busy sawing off their feet to escape the trap of cliches, every story is chock full of them and…

— Rafael Yglesias

“Each story wanted, no—needed—to reveal a human fragility, a human bondage which tied people to the things they did and to be the person…

— C.J. Roberts

We tell ourselves stories in order to live...We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder…

— Joan Didion

“Mere grimness is as easy as grinning; but it requires something to put a handsome face on a story. Narratives become of suspicious merit…

— Leigh Hunt

I think there's something quite interesting about the almost tragic quality of a lot of overwrought prose, because it has a much more self-conscious…

— China Mieville

“A short story is not a portrayal of life. When life becomes disconsolate and the fear for the unknown seeps through the holes on…

— Anu Lal

The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.

— Ben Okri

“The internal psychological pressure to make up a story, to explain the ruins before one's eyes, is powerful indeed.”

— Michael Crichton

The basic quality that any great story must have is a story that illustrates the human condition.

— William Shatner