Be amusing: never tell unkind stories; above all, never tell long ones.
--
Upon being asked to offer the young son of a member of Parliament advice, cited in Wilfrid Meynell, Benjamin Disraeli: An Unconventional Biography (1903), p. 83.Benjamin Disraeli
» Benjamin Disraeli - all quotes »
Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose its an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.
Eudora Welty
Three stories high, long, dull, and old,
As great lords' stories often are.George Colman
In an interview which appeared in The Paris Review in 1982 the interviewers asked Travers whether "Mary Poppins' teaching if one can call it that resemble that of Christ in his parables". Travers replied:
"My Zen master, because I've studied Zen for a long time, told me that every one (and all the stories weren't written then) of the Mary Poppins stories is in essence a Zen story. And someone else, who is a bit of a Don Juan, told me that every one of the stories is a moment of tremendous sexual passion, because it begins with such tension and then it is reconciled and resolved in a way that is gloriously sensual".
The answer is clarified by the following question: "So people can read anything and everything into the stories?" "Indeed."P. L. Travers
In fact, Mr. Watson, it's a queer world, and the longer I live in it the queerer I find it. Once I thought it would be a good idea to regulate things myself and run the world as it ought to be run; but I gave it up long ago. The world's a stage, they say; but the show ain't always amusing, by a long chalk, and sometimes I wish I didn't have a reserved seat.
L. Frank Baum
The fact is we are all, no matter where we live, surrounded constantly by stories, whether they are literal, oral or visual...the benign story I'm really growing tired of is the "humorous" story of the blonde woman who is either injured or humiliated all in order to sell beer. Not funny. I am tired of these stories. I am angered by these stories. There are other stories far more wondrous stories of women claiming and reclaiming power, stories of rage and resistance and indefatigable courage, and stories of women and some men reaching across great divides and into the most treacherous places on Earth where turmoil reigns and violence against women is unchecked, taking the hands of those women, helping to lift them up and leading them toward safety and sanctuary and self-determination.
Jennifer Beals
Disraeli, Benjamin
Dix, Otto
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