When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.
The most difficult story that I've ever been involved in breaking on any of my shows was 'The Constant' episode of 'Lost,' which was when Desmond was consciousness-traveling.
'The New Yorker's fiction podcast I like a lot, where they have authors pick short stories by other authors that appeared in 'The New Yorker.'
Not only is your story worth telling, but it can be told in words so painstakingly eloquent that it becomes a song.
Chekhov - shall I be blunt? - is the greatest short story writer who ever lived.
Many of my short stories (all unpublished) were horror, and the novel I'd just finished was horror, too.
A story is a really weird art object that should contain life but not be enslaved by the banality.
I've often taken important classical, biblical or literary stories and interrogated them. I have tried to reinvigorate Lot by interpreting it differently.
A novel, in the end, is a container, a shape which you are trying to pour your story into.
I'll walk through the fire With my head lifted high And my spirit revived In Your story
Eroticism bubbles beneath the surface of every vampire story, but Anne Rice is a writer to make the pot boil.
Getting on stage is a bonus, that's my therapy, that's when I can tell stories and it all makes sense.
'The Merchant of Venice' is a straightforward, clear story, while 'The Winter's Tale,' as a general rule, is hard to present because there is so much plot.
In so many musicals today, the story is moved forward by a song. I don't think we're gonna try to do that.
People are fascinated, for whatever reason, by human drama, and the idea that cameras are capturing ambient stories.
My style is colloquial storytelling. It's the way we tell stories to one another - it's not writerly, it's not overdone.
Most important to any fake story is a plausible, realistic edge with a satirical twist that is topical.
If you're going to have a complicated story, you must work to a map; otherwise you can never make a map of it afterwards.
A reader is not supposed to be aware that someone's written the story. He's supposed to be completely immersed, submerged in the environment.
I'm a fisherman who likes to observe and tell yarns, and so I told stories about things that I knew about.
I never know, when I start writing a story, what's going to happen, or how it will all get sorted out.
