Africa breathes stories… in Africa everything is a story, everything is a repository of stories. Spiders, the wind, a leaf, a tree, the moon, silence, a glance, a mysterious old man, an owl at midnight, a sign, a white stone on a branch, a single yellow bird of omen, and inexplicable death, an unprompted laughter, an egg by the river – are all pregnated with stories. In Africa things are stories, they store stories, and they yield stories at the right moment of dreaming, when we are open to the secret side of objects and moods. (Ben Okri, Birds Of Heaven)
The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. (Barry Lopez)
A man is always a teller of tales, he lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. (Jean-Paul Sartre)
1 response so far ↓
Anonymous // April 7, 2008 at 7:30 pm
In the end all we have, machine or human, are stories and methods of finding and using those stories.
Roger Schank, Director, Institute for the Learning Sciences, Northwestern University
Storytelling fundamentals are the same forever and everywhere because storytelling is a metaphor for life and life is the same everywhere.
Screenwriter Robert McKee
Storytelling may be at the very center of human life. It is possible that, in the end, it all comes down to storytelling.
James Fernandez, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago
For we are the storytellers
and we have to learn
to tell stories again.
So we can
bring understanding
again.
Broadcast Journalism Trainer, Tim Knight