Storyquote: Cyclops

“We villains are a very select group indeed. In the very desperation of our hate rests our strength.”
― Cyclops

(c)2013 Laura S. Packer

Storyquote: Before it is lovable

“There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.”
― G.K. Chesterton

(c)2013 Laura S. Packer

Storyquote: Antidote against boredom

“If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.”
― Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder

(c)2013 Laura S. Packer

Storyquote: I told you so

“Nobody who says, ‘I told you so’ has ever been, or will ever be, a hero.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

(c)2013 Laura S. Packer

Storyquote: Words

“Words are like nets - we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder.”
― Jodi Picoult, Change of Heart

(c)2013 Laura S. Packer

Storyquote: The beginning of wisdom

“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.”
― Socrates

(c)2013 Laura S. Packer

Storyquote: How complicated it is

"Of course that is not the whole story, but that is the way with stories; we make them what we will. It’s a way of explaining the universe while leaving the universe unexplained, it’s a way of keeping it all alive, not boxing it into time. Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently. Some people say there are true things to be found, some people say all kinds of things can be proved. I don’t believe them. The only thing for certain is how complicated it all is, like string full of knots."
— Jeanette Winterson (Oranges are Not the Only Fruit)

(c)2013 Laura S. Packer

Storyquote: Magic things

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”
― W.B. Yeats

(c)2013 Laura S. Packer

Storyquote: Scribe of your tribe

"It is important to tell good stories. You can tell stories even if they are not huge, epic, and wonderful. You can still take the responsibility for being a scribe of your tribe."
― Ajay Naidu

(c)2013 Laura S. Packer

Story quote: Behind the veil of familiarity

“The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity.’ The child enjoys his cold meat, otherwise dull to him, by pretending it is buffalo, just killed with his own bow and arrow. And the child is wise. The real meat comes back to him more savory for having been dipped in a story…by putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it.”
― C.S. Lewis, On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature

(c)2013 Laura S. Packer

Story Quote: Congratulations, you're alive.

“If you're reading this...
Congratulations, you're alive.
If that's not something to smile about,
then I don't know what is.” 
― Chad Sugg, Monsters Under Your Head

(c)2013 Laura S. Packer

Story Quote: Being a dreamer

“Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist

(c)2013 Laura S. Packer

Story Quote: Developing wings

“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

(c)2013 Laura S. Packer

Story Quote: Truth inside the lie

“Fiction is the truth inside the lie.”
― Stephen King

(c)2011 Laura S. Packer

Story Quote: Chariots

“Telling the proper stories is as if you were approaching the throne of Heaven in a fiery chariot.”

—Baal Shem Tov

(c)2011 Laura S. Packer

Story Quote: Once Upon a Time...

“‘Thou shalt not’ is soon forgotten, but ‘Once upon a time’ lasts forever.”
—Philip Pullman
(1996 Carnegie Medal acceptance speech)

(c)2013 Laura S. Packer

Story Quote: Avoiding madness

We create stories to define our existence. If we do not create the stories, we probably go mad."

- Shekhar Kapur, from his TED talk, We Are The Stories We Tell Ourselves.

(c)2013 Laura S. Packer

Story quote: Myth vs. journalism

“Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is.”
― Joseph Campbell

Story quote: The road to hell

The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.
- Philip Roth


(What would happen if you went back to an old work today?)

(c)2013 Laura S. Packer

Story quote: False coaches

Perhaps you, too, have a coach of the interior like mine – bald and cruel, shaking his sweaty pate at your sloth, ridiculing your sentences, professionally contemptuous. Extremely foul-mouthed. A definite misogynist. A voice that reads over your shoulder and snorts with derision at your characters’ dialogue. A voice in cahoots with every other voice that has ever criticized your efforts and ambitions and haircut. He pretends to be all kinds of things: the Voice of Reason, the Voice of Tough Love. But he is a tyrant. He is the enemy of fiction writing. His “pep talks” are actually spells of paralysis, designed to rob you of all confidence and happiness. In order to write your novel, you must get rid of this sadist. Do whatever it takes to shut him up. Chloroform him; drag him by his white Reebox behind the dugout; bury his shrill, censorious whistle. Then return to your green, blank, mercifully silent playing field, and write.
- Karen Russell


(How do you shut up the liars in your head?)

(c)2013 Laura S. Packer