You can throw away the privilege of acting, but that would be such a shame. The tribe has elected you to tell its story. You are the shaman/healer, that's what the storyteller is, and I think it's important for actors to appreciate that. Too often actors think it's all about them, when in reality it's all about the audience being able to recognize themselves in you. The more you pull away from the public, the less power you have on screen.
-- Ben Kingsley.

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much love, light and laughter,
ananya.

*~ Scatter Joy ~* - Emerson

A good storyteller is a person with a good memory and hopes other people haven't.
~Irvin S. Cobb (1876 - 1944) US journalist, author

Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away.
~Walter Benjamin (1892 - 1940) German man of letters, aesthetician
"The Storyteller," sct. 8, 1936.

The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.
~Walter Benjamin
"The Storyteller," sct. 4

I sang in the coffee houses...in the early 60's with no idea of "success" in terms of records or television. I just thought I was a storyteller. I had this deep, bassy voice. But I had incredible passion for the music I was singing.
~Judy Collins (1939 -) US folksinger, film maker
Interview in "Empire:ZINE," by T. Fennel Crenshaw

My very first lessons in the art of telling stories took place in the kitchen...my mother and three or four of her friends...told stories...with effortless art and technique. They were natural-born storytellers in the oral tradition.
~Paule Marshall (1929 -) US writer, educator
In "The Black Woman's Gumbo Ya-Ya," by Terri L. Jewell, 1993.

Storytelling is the way of communicating with the world. It is the way of teaching and learning. In all the forms our communications take, there is a story. Even what we see on television or at the movies or in the news, starts with a story. Our theories about creation, the nature of the world, the nature of humanity, or just how our children grew up are stories.~Adora L Dupree

Storytelling is a basic part of every human culture — people have always had the need to participate emotionally in stories, and so the actor has probably played an important role in every society. But he should never forget it is the audience that really does the work and that is a pivotal part of the process. All theatrical events, from those taking place in Stone Age to Punch-and-Judy shows and Broadway plays, can produce an emotional participation from the audience, who become actors in the drama.~Marlon Brando.

We have a tendency as we move into the future to balance our progression by taking something from the past. E-mail and electronic means of communication whet our appetites for spontaneous expression, bring us into a more oral mode of communication, and evoke a yearning for longer, more traditional forms... Storytelling groups and poetry slams satisfy another need brought on by the Information Age, face-to-face human interaction.”~Paul Levinson

I believe it is the easiest thing in the world to tell a story – and the hardest to be a fine storyteller.
~ Ruth Sawyer, ‘The way of the Storyteller’ ~

‘Do all things with love' ~Og Mandino~

Storytelling

We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We're a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don't really have an explanation for.
~ Malcolm Gladwell

Children, who will inherit the world. Children to whom, throughout history, stories have been told, chiefly but not always at bedtime, in order to quell restless thoughts; whose need of stories is matched only by the need adults have of children to tell stories to, of receptacles for their stock of fairy-tales, of listening ears on which to unload those most unbelievable yet haunting of fairy-tales, their own lives; children - they are going to separate you and me.
~ Waterland by Graham Swift

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Mathcounts Central

Storytelling is how we survive, when there's no feed, the story feeds something, it feeds the spirit, the imagination. I can't imagine life without stories, stories from my parents, my culture. Stories from other people's parents, their culture. That's how we learn from each other, it's the best way. That's why literature is so important, it connects us heart to heart.
-- Alice Walker

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much love, light and laughter,
ananya.

Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.
~ Hannah Arendt

The power of storytelling is exactly this: to bridge the gaps where everything else has crumbled.
~ Paulo Coelho

To be a person is to have a story to tell.
~Isaac Dinesen

The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it, and copy it.
~Jules Renard

We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our most ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say – and to feel - “Yes, that is the way it is, or at least that is the way I feel it.” You're not as alone as you thought.
~John Steinbeck