People are much deeper than stereotypes. That's the first place our minds go. Then you get to know them and you hear their stories, and you say, 'I'd have never guessed.'

I am always at a loss at how much to believe of my own stories.

People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.

Maybe stories are just data with a soul.

Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.

Our stories come from our lives and from the playwright's pen, the mind of the actor, the roles we create, the artistry of life itself and the quest for peace.

Love is the answer to everything. It's the only reason to do anything. If you don't write stories you love, you'll never make it. If you don't write stories that other people love, you'll never make it.

I think if everyone would write down the funny stories from their own childhoods, the world would be a better place.

What I love about the stories of the Great Migration is that this is not ancient history; this is living history. Most people of color can find someone in their own family who had experienced a migration of some kind, knowing the sense of dislocation, longing and fortitude.

We hunger to understand, so we invent myths about how we imagine the world is constructed - and they're, of course, based upon what we know, which is ourselves and other animals. So we make up stories about how the world was hatched from a cosmic egg or created after the mating of cosmic deities or by some fiat of a powerful being.

And it's a human need to be told stories. The more we're governed by idiots and have no control over our destinies, the more we need to tell stories to each other about who we are, why we are, where we come from, and what might be possible.

Short stories and poems are an intense burst of emotions.

Stories teach us empathy. They reveal to us ourselves in the skins of others.

To understand and reconnect with our stories, the stories of the ancestors, is to build our identities.

Bad things do happen in the world, like war, natural disasters, disease. But out of those situations always arise stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

People love stories about the mafia: 'The Godfather,' 'American Gangster.'