“I have woken up and I am real. I know where I come from and I know where I’m going. You cannot fool me any more.” ― Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men
Category Archives: STORIES
A beautiful thing is never perfect. Egyptian
My nana opens windows
Weaving songs
And gently tells
Real myths.
Ali Cobby Eckermann
If you keep telling the same sad small story, you will keep living the same sad small life. —Jean Houston
Stories live in your blood and bones, follow the seasons and light candles on the darkest night-every storyteller knows she or he is also a teacher.
—Patti Davis
A pretty basket does not prevent worries. Congo
I see story: the rise of rice from the paddy,
shoots the colour of trust. Grains of rain fall,
shaken from the rain-giver’s basket. Rice broken
into bowls, mouths.
Broken, Rising
ANNE M. CARSON, VIC
http://www.australianpoetry.org/2012/11/26/broken-rising/
We desire to bequest two things to our children – the first one is roots; the other one is wings. ~Sudan
http://www.squidoo.com/african-quotes-proverbs-and-sayings
My heart is Round ready to echo the music of my
family but the Square
within me remains
The Square stops me in my entirety.
Ali Cobby Eckermann
Does a Koala shit in a gum tree and wipe his ass on a Cockatoo? Most likely
http://www.sunburntcountry.au.com/sayings/fulllist.html
The Cockatoo
(Mary Carolyn Davies)
Green and yellow cockatoo,
Won’t you let me talk to you?
Or if you would kinder be
Won’t you come and talk to me?
Tell me all about the places
Where the children have black faces,
Armlets, anklets, copper rings!
Where the cannibals are kings!
Has a hungry crocodile
Ever met you with a smile?
Have you taken many a trip
In a rakish pirate ship?
Cockatoo, cockatoo,
How I’d like to talk to you!
But as you can guess, I’d be
Gladder if you’d talk to me!
If you called yourself a milk mushroom, get into the basket. Russian.
http://www.pskovgo.narod.ru/proverbs_2.htm
I see story: the rise of rice from the paddy,
shoots the colour of trust. Grains of rain fall,
shaken from the rain-giver’s basket. Rice broken
into bowls, mouths.
Broken, Rising
ANNE M. CARSON, VIC
http://www.australianpoetry.org/2012/11/26/broken-rising/
No one comes to the earth like grass, we come like trees, we all have roots”
~ Yiddish Proverb ~
“Scribbly Gum”, by Judith Wright:
The gum-tree stands by the spring.
I peeled its splitting bark
and found the written track
of a life I could not read.
“When a man’s best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.”
– Edward Abbey
The Queensland Dog
Author unknown
A stranger came from New South Wales, and he was tall and brown,
He lined up beside us at the bar and sank his schooners down.
And all the while, to pass the time, he told us doubtful tales
Of the country he laid claim to, that remarkable New South Wales….
With soil so rich and fertile, so ran his line of talk,
That pumpkin vines fair sprinted along, as fast as a man can walk.
He said it took two hours sometimes, to ride through the hollow logs,
For the timber grew so thick and tall… ..and then he mentioned DOGS!
Little McGinnis spoke up then, arising from his seat,
“I dunno about them other things, but in dogs we got ya beat”
“I was boundary ridin’ once,” he said, “on a station out Longreach way,
And lost me bearin’s among them hills, right at the end of day.
So I let the old moke poke along and find his own way in the dark,
Until in the distance I saw a light and then I heard him bark.
Well, station dogs are mostly noise, I never took no heed,
I only wanted me bearin’s, and I could have done wiv a feed.
So I went on ridin’ towards the light, just followin’ me nose,
And then I heard him bark agin and this time he’s up close!
I needn’t ‘ave worried, he’s only a dog, the kind the cockies keep,
That chase the Dingos away all night, then lay all day and sleep.
When we gits nearer ‘e whines a bit, friendly and quiet and deep.
Then he stands on his hind legs to lick me face, and I see his gentle eye,
and his dusty coat and wagging tail by the starlight in the sky.
And the horse I was sittin’ on was seventeen hands high!”
The stranger paled and admitted, with the wind took out of his sails,
That dogs do grow bigger in Queensland than they do in New South Wales!
Scheherazade had inherited the seven baskets of talk, I should have added that she put them out at compound interest until they amounted to seventy-seven.
EDGAR ALLEN POE
http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/1002Scheherazade.html
“Stories are masks of God.
That’s a story, too, of course. I made it up, in collaborations with Joseph Campbell and Scheherazade, Jesus and the Buddha and the Brother’s Grimm.
Stories show us how to bear the unbearable, approach the unapproachable, conceive the inconceiveable. Stories provide meaning, texture, layers and layers of truth.
Stories can also trivialize. Offered indelicately, taken too literally, stories become reductionist tools, rendering things neat and therefore false. Even as we must revere and cherish the masks we variously create, Campbell reminds us, we must not mistake the masks of God for God.
So it seemes to me that one of the most vital things we can teach our children is how to be storytellers. How to tell stories that are rigorously, insistently, beautifully true. And how to believe them.”
― Melanie Tem, The Man on the Ceiling
In every drop of water, there is a story of life.”
~ Leena Arif
http://www.tranquilwaters.uk.com/water.html
The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach – waiting for a gift from the sea.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Rise and rise again until lambs become lions” ― Robin Hood
Forgetting isn’t enough. You can paddle away from the memories and think they are gone. But they will keep floating back, again and again and agian. They circle you, like sharks. Until, unless, something, someone? Can do more than just cover the wound. ”
― Sara Zarr, Story of a Girl
“Just for the sake of amusement, ask each passenger to tell you his story, and if you find a single one who hasn’t often cursed his life, who hasn’t told himself he’s the most miserable man in the world, you can throw me overboard head first.”
― Voltaire, Candide
I’m a typed director. If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach.”
― Alfred Hitchcock
“I’ll tell you a secret about storytelling. Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty… were not perfect in the beginning. It’s only a happy ending on the last page, right? If the princess had everything from the beginning, there wouldn’t be a story. Anyone who is imperfect or incomplete can become the main character in the story.”
― Peach-Pit, Shugo Chara!, Vol. 2: Friends in Need
The robin and the wren are God’s cock and hen; the martin and the swallow are God’s mate and marrow.
Tanzanian
“Words
Be careful of words,
even the miraculous ones.
For the miraculous we do our best,
sometimes they swarm like insects
and leave not a sting but a kiss.
They can be as good as fingers.
They can be as trusty as the rock
you stick your bottom on.
But they can be both daisies and bruises.
Yet I am in love with words.
They are doves falling out of the ceiling.
They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.
They are the trees, the legs of summer,
and the sun, its passionate face.
Yet often they fail me.
I have so much I want to say,
so many stories, images, proverbs, etc.
But the words aren’t good enough,
the wrong ones kiss me.
Sometimes I fly like an eagle
but with the wings of a wren.
But I try to take care
and be gentle to them.”
― Anne Sexton
God made man because he loves stories.
—Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlev (as quoted by Steve Sanfield)
“There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who want to know the facts, and those who want to make up a nice story to feel better. I wish I was the kind who made up stories.”
― Adriana Trigiani, The Shoemakers Wife
After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”
― Philip Pullman
“Life is so much richer, so very much more meaningful, if you plant yourself in a place that will nourish you.”
― Ann Shayne, Bowling Avenue
A spider found inside the house should not be killed because it may result in the breakage of at least some of the crockery in the house.
“Stories are like spiders, with all the long legs, and stories are like spider-webs, which man gets himself all tangled up in but which look so pretty when you see them under a leaf in the morning dew and in the elegant way that they connect to one another, each to each.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys
There is no greater power on this earth than story.”
― Libba Bray, The Diviners
Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, the power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.
-Salman Rushdie
http://www.pattistory.com/54-Quotes.htm
The happiest asks directions, even though he knows the way.
“Once you make a journey to a near impossible destination, you get to realize how everything and anything is possible”
― Luthfy Es-Haq
Without the quest, there can be no epiphany.”
Reflections on a Simple Twist of Fate: Literature, Art and Parkinson’s Disease ― Constantine E. Scaros,
“As is often the case when I travel, my vulnerability – like not knowing what the hell I’m going to do upon arrival — makes me more open to outside interactions than I might be when I’m at home and think I know best what needs to be done. On the road, serendipity is given space to enter my life.”
― Andrew McCarthy, The Longest Way Home: One Man’s Quest for the Courage to Settle Down
Audiences love both the feeling part (reliving the life) and the thinking part (figuring out the puzzle) of a story. Every good story has both.
― John Truby, The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller
“There’s nothing more embarrassing than a person who tries to guess what the great American public would like, makes a compromise for the first time, and falls flat on his face… I would rather be a failure on my own terms than a success on someone else’s. That’s a difficult statement to live up to, but then I’ve always believed that the way you affect your audience is more important than how many of them are there.”
― Tom Waits
“Australian Aborigines say that the big stories — the stories worth telling and retelling, the ones in which you may find the meaning of your life — are forever stalking the right teller, sniffing and tracking like predators hunting their prey in the bush.” Robert Moss
“When old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart; and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.”
― Rabindranath Tagore
THE OLD PROVERBIAL RECOVERY 