Jenni's Favourite Quotes on Storytelling

“The process of listening to, remembering and retelling stories enhances every facet of a child's development. It helps develop language and listening skills; breeds vocal confidence and performance skill; develops the imagination; spurs the memory; aids visualisation and interpretive skills and is valuable in problem solving and citizenship…

“Storytelling has been with us for as long as we have had ears to listen. It has been passed from lips to ears and from minds to hearts ever since we learned to speak. But Storytelling evolves, grows and changes – even from one telling to the next of the same story. It is a direct and instant two-way communication between teller and listener. It is a crucial and interactive developmental tool for Literacy, Personal Development and for Citizenship…

“You can watch as the power of the spoken word strikes back in this world of sedentary television viewing, of solo computer games. Listeners are part of the creation of a common shared moment that is still a highly personal experience. It can give structure to their daydreams and fantasies.

“May your sleep be filled with dreams and may your dreams be filled with stories.”
David James, “Facts and Fiction” #50, UK Storytelling magazine www.storyteller.me.uk.

“Every ancient society seems to have been governed and influenced by mythology. While to the modern way of thinking the myths of the past may seem primitive and irrelevant to a technological society, I would contend that it is precisely because we have lost sight of these myths and failed to see their true significance in unconscious terms, that our whole approach to life and to our natural environment has become so unbalanced.

“It is perhaps worth recalling what a myth is. It is a narrative or fable having a meaning attached to it other than that which is obvious when it is taken literally….The inner aspects of truth, when presented in literal language, are liable to be misunderstood, and therefore all great religions and philosophies have made use of myth and allegory for veiling (and at the same time revealing to those who have the eyes to see) their profoundest truths. Our ancestors may not have developed a sophisticated technology, but their insight into hidden unconscious aspects of the laws of nature was simple and profound and in one sense more sophisticated than our own.”
HRH Prince Charles in his forward to Jonathon Porritt’s book “Save the Earth”, quoted in “Stories that Crafted the Earth.”

“Traditional stories, told orally, contained within them the history, social laws, spiritual truths, and cultural values of families and their communities. We continue to pass stories along year after year, generation after generation, because their timeless elements possess an intrigue, a power, and an ability to transform our lives.”
Robert Atkinson quoted in “Storycatcher” by Christina Baldwin.
“We are often physically and mentally overwhelmed with the wordiness of the human world, yet the cure for wordiness is not less story but deliberate story.”
Christina Baldwin, “Storycatcher”.

“A myth is a public dream, and a dream is a private myth.”
Joseph Campbell.

“A new world-wide impulse for storytelling is arising today to transform an increasing array of strife and dehumanizing forces. This growing storytelling and storymaking movement serves the heart’s wisdom. It strengthens resilience and awakens new inspiration for life. Storytellers and listeners who are dedicated to this path discover healing medicine. Warmly and fully present to each other, whether sharing old myths, stories or tales, or spontaneous new ones, they grow in stature of soul, and tap into surprising and potent creative forces. Healing is always creative.”
Nancy Mellon, www. healingstory.com

“A literary story is the product of one individual. It gives us one person’s talent and their wisdom. The traditional story is the product of a whole chain of tellers. It gives us the distilled wisdom of the culture from which it springs, filtered over many years of telling and retelling. Examine a traditional story and you can see the values of the culture that told it. The story is shaped by the culture, and in turn, the culture is shaped by the story.”
Loren Niemi and Elizabeth Ellis, “Inviting the Wolf In”.

In the following text, written 1944, I have replaced the word ‘men’ with the word ‘people’:
“Told by generation after generation, the traditional stories projected the deepest wishes of the folk, generalized diverse characters into a few types, selected the incidents that would most strikingly illustrate what heroes and heroines, witches, enchanters, giants and dwarfs, the haughty, the envious and the unfaithful were capable of. As in work long thought about and lived with, the stories have something which the most brilliant improvisations are without- depth, fullness, a mysterious relation of parts. We can think upon them, reflect over them…

“We go to our writers for distraction or relaxation while still keeping hold of our daily affairs, but the people who listened to him or to her went to the storyteller for release, leaving their daily affairs outside the house door. “They felt as we do not feel, the rhythm that succeeds the rhythm of the day. Compulsiveness gave place to acquiescence. Outside, the geese, the goats, the sheep and cattle were folded; within, the cat purred, the dog lay in a corner, and on a beam of the roof the hens roosted. Elders and youngsters sat round the fire or beside the stove; the candle or dim oil lamp made shadows on the walls; a woman spun a thread. Out of the reverie such settled and familiar things held came the storyteller’s utterance, familiar, too, in the repetition of traditions that were the people’s own like the table, the bench, the grandmother’s chair.

“We have another past besides the past that history tells us about, a past which is in us, in individuals more livingly than the recorded past. It is a past in which people slowly arrived at self-consciousness while building up the community, the arts and the laws. Today we have advanced poets and novelists who are trying to find means to suggest the unrecorded past in our memories and in our attitudes and so give their work another dimension. Well, it is in this long past, the past that merges with the time people were comradely with the animals and personalised the powers of nature that comes over to us in these and in other traditional stories. With it certain things are restored to our imagination. Wilhelm Grimm who knew much more about the inwardness of these stories than the philologists and the historians of culture who were to comment on them was aware of “fragments of belief dating back to most ancient times, in which spiritual things are expressed in a figurative manner.” “The mythic element,” he told us, “resembles small pieces of a shattered jewel which are lying strewn on the ground all overgrown with grass and flowers, and can only be discovered by the most far-seeing eye.” ”Their signification has long been lost, but it is still felt,” he says,”and imparts value to the story.” It is this felt but hidden value that makes a connection between certain modern works and these old-world fairy tales.”
Padraic Colum, Introduction to The Complete Book of Grimms.

Storytelling Renewed

‘But in the last couple of decades a revival of storytelling has taken place in ‘Britain and around the world. “Those who grew up with television” it has been said, “rediscovered storytelling”. For storytelling is different from reading a book, watching TV or playing with CD ROMs. It is a sociable yet intimate way of being with others. Storytellers have the freedom to interpret their tale afresh each time they tell it, to respond to their particular audience with spontaneity and creativity. One story is never told quite the same twice.

Tales from the Oral Tradition are the best to tell. These stories have been filtered through many minds, been honed for telling over many generations. As such, with their strong images and universal human dilemmas, they carry the wit and wisdom of the people. They are journeys in the imagination where anything is possible. They demand a belief in magic. They tell us who we are, where we’re going, how to get there. The told story is a gift you can give away and keep. It makes the day complete. It is like “soul food”. Many of these ancient tales are as relevant today as ever.’
Eric Maddern, www.ericmaddern.com

The Storyteller's Creed

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge.
That myth is more potent than history.
That dreams are more powerful than facts.
That hope always triumphs over experience.
That laughter is the only cure for grief.
And I believe that love is stronger than death.
Robert Fulghum

Loaves and Fishes
This is not
the age of information.
this is not
the age of information.

Forget the news
and the radio
and the blurred screen.

This is the time
of loaves
and fishes.

People are hungry,
and one good word is bread
for a thousand.
David Whyte.

More storytelling resources