A Quote by Deborah Tannen

Many mothers or daughters assume that words only mean one thing. 'If I feel criticised, that has to be the whole story', and 'if I feel I am being helpful, that has to be the whole story'.
The way that I work as an actress, I always prefer to read the whole story and tell the whole story and feel what the whole story's going to be, the journey for the audience and how it ebbs and flows, the highs and the lows.
I guess you just feel like there's a whole story that's not being told in movies. You're only seeing the macho guy version of a story that from the woman's side, may be completely different.
When I am in the process of conceiving a story, I make sure it can be told with words and pictures. The story has to be creative, original and interesting in both areas. Many stories get rejected because they feel derivative.
'Somnia' is a story about loss and, I guess, what you're willing to do to have closure and try and feel whole again. It's a story of redemption in a sense. I don't want to give too much away, but it's a heartbreaking story that's incredibly terrifying.
Well, if you look at the whole story, I mean there's only Jews and Romans in the story. I mean I just wanted to flesh that character out and make that a drama about the people around Christ when he was going through this passion.
It's only a story, you say. So it is, and the rest of life with it - creation story, love story, horror, crime, the strange story of you and I. The alphabet of my DNA shapes certain words, but the story is not told. I have to tell it myself. What is it that I have to tell myself again and again? That there is always a new beginning, a different end. I can change the story. I am the story. Begin.
Mother used to say it meant Christopher was a nice name because it was a story about being kind and helpful, but I do not want my name to mean a story about being kind and helpful. I want my name to mean me.
There are so many slices to the African-American experience. I mean, I have the whole ghetto pedigree. My mom was in jail, I didn't have any money, and I didn't go to a fancy college. But that's not the type of story I want to tell or feel the need to tell on film.
I am a technophile, so there is no such thing as a first draft. The first draft plunges on, and about a quarter of the way through it I realise I'm doing things wrong, so I start rewriting it. What you call the first draft becomes rather like a caterpillar; it is progressing fairly slowly, but there is movement up and down its whole length, the whole story is being changed. I call this draft zero, telling myself how the story is supposed to go.
My parents telling me that if there is a story you feel compelled to share, then you are responsible for doing that. You can't ask someone else to take on that story - or you can, but you have to deal with whatever the fallout is. If the story doesn't end up being told the way you originally heard it or that you feel it needs to be expressed, that's on you.
With 'If I Stay,' I want you to feel that the whole story is being told from a larger, spiritual point of view. So the beginning is very theatrical.
The only thing I really feel is necessary is that the black people, not only in Mississippi, will have to actually upset this applecart. What I mean by that is, so many things are under the cover that will have to be swept out and shown to this whole world, not just to America. This thing they say of "the land of the free and the home of the brave" is all on paper.
Women as mothers grapple with corresponding contradictions. The adoration they feel for their grown daughters, mixed with the sense of responsibility for their well-being, can be overwhelming, matched only by the hurt they feel when their attempts to help or just stay connected are rebuffed or even excoriated as criticism or devilish interference.
The only thing I really feel is necessary is that the black people, not only in Mississippi, will have to actually upset this applecart. What I mean by that is, so many things are under the cover that will have to be swept out and shown to this whole world, not just to America. This thing they say of "the land of the free and the home of the brave" is all on paper. It doesn't really mean anything to us. The only way we can make this thing a reality in America is to do all we can to destroy this system and bring this out to the light that has been under the cover all these years.
The present rearranges the past. We never tell the story whole because a life isn't a story; it's a whole Milky Way of events and we are forever picking out constellations from it to fit who and where we are.
Sometimes a story idea will come to me, and suddenly I've figured out the whole thing, and I feel like I'm collaborating with something other than myself.
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