A Quote by Roger Schank

In the end all we have...are stories and methods of finding and using those stories. — © Roger Schank
In the end all we have...are stories and methods of finding and using those stories.

Quote Author

Roger Schank
Born: 1946
Stories move in circle. They don’t move in straight lines. So it helps if you listen in circles. There are stories inside stories and stories between stories and finding your way through them is as easy and as hard as finding your way home. And part of the finding is the getting lost. And when you’re lost you start to look around and to listen.
Yes, we could talk to you for days on end about all the bad first dates. Those are stories. Funny stories. Awkward stories. Stories we love to share, because by sharing them, we get something out of the hour or two we wasted on the wrong person. But that's all bad first dates are: short stories. Good first dates are more than short stories. They are first chapters. On a good first date, everything is springtime. And when a good first date becomes a relationship, the springtime lingers. Even after it's over, there can be springtime.
So much of the knowledge in our minds is based on lies and superstitions that come from thousands of years ago. Humans create stories long before we are born, and we inherit those stories, we adopt them, and we live in those stories.
Lies are just stories, and stories are all that matter. We all tell stories. Some are more truthful than others, maybe, but in the end the only thing that counts is what you can make people believe.
Stories matter. Stories are how we make sense of the world, which doesn't mean that those stories can't be stupid and simplistic and full of lies. Stories can exaggerate and offend and they always, always matter.
You can do weird things on TV - there are happy stories, sad stories, dark stories. But with a movie, it always has to end satisfying. Unless you're the Coen brothers, and it ends with somebody getting shot in the head.
There are only really a few stories to tell in the end, and betrayal and the failure of love is one of those good stories to tell.
Actors sure have stories. We always have stories. At the end of our careers, all we have to take with us is our stories, and we have many of them.
Digression is my passion. I'm not kidding. I love telling the main stories, but in some ways, what I love most is using those narratives as a way of stringing together the interesting stories that people have kind of forgotten and that are kind of surprising.
Life is a story. You and I are telling stories; they may suck, but we are telling stories. And we tell stories about the things that we want. So you go through your bank account, and those are things you have told stories about.
The desire for story is very, very deep in human beings. We are the only creature in the world that does this; we are the only creature that tells stories, and sometimes those are true stories and sometimes those are made up stories. Then there are the larger stories, the grand narratives that we live in, which are things like nation and family and clan and so on. Those stories are considered to be treated reverentially. They need to be part of the way in which we conduct the discourse of our lives and to prevent people from doing something very damaging to human nature.
Most people, they get overwhelmed by the religious stories, the nationalist stories, by the economic stories of the day, and take these stories to be the reality.
Most politicians - those people who live, eat and breathe politics - like to sit around and talk about politics and tell political war stories. Reagan didn't do that. His war stories were movie war stories and Hollywood war stories. He loved that.
Why the connection with musicians? I think it's because in the end we're doing very similar things - we're telling stories, we're using poetic, lyrical language, and we're distilling stories down into their simplest form. We're both telling a story in two languages - word and music for them; and word and image for me.
Stories--individual stories, family stories, national stories--are what stitch together the disparate elements of human existence into a coherent whole. We are story animals.
Our old stories happen to be your new stories. The stories that you're seeing as immigrant stories are your grandparents' stories, are your great-grandparents' stories. You just happen to be separated from them a little bit.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!