Anecdote Quotes

“My cousin Helen, who is in her 90s now, was in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II. She and a bunch of the girls in the ghetto had to do sewing each day. And if you were found with a book, it was an automatic death penalty. She had gotten hold of a copy of ‘Gone With the Wind’, and she would take three or four hours out of her sleeping time each night to read. And then, during the hour or so when they were sewing the next day, she would tell them all the story. These girls were risking certain death for a story. And when she told me that story herself, it actually made what I do feel more important. Because giving people stories is not a luxury. It’s actually one of the things that you live and die for.”
― Neil Gaiman

“My life is dope and I do dope shit.”
― Kanye West

“The plural of anecdote is not data.”
― Marc Bekoff

“A life saved is a statistic; a person hurt is an anecdote. Statistics are invisible; anecdotes are salient.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“Our family was nearly torn apart on several occasions by arguments started when the refrigerator door was open for what my father deemed as ‘too long.”
― Weston Locher, Musings on Minutiae

“The first way not to shake hands is executed by receiving someone’s hand in yours and proceeding to squeeze it tightly, hurting the other party as if they were responsible for a past death in your family, or your adoption as a child.”
― Weston Locher, Musings on Minutiae

“Ever since the robot was first invented, there have been people who swear up and down that this marks the first step towards the fall of man … To be fair, their arguments are backed with scientific fact taken from documentary films such as The Terminator, The Matrix, and RoboCop.”
― Weston Locher, Musings on Minutiae

“I think it's something like Mr. Peter Sloane and the octogenarians. The other evening Mrs. Sloane was reading a newspaper ans she said to Mr. Sloane 'I see here that another octogenarian has just died. What is an Octogenarian, Peter?' And Mr. Sloane said he didn't know, but they must be very sickly creatures, for you never heard tell of them but they were dying.”
― L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea

“I would go to parties and say I was an editor, and people, especially women – and that was important to me back then – would say, “Oh, really?” and raise their eyebrows and look at me a little more carefully. I remember the first party I went to after I became a teacher, someone asked me what I did for a living, and I said, “Well, I teach high school.” He looked over my shoulder, nodded his head, said, “I went to high school,” and walked away.

Once I repeated this anecdote around a big table full of Mexican food in the garden at a place called La Choza in Chicago, and Becky Mueller, another teacher at the school, said that I was a “storyteller.” I liked that. I was looking for something to be other than “just” a teacher, and “storyteller” felt about right. I am a teacher and a storyteller in that order. I have made my living and my real contribution to my community as a teacher, and I have been very lucky to have found that calling, but all through the years I have entertained myself and occasionally other people by telling stories.”
― Peter Ferry, Travel Writing

“It wasn’t enough that I had to worry about playing well and winning the game, but I also had to deal with possibility that one of my teammates could be dragged off the field by the inhabitants of the mental hospital.”
― Weston Locher, Musings on Minutiae

“[The cats] scamper in front of my legs, causing me to fall and face plant into whatever furniture is closest. They especially like to play this game when I’m carrying piping hot coffee.”
― Weston Locher, Musings on Minutiae

“After all, this was the place where I’d had my first meaningful conversation with a female, it was the site of a football’s first encounter with my groin, and above all, it was the location where I was first punched in the face by a bully. Somewhere out there, a tooth of mine lay deep within the soil.”
― Weston Locher, Musings on Minutiae

“These handkerchief gardens are a traditional German solution to apartment dwellers' yearning for a tool shed and a vegetable garden. They make a patchwork of green in odd corners of urban land, along train lines or canals or, as here, in the lee of the Wall.”
― Anna Funder

“Always preoccupied with his profound researches, the great Newton showed in the ordinary-affairs of life an absence of mind which has become proverbial. It is related that one day, wishing to find the number of seconds necessary for the boiling of an egg, he perceived, after waiting a minute, that he held the egg in his hand, and had placed his seconds watch (an instrument of great value on account of its mathematical precision) to boil!

This absence of mind reminds one of the mathematician Ampere, who one day, as he was going to his course of lectures, noticed a little pebble on the road; he picked it up, and examined with admiration the mottled veins. All at once the lecture which he ought to be attending to returned to his mind; he drew out his watch; perceiving that the hour approached, he hastily doubled his pace, carefully placed the pebble in his pocket, and threw his watch over the parapet of the Pont des Arts.”
― Camille Flammarion, Popular Astronomy: A General Description of the Heavens

“I was fired ignominiously from the Junior School Choir for being so off tune that the choir mistress declared she couldn't even bear to have me mime.”
― Sara Sheridan

“There is a point in the future where even the worst disaster starts to settle into an anecdote.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“Every ounce of his soul tells him this will make a good story to tell his friends—an anecdote in the biography, an incident in the life. But part of the sorrow he feels—and it is that—comes from the distance he sees between himself and the storytelling, the hole that has ripped open between the here and the there.”
― David Levithan, Are We There Yet?

“If three people are travelling and one of them is confused, they can still get where they are going. That´s because the confused one is in the minority.
If two of them are confused, they´ll have a hard time and won´t get there, because confusion prevails.”
― Thomas Cleary, Chuang-tzu: The Outer Chapters

“Brad Bird remembers a meeting during the making of The Incredibles, soon after he joined the studio, when Steve hurt his feelings by saying that some of the Incredibles artwork looked "kind of Saturday morning"––a reference to the low-budget cartoons that Hanna-Barbera and others produced. "In my world, that's kind of like saying, 'Your mama sleeps around,'" Brad recalls. "I was seething. When the meeting ended, I went over to Andrew and said, 'Man, Steve just said something that really pissed me off.' And Andrew, without even asking what it was, said, 'Only one thing?'" Brad came to understand that Steve was speaking not as a critic but as the ultimate advocate. Too often, animated superheroes had been made on the cheap and looked that way, too––on that Steve and Brad could agree. The Incredibles, he was implying, had to reach higher.”
― Ed Catmull, Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration

“Too much light for the eyes is as useless as darkness.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“But if you've got a bagful of stories it means you've led a rich life, and I'm way behind on that count.”
― Jason, Why Are You Doing This?

“In the middle section of the book Mirabelle breaks into not one, but two houses near Belgravia Books. I had fun scoping these out - checking which windows looked least secure and figuring out how to scale the mews houses to the rear to get her inside. A man came out at one point, 'What are you doing?' he questioned me. 'The thing is, I'm writing a book,' I started with a smile. He waved me off, his hand as wide as a tennis racket. 'Everyone is writing a book, my dear,' he said. Between you and I, it's his house that MIrabelle ends up breaking into.”
― Sara Sheridan

“I remember calling the council's cemetery department to ask about body decomposition in different soil types. Once they had verified that I was a novelist and not a sicko, they were extremely helpful.”
― Sara Sheridan

“Il lui fallait impérativement un comptable, une secrétaire et une vendeuse. Cette dernière, Madame Crucifix, s'était présentée par hasard au magasin pour demander du travail et Madeleine y avait vu un signe du destin. [...] Elle avait épousé l'héritier de la famille des Portos Crucifix, et puis la famille avait perdu toute sa fortune et elle avait dû trouver un emploi pour survenir à ses besoins. Mme Castaing l'adorait parce qu'elle était cultivée, spirituelle et qu'elle lui récitait des poèmes, mais son choix peut surprendre... En effet, elle était complètement aveugle d'un oeil et l'autre ne marchait pas très bien, ce qui fait que, lorsqu'elle était seule à la boutique, des clients malhonnêtes volaient des biblots. Mme Castaing s'en moquait, car elle la trouvait très divertissante. Elle l'avait définitivement adoptée après avoir surpris une conversation téléphonique entre sa vendeuse et son tapissier attitré, M. Seigneur : 'Allô! Mme Crucifix à l'appareil. C'est vous Seigneur? Le quel, le père ou le fils?”
― Jean-Noël Liaut, Madeleine Castaing Mécène à Montparnasse, décoratrice à Saint-Germain

“Ensuite [Madeleine Castaing] avait engagé comme comptable Paul de Saint-Sauveur, un comte désargenté contraint lui aussi de gagner sa vie. 'Il apparaît dans la boutique en habits de chasse à courre', note Jean Cocteau dans son journal en septembre 1951. [...] Un jour où elle lui avait demandé de faire une livraison chez une personnalité de la télévision, le client remercia le comptable en lui donnant un généreux pourboire. 'Un pourboire au comte de Saint-Sauveur? Comment a-t-il osé!' Madeleine, qui manqua d'éclater de rire, fit l'impossible pour calmer sa fureur et son orgeuil blessé.”
― Jean-Noël Liaut, Madeleine Castaing Mécène à Montparnasse, décoratrice à Saint-Germain

“L'anecdote, cette moisissure qui se forme sur tous les livres.”
― Henry de Montherlant, Le Démon du bien

“The facts miss the heart of the matter; to give us a clear picture, the facts need a vehicle, the anecdote”
― Tim Krabbé, The Rider

“Good call dropping the mystery-ingredient round." She caught Sylvie's questioning glance. "Finalist last year with an unknown allergy to turmeric. Violent gastro effects. Ever seen the pie scene in Stand By Me?"
Sylvie winced.
"We had to reshoot the whole day. I was scrubbing neon yellow out of my ears for a week." Mariana smoothed back a strand of salt-and-pepper hair. "We looked like we'd banded together to massacre Big Bird."
Only this woman could make that anecdote sound almost classy.”
― Lucy Parker, Battle Royal

“Proscenium Panther by Stewart Stafford

The actor missed his line,
Whispers from the wings,
Deafening silence hanging,
Another cue came briskly.

A pregnant pause of years,
The frozen player’s lips moved,
Offstage, a mock post-mortem,
The thespian grinned impishly.

After the audience’s first line laugh,
He racked his brain for more jokes,
Flouting the text and all the cast,
O, limelight, of hot-headed hydras.

© Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“A self important college freshman was walking along the beach philosophizing to anyone who would listen, when he came across an old man minding his own business in the shade.
He made it clear to the old man that it was impossible for the old man's generation to understand the new regime. The new generation, the young Turks.

You grew up in a different world, the student said, and a pretty primitive one. The youth of today grew up with television, jet speed travel, space travel, man walked on the moon. We have nuclear energy, super tankers, and smartphones, broadband internet systems, and so much more.

The old man thought for a second, and then responded, you're right son, we didn't have those things when we were young, that's why we invented them, for arrogant little shits like you. What have you got planned for the next generation?”
― Oliver Staark, Zen Jiu Jitsu: The 30 Day Program to improve Your Game 1000%