These true story quotes will inspire you. True story is an account of something that really happened.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging true story quotes, true story sayings, and true story proverbs.
Best True Story Quotes
- “It’s hard when you’re doing a film based on a true story to really figure out what all those relationships were.” ~ James Franco
- “The truth is not delicate and it does not suffer from denial—the truth only dies when true stories are untold.” ~ Ken Liu
- “There’s no substitute for the power of a personal story. The true stories of God redeeming a broken life shoot like arrows straight to our hearts and remind us that God wants to do the same life changing work in our lives. I love how one story can impact another story, causing a ripple effect of change if we let it.” ~ Matthew West
- “True stories are always good because they’re so odd, and so unlikely.” ~ Steven Knight
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“If you tell a true story, you can’t be wrong.” ~ Jack Kerouac
- “A story-a true story-can heal as much as medicine can.” ~ Eben Alexander
- “Fiction has consisted either of placing imaginary characters in a true story, which is the Iliad, or of presenting the story of an individual as having a general historical value, which is the Odyssey.” ~ Raymond Queneau
- “The true story of every person in this world is not the story you see, the external story. The true story of each person is the journey of his or her heart.” ~ John Eldredge
- “A true storyteller is really good at writing himself into a corner and then finding a way out of that corner” ~ Michael Chabon
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“Popular films are so powerful and compelling that it’s often easier to accept their versions of history than the much more complicated true stories.” ~ Melissa Harris-Perry
- “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.” ~ Salman Rushdie
- “It is a true story, the monster said. Many things that are true feel like a cheat.” ~ Patrick Ness
- “All stories, if continued far enough, end in death.” ~ Ernest Hemingway
- “The story itself, the true story, is the one that the audience members create in their minds, guided and shaped by my text, but then transformed, elucidated, expanded, edited, and clarified by their own experience, their own desires, their own hopes and fears.” ~ Orson Scott Card
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“Strange as it may seem, my life is based on a true story” ~ Ashleigh Brilliant
- “Actually, the true story of a person’s life can never be written. It is beyond the power of literature. The full tale of any life would be both utterly boring and utterly unbelievable.” ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer , True story quotes life
- “By now, everyone I know is one of seven strangers, inevitably hoping to represent a predefined demographic and always failing horribly. The Read World is the real world is The Real World is the read world. It’s the same true story, even when it isn’t.” ~ Chuck Klosterman
- “I like when they say a movie is inspired by a true story. That’s kind of silly. “Hey, Mitch, did you hear that story about that lady who drove her car into the lake with her kids and they all drowned?” “Yeah, I did, and you know what – that inspires me to write a movie about a gorilla!”” ~ Mitch Hedberg
- “They [Fairy Tales] are talking about real emotions, telling true stories, through the medium of metaphor. People used to understand metaphor better than I think we do now. But these stories are so potent, they refuse to die.” ~ Jane Yolen
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“You, my lord, are the ending of all true stories.” ~ Martine Leavitt
- “Waves of hands, hesitations at street corners, someone dropping a cigarette into the gutter-all are stories. But which is the true story? That I do not know. Hence I keep my phrases hung like clothes in a cupboard, waiting for some one to wear them. Thus waiting, thus speculating, making this note and then an· other I do not cling to life. I shall be brushed like a bee from a sunflower. My philosophy, always accumulating, welling up moment by moment, runs like quicksilver a dozen ways at once.” ~ Virginia Woolf
- “I learned that I never really know the true story of my guests’ lives, that I have to content myself with knowing that when I’m interviewing somebody, I’m getting a combination of fact and truth and self-mythology and self-delusion and selective memory and faulty memory.” ~ Terry Gross
- “One movie I think is just terrific is ‘Bernie,’ with Jack Black and Shirley MacLaine. That was a great surprise to me – so witty, so entertaining, a true story, and I’m not a great Jack Black fan, but he’s great in it. I think it’s a gem.” ~ Robert Osborne
- “Mine is a story about a teenage single mother who struggled to keep her young family afloat. It’s a story about a young woman who was given a precious opportunity to work her way up in the world. It’s a story about resiliency, and sacrifice, and perseverance. And you’re damn right it’s a true story.” ~ Wendy Davis
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“But this too is true: stories can save us.” ~ Tim O’Brien
- “Boswell, when he speaks of his Life of Johnson, calls it my magnum opus, but it may more properly be called his opera, for it is truly a composition founded on a true story, in which there is a hero with a number of subordinate characters, and an alternate succession of recitative and airs of various tone and effect, all however in delightful animation.” ~ James Boswell
- “Rare is the book that can actually transform us into better, more fulfilled people. Having combed through the research and documented case studies all over the world, Kristof and WuDunn present the clearest view I have ever seen of the human soul. A Path Appears tells us whether we are intrinsically good, why specific ways we parent our newborns help predict their chances for success, and how we can live lives of greater significance. This book, full of rich and riveting true stories, reminds us that human greatness is all around us, and even within us, if we dare to look.” ~ Ann Curry
- “The storytelling mind is allergic to uncertainty, randomness, and coincidence. It is addicted to meaning. If the storytelling mind cannot find meaningful patterns in the world, it will try to impose them. In short, the storytelling mind is a factory that churns out true stories when it can, but will manufacture lies when it can’t.” ~ Jonathan Gottschall
- “All stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you. Especially do all stories of monogamy end in death, and your man who is monogamous while he often lives most happily, dies in the most lonely fashion.” ~ Ernest Hemingway
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“I think, ultimately, people are looking for real heartfelt true stories. They want to engage with them, they want to relate (to) them and, ultimately, they want to have hope.” ~ Shari Wiedmann
- “Take a Nicodemus and put a Joseph Smith’s spirit in him, and what do you have? Take a Da Vinci or a Michelangelo or a Shakespeare and give him a total knowledge of the plan of salvation of God and personal revelation and cleanse him and take a look at the statues he will carve and the murals he will paint and the masterpieves he will produce. Take a handel with his purposeful effort, his superb talent, his earnest desire to properly depict the story, and give him inward vision of the whole true story and revelation, and what a master you will have!” ~ Brigham Young
- “If you think of the typical Herbalife distributor and their level of sophistication, to this day I still don’t understand the marketing plan – true story.” ~ Bill Ackman
- “The first casualty in any war is the truth. In World War II, I was part of a group of people who used to meet once a week with the sole purpose of analyzing the news and trying to work out what we weren’t being told. We thought that we were clever, but we had absolutely no idea what was really going on. It was only years later that we learned the true story.” ~ Doris Lessing
- “I had read the Animal House script, and by hook and crook, I finally got an audition. It was a great one. John Landis followed me out into the hallway afterward and said, “I’ve never done this before, but you’ve got the job. Now don’t tell anyone!” I’ve never had a director do that. It was one of those Hollywood-dream-come-true stories. They saw me as a surfer or cowboy, not a preppie, but someone begged and borrowed me an audition, and I went in and got it.” ~ Tim Matheson
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“I think all true stories are hopeful stories. I don’t think there’s any room for nihilism.” ~ John Green
- “I’ve done a number of things based on real people or true stories or based on books, and I’m a great believer that you have to be true to the script.” ~ Clive Owen
- “Mostly it’s lies, writing novels. You set out to tell an untrue story and you try to make it believable, even to yourself. Which calls for details; any good lie does.” ~ Anne Tyler
- “I was working on a satirical novel about a charismatic preacher who takes over a small Indiana town. Then I remembered Jim Jones was from Indiana and Googled him. I learned that the FBI had recently released all the documents that agents collected from Jonestown after the massacre – over 50,000 pieces of paper and almost 1,000 audio tapes. I started reading the files and couldn’t tear myself away; I find “true” stories inherently more powerful than fiction.” ~ Julia Scheeres
- “In Africa I discovered what the true purpose of a musician is. We are historians, and it is our purpose to tell the people the true story of our past, and to extend a better vision of the future.” ~ Randy Weston
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“I think any time you’ve got a story based on a true story, no matter how accurate it is, obviously it’s still fictitious.” ~ John Lee Hancock
- “I think it’s really healing to see movies that are based on true stories. It builds so much more compassion and empathy.” ~ Vanessa Hudgens
- “In the Seventies, a lot of executions via electric chair failed because of technical problems. Seed tells the true story of someone who survived and sought revenge. They buried him alive to make it seem he was dead.” ~ Uwe Boll
- “I love horror movies and I love being scared, but I don’t like them, if they’re not based on a true story. It’s like knowing how the sausage is made.” ~ Olivia Munn
- “I’ve noticed that most authors who are pastors or speakers write books whose message is derived from a sermon series they did at their church. I guess my process is similar except that instead of a sermon, the genesis of the idea is found in the form of a three-minute song. And many of my songs have been inspired by the true stories and testimonies of people who’ve written to me from all over the world.” ~ Matthew West
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“All true stories end in death.” ~ Matthew Woodring Stover
- “One of my favorite episodes in West Wing was the homeless man that died and they found, in the overcoat he was wearing, a card of the speechwriter, Toby. He had given that coat to the Goodwill and this guy had ended up wearing it, died in it and Toby went to his funeral. He turned out to be a Korean war veteran. It was our first Christmas episode and that was a true story – a member of the staff had done exactly that. So many of these stories were far better than any fiction.” ~ Martin Sheen
- “The true story…is the realization that no time in your life is ever perfect, that even the best memories have cracks you might not see.” ~ Sarah Dessen
- “Odds are you’re going to like this lively spin on the true story of six MIT mathletes who broke the Vegas Bank. It’s a kick to watch Kevin Spacey and a gifted young cast use smarts to deal audiences a winning hand.” ~ Peter Travers
- “”Based on a true story” is a come-on, the aesthetic equivalent of “no loan request refused.” For, at best, the creator has fashioned a film based on his understanding of, interpretation of, and reduction of the report of an actual occurrence.” ~ David Mamet
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“Money is the driving force of Hand to Mouth, the lack of money, and all those true stories about strange things in The Red Notebook, coincidences and unlikely events, surprise, the unexpected.” ~ Paul Auster
- “I found two true stories. One was in 2003. One was the beginning of 2004. I decided to meld them. Richard Davis’ story which is the largest portion of this, a lot of the events are exactly as you saw, exactly what happened and the locations. Exactly as it was said with the chicken house and the strip club. Richard’s parents were on the set and they’ll tell you that the story is different than their son’s. I was very concerned because I called them to say, ‘You understand I’m fictionalizing this story?” ~ Paul Haggis
- “Barack Obama, you know has a lot of supporters here in America, but he’s very popular internationally. It’s quite interesting. This is a true story. It was in the paper. Barack Obama is so popular in the African town where his father was born, they’ve named a beer after him. That’s true. Yeah. So next time you’re in Africa, sit back, relax, and enjoy a tall, cold Barackelob Light. Good enough. Clearly not as popular a beer as it used to be.” ~ Conan O’Brien
- “I’ve just directed a film called The Great Debaters, which is inspired by a true story about a young college debating team in the thirties and two of those people are still alive and we put them on tape on the film and I’m sure that will be added to the DVD, and to get the opportunity to do that is very cool.” ~ Denzel Washington
- “The most obvious difference between writing novels and memoirs is that my memoirs are true stories, and explore certain experiences I’ve lived, and thus operate within the boundaries of memory and fact.” ~ Danielle Trussoni
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““Money to Burn” is a fantasy. I mean, I would love for that to be a true story. Most of my songs are written in metaphors.” ~ Ladyhawke
- “Behind The Curtain of the Night is a life after death movie and it is based on a best-selling novel in the Czech Republic. It is a true story, and together with director Dalibor Stach, producers Milan Friedrich and Phil Goldfine, we were able to bring such a meaningful, important, and powerful story onto the big screen. We were so blessed that we got to shoot in the best historical locations throughout the entire Czech Republic from Prague to Karlovy Vary and many other important locations.” ~ Massimo Dobrovic
- “I like to think that one of things I’ve done with non-fiction since the very beginning is to find new ways of telling true stories.” ~ Errol Morris
- “Fiction is of the essence of poetry as well as of painting; there is a resemblance in one of human bodies, things, and actions which are not real, and in the other of a true story by fiction.” ~ John Dryden
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“Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.” ~ Ernest Hemingway
- “When you hear a true story, there is a part of you that responds to it regardless of art, regardless of evidence. Let it be the most obvious fabrication and you will still believe whatever truth is in it, because you can not deny truth no matter how shabbily it is dressed.” ~ Orson Scott Card
- “If I seem to wander, if I seem to stray, remember that true stories seldom take the straightest way” ~ Patrick Rothfuss
- “Ali Bell doesn’t play hide-and-seek,” Lucas said. “She plays hide-and-pray-I-don’t-find-you.” Mackenzie smiled. “When Ali Bell gives you the finger, she’s telling you how many seconds you have to live.” Cole chuckled, saying, “Fear of spiders is arachnophobia, and fear of tight spaces is claustrophobia, but fear of Ali Bell is just called logic.” “Oh, oh.” Kat clapped excitedly. “There used to be a street named after Ali Bell, but it was changed because nobody crosses Ali Bell and lives. True story.” ~ Gena Showalter
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“Tell them stories. They need the truth you must tell them true stories, and everything will be well, just tell them stories.” ~ Philip Pullman
- “My sister was drowning in the ocean once, and my brother and I dove in and saved her. True story. She owes us her life. Its great leverage; we abuse it all the time!” ~ Matt Barr
- “I find it relatively easy to keep my clothes on because I don’t really feel like taking them off. It’s not an urge I have. For me, ‘risky’ is revealing what really happened in my life through music. Risky is writing confessional songs and telling the true story about a person with enough details so everyone knows who that person is. That’s putting myself out there, maybe even more than taking my shirt off.” ~ Taylor Swift
