Ivan

“Last week I sat through a day of environmental talks. You know what I remember from that entire day? Only one thing-the story a guy told about how he was sitting on an airplane and the lady next to him asked for cream for her coffee, but when they brought her the small plastic containers of cream, she said, "No thanks; the plastic isn't biodegradable." And he thought to himself, "I can hardly hear her over the jet engines that are burning up fifty gazillion barrels of fuel a minute, and she's worried about a thimble-sized piece of plastic?"
That's all I remember from that day. Why is that? It's the power of a well-told story that is also very specific. Stories that are full of vague generalizations are weak. Specifics give them strength.”
― Randy Olson, Don't Be Such a Scientist: Talking Substance in an Age of Style

“In eastern Washington, the territory around the Hanford reservation is promoted as the last stand of original shrub-sage habitat in the Columbia Basin, yet periodically deer and rabbits wander from the preserve and leave radioactive droppings on Richland’s lawns.”
― Kate Brown, Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters

“One guiding post to determine where the distressing issues, needs and aspirations is Maslow‘s Needs Hierarchy. If you can identify their fears and concerns, you can choose a story that provides hope.”
― Gideon For-mukwai, The Science of Story Selling: How Win the Hearts & Minds of Your Prospects for Profit and Purpose

“That dawn he officiated at the daily mass of his ablutions with more frenetic severity than usual, trying to purge his body and spirit of twenty years of fruitless wars and the disillusionments of power.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, The General in His Labyrinth