Caught Up in a Story Quotes

“You are part of God’s story on earth,” my parents whispered in our ears, “You can be like Aragorn or Frodo or Sam in the battles of the world, you can bring beauty like Jared (in The Journeyman by Elizabeth Yates), or discover something new like George Washington Carver. What kind of hero do you want to be?”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“Life is a story, and each of us has but one tale to live as valiantly as we can.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“The hero tales, the epic myths, the tales of quests and dragons, knights and journeys can enter the pain and confusion of a child’s mind with a healing clarity.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” ~ from The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“consider the words of G. K. Chesterton, who once wrote, “fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“Give up yourself and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Look for Christ and you will get Him, and with Him everything else thrown in. Look for yourself and you will get only hatred, loneliness, despair, and ruin.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“Heroism begins when we realize that we are called to join a story much larger than ourselves.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“we are in danger of raising a generation of children dependent upon media and technology to think or imagine for them. Instead of creating a new world within their own thought, a new story, or a fresh invention, they watch the ones on TV. Instead of forming an independent conclusion about any idea they encounter (educational or cultural), they become conditioned to accept the opinion of the faces that flash across their many screens.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“But if children are given time away from all the noise of the world and time to be alone, if they are loved and affirmed and invited to explore nature or listen to music or read a book, the cup of their heart will be filled to overflowing with wonder.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“to read a great story is to begin to learn how to live one.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“Fleeting as those childish moments were, imagined though the dramas were that I lived within them, the habit of make-believe allowed me to experiment with a wide variety of vocations and experience. In pretending, I felt out what was possible. I tried on many selves for size and in so doing, began to recognize the self I desired to become. Make-believe is a process of exploration in which our imaginations seek out the elements with which we will craft our dreams.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“The power to imagine, to innovate, or to come to conclusions independent of media influencers is a necessary skill in the process of self-development. The actions of heroes (or artists, inventors, and leaders) come from an inner idea, an imagined picture of what they ought to be and do. Lives of noble ideals, heroic action, or great creativity do not grow out of minds dependent on others to think, opine, and imagine for them. Great lives are first imagined, then lived.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“Terms such as “courage,” “kindness,” “good,” “evil,” or “heroic” are abstract concepts for a child. In order to learn what it means to be “good,” a child needs to be shown, not merely told. In all honesty, I think that is true of the human race, adults as well as children. It”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“The wonder natural to childhood is precious, something many adults spend a lifetime trying to reclaim, and as such must be preserved and maintained, especially while children are young.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“Wonder is a state of mind in which the sight and senses are wholly awake and engaged in what is before them. Wonder reveals the world as the miracle it is—the veined crimson of an autumn leaf, the play of sunlight in summer trees, the ripple of light over water. Of course, we may look at these things every day, but our eyes are often restless, our minds preoccupied, so that we never truly see. Wonder is what compels us to notice with quiet, focused eyes, eyes that perceive the unique beauty of the people and the living world all around.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“Consider that for every children’s classic written, there are countless versions of it to be found within the minds of the children who read it, and no two of them are the same. The imagination of each child is unique, creating a new image to fit the words he or she reads. Because of this, to read a story is to set in motion a swift growth of new images within the mind of a child. Every book read adds to that stock of inner imagery so that a child who is a great reader has a mind crammed with landscapes and people, trees and fairies, castles and mountains unique to his or her own thought.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“Stories are unique in their comprehensive power to shape an overarching idea of what life is meant to be. A good story is a special combination of compelling language, vivid imagery, and a riveting plot that engages children on multiple levels of consciousness, inviting them to experience existence through the lens of narrative. Even a toddler can perceive that in a story, actions have meaning, that some characters bring beauty while others cause pain, and that each one is part of a kingdom or world much greater than he or she knows.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“But parents are also storytellers because they get to choose the books whose words and imagery, whose adventures and far lands, whose great battles and fascinating characters will equip their children with everything they need to live out their vision of heroism. Great stories outfit a child’s inner land by forming the realm of imagination. The”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“No fairy tale begins in despair, because if it did, what would the hero have left to fight for?”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children