Quotes About Narrative

Of all liars the most arrogant are biographers: those who would have us believe, having surveyed a few boxes full of letters, diaries, bank statements and photographs, that they can play at the recording angel and tell the whole truth about another human life.

Our history is our own; it's not America's. Too often, those who campaign against racial inequality import wholesale a narrative and assumptions that have nothing to do with this country's history and have no place on these islands.

When you're a storyteller, part of the process of storytelling is the kind of communion you form with the audience to whom you're telling your story. If some segment of the audience doesn't like that story, it doesn't feel good.

I like characters who are changed, often for the better, by the dark nature of their experiences. I also can become engaged by a character for whom I wish to see justice done, one way or the other. In general, I require a book to have some sort of moral center.

Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.

It's also possible to have two third person singular points of view, as represented by two characters through whose eyes the story is told in alternating chapters, say.

That's the funny thing about time. It is only in looking back that it's easy to connect the dots. To see exactly why everything needed to happen the way that it did.

Memories are just stories we tell ourselves about our past; and that's often why they don't match when we've shared the same experiences with someone.

I'm not interested in hearing yet another rapper tell me why he's the best. Why not tell a story set in a specific time and place? Create some characters, add a little bit of action and you're good to go.

Most fiction series are written so that the reader can come in at any point and not feel lost, but if you can start at the beginning, why not?

The thing is you can never sugarcoat anything, If you're going to tell a story, tell the truth. If you're going to tell something, why not tell it all?

The thing that I took away as an early fan from Bob Dylan was the storytelling aspects. He can tell some wicked stories.

There's nothing nicer than a wicked bad person in a story is there? It's fun.

If I have to point to something specific with the way I move my camera, I love to do it with a wide lens. I like to show you as much of the space as I can, even if I'm following a character.

Great theater continues to bind us, one to the other, and most of us will travel far and wide to see a good story told well.

Historians will handle a much wider range of sources than a biographer and will be covering a broader spectrum of events, time, peoples.

As the character talks and moves, the world around him is slowly revealed, just like dollying a camera back for a wider look at things. So all my stories start with a character, and that character introduces setting, culture, conflict, government, economy... all of it, through his or her eyes.

Sometimes when you're inside a story, it's almost better if you don't think too much about its wider cultural significance or if you don't think about how audiences might react to it. That takes you out of the reality of the situation you're committing to as you're telling the story.

The reason I think the shows I do are successful with a wider public is because they tap into something that's beyond dance and is about being told a story. That's what people want.

The privilege, and the challenges, of taking on Black Widow have never been lost on me. I worked on the first 'Spiderman' game as well as 'Fantastic Four,' and I had always wanted to be able to tell more of a character-driven comic book story than was possible to fit into a game narrative.

I think we have come to a place in black America, sadly from my point of view, where we have once again begun to rely on our history of victimization as our primary source of power to wield within society.

I was always the hero's girlfriend or wife - actually, the woman with no voice.

I've been a radio reporter for ten years, and if I learned anything from my time at 'This American Life,' it's how to craft a narrative so that even if the ending is ambiguous, it is somehow satisfying.

Ten years ago, TV cookery shows were about a man or a woman following recipes. Now, it's all about journeys and campaigns and less about the actual chopping and dicing. That's what I'd like to do with magic.