Quotes About Narrative

Story has a mind of its own and tells things sometimes it might have preferred us not to know. Stories operate like dreams; both veil what is to be uncovered, neither is capable of the coverup.

Story has a mind of its own and tells things sometimes it might have preferred us not to know. Stories operate like dreams; both veil what is to be uncovered, neither is capable of a coverup [Our Dream of the Good God, Out of the Garden ].

I used to think that those essentially happy and romantic novels that ended with a wedding were all wrong, that they had left out the most interesting part of the story.

From here on in, many things can happen. But the main one will be this: you decide not to go to law school after all, and, instead, you spend a good, big chunk of your adult life telling people how you decided not to go to law school after all. Somehow you end up writing again.

A short story is photograph. A novel is a film.

He will talk about what some other people said, and what he and some other people did, and when he never specifically mentions women it will be like the Soviet news agency which never publicizes anything containing the names of the towns where the new bombs are.

I am not a cynic, but I do know that history is the propaganda of the victors.

When we are young, the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so are we, sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape.

Historical novels are, without question, the best way of teaching history, for they offer the human stories behind the events and leave the reader with a desire to know more.

shoulders. Between sips of coffee, he explained what happened. "How are the girls?" Dal

But, Sir, I thought every story should have some sort of a moral, so I took care to have a few of my sinners repent.

A long night and a happy day had passed. All had been told...

If, as I suspect, my body survives by uttering itself over and over again, then I have some questions. If [I] am one word, so are my daughters, so are all of us in strings and loops. Each life is one short word slowly uttered.

Hemingway said write first and then take out all the good stuff and what's left is story. (By "good stuff" Hemingway meant all the material that the author has fallen in love with—not everything that was proper for the story.)

when there's no plot line there are no digressions.

Para ser, tenemos que narrarnos, y en ese cuento de nosotros mismos hay muchísimo cuento: nos mentimos, nos imaginamos, nos engañamos.

porque en realidad lo que llamamos locura es algo que causa un pavor general. Produce tanto miento, y tan irracional, que las personas que sufren alguna enfermedad mental son estigmatizadas y aisladas socialmente, cosa que empeora de manera fatal su dolencia. Porque estar loco, ya lo he dicho antes, es sobre todo estar solo. Es una ruptura de la narración común, es salirse de la convención social.

Porque hay una historia que no está en la historia y que solo se puede rescatar aguzando el oído y escuchando los susurros de las mujeres.

el uso de la tercera persona convierte el caos de los recuerdos en un simulacro narrativo y disfraza de orden la existencia.

Estoy convencida de que el arte primordial es el narrativo, porque, para poder ser, los humanos nos tenemos previamente que contar. La identidad no es más que el relato que hacemos de nosotros mismos.

Para ser, tenemos que narrarnos, y en ese cuento de nosotros mismos hay muchísimo cuento: nos mentimos, nos imaginamos, nos engañamos. Lo que hoy relatamos de nuestra infancia no tiene nada que ver con lo que relataremos dentro de veinte años. Y lo que uno recuerda de la historia común familiar suele ser completamente distinto de lo que recuerdan los hermanos.

nosotros mismos, porque nuestra identidad reside en la memoria, en el relato de nuestra biografía

El arte primordial es el narrativo, porque, para poder ser, los humanos nos tenemos previamente que contar. La identidad no es más que el relato que nos hacemos de nosotros mismos.

All over the continent, local histories, monuments, and signage narrate the story of first settlement: the founder(s), the first school, first dwelling, first everything, as if there had never been occupants who thrived in those places before Euro-Americans.