Quotes About Narrative

I never like to put myself in the stories; in 'Lost in the City,' there are fourteen stories, and there's only one, 'The First Day,' about a little girl going to school, that has anything to do with me.

I'm writing my story so that others might see fragments of themselves.

I'll take a certain concern of my own or a situation and try to frame it around a fictional story, but sometimes just straight-up autobiographical songs work well, and sometimes a story is better. I like stories. I like to hear them. I don't think there are enough of them in songs anymore.

Amelia shows that it's not what happens in life that counts, but rather how you frame it, how you talk about it.

My position was that the film begins with the first frame and that the film should be doing a job at that point.

I'm telling the story, and if I can't tell the story, I'm not going to sing it. And if I don't agree with the story, and if I got to sing something that portrays me as something I'm not, then I'm not going to sing it either. I didn't even want to sing Aretha Franklin's 'Chain of Fools.'

We filmmakers are control freaks. For us, it's about bending the elements of a story into existence.

Something that I learned from 'Friday Night Lights,' sometimes if you have four or five scenes in an episode, it's not having less than having 10. It's what you do with those scenes.

I write about other people's experiences from time to time.

With 'Crazy Story,' I thought it from the back to the front. I thought about the ending first, then what's going to happen.

Telling the story from start to finish, that adrenaline fuels me and keeps me going.

It's always nice to do the flashbacks. That's what's so great about 'Scandal' is that we get to do flashbacks and then keep figuring out and discovering more things about our characters that make them fuller.

Fundamentally, I always find that most of the films that I've put out are essentially the director's cut. Part of the process with a director's cut is the leaving behind of certain aspects of the movie that we don't feel necessary because they aren't part of the dynamic of the story.

I HAVE, I am aware, told this story in a very rambling way so that it may be difficult for anyone to find their path through what may be a sort of maze.

I DON'T KNOW how it is best to put this thing down – whether it would be better to try and tell the story from the beginning, as if it were a story; or whether to tell it from this distance of time, as it reached me from the lips of Leonora or from those of Edward himself.

Ford Madox Ford

The man in the corner hollered, Tell it all!

If I go on talking and talking...and telling you things about pretending, I shall bear it better. You don't forget, but you bear it better.

I do not know whether many people realize how much more than is ever written there really is in a story— how many parts of it are never told— how much more really happened than there is in the book one holds in one's hand and pores over.

Oh,Sara. It is like a story. It is a story...everything is a story. You are a story-I am a story. Miss Minchin is a story.

If you tell stories, you like nothing so much as to tell them to people who want to listen.

It IS a story, said Sara. EVERYTHING'S a story. You are a story—I am a story. Miss Minchin is a story.

Oh Sara! Ermengarde whispered joyfully. It is like a story. It is a story, said Sara. Everything's a story. You are a story- I am a story. Miss Minchin is a story.

her power of telling stories and of making everything she talked about seem like a story, whether it was one or not.