Quotes About Narrative

Fiction is not only fiction; it also carries truth that appears in various imaginary contexts and protective forms.

Not writing means; not history remains; whereas, writing means; disclosing and unmasking the characters' reality.

The beauty of the story is that it happened. It was the last thing that happened in New York. Everything else happened while I was stopping it from happening.

You can't force a story that doesn't want to be told. It was that kind of year.

You pulled one story from your head, and another story popped up in its place, like tissues from a box.

History: gossip well told.

A miracle is an event described by those to whom it was told by people who did not see it.

I long ago discovered that you can't TELL about Pollyanna. The minute you try to, she sounds priggish and preachy, and--impossible. Yet you and I know she is anything but that.

The rules say that to tell a story you need first of all a measuring stick, a calendar, you have to calculate how much time has passed between you and the facts, the emotions to be narrated.

Thus the story of the facts has to reckon with filters, deferments, partial truths, half lies: from it comes an arduous measurement of time passed that is based completely on the unreliable measuring device of words.

Ognuno si racconta la vita come gli fa comodo.

But the happy ending has to do with the tricks of the narrative, not with life, or even love, which is an uncontrollable, changeable feeling, with nasty surprises that are alien to the happy ending.

What I expect from a good story is that it will tell me today what I can't know from any other source but that story, from its unique way of putting something into words, from the feeling that it implies.

With greater or less ability we fabricate fictions not so that the false will seem true but to tell the most unspeakable truth with absolute faithfulness through the fiction.

Yes, it's Lila who makes writing difficult. My life forces me to imagine what hers would have been if what happened to me had happened to her, what use she would have made of my luck.

Ognuno si racconta la vita come gli fa comodo».

Only she can say if, in fact, she has managed to insert herself into this extremely long chain of words to modify my text, to purposely supply the missing links, to unhook others without letting it show, to say of me more than I want, more than I'm able to say.

Telling the real, Jacques emphasized, is constitutionally difficult; you have to deal with the fact that the teller is always a distorting mirror.

At those moments I took it for granted that there was not and never would be a manuscript of Lila's. I had always overestimated her, nothing memorable would emerge from her - something that reassured me and yet truly upset me. I loved Lila. I wanted her to last. But I wanted it to be I who made her last. I thought it was my task. I was convinced that she herself, as a girl, had assigned it to me.

Volevo scrivere storie piene di spifferi.

L'oscenità, concluse, non è estranea alla buona letteratura e l'arte vera del racconto, se pure passa il limite della decenza, non è mai scabrosa.

Es war eine wundervolle Erfahrung«, sagte ich zu ihr. »Was denn?« »Die Schwangerschaft, die Geburt. Adele ist bildschön und so lieb.« Sie antwortete: »Jeder erzählt sich das Leben so, wie es ihm gefällt.

Byla jsem jediný možný zdroj pÃ…â"¢íbÄ›hu, nemohla jsem a ani jsem nechtÄ›la pátrat mimo sebe.

Que desperdício seria, pensei, estragar nossa história dando espaço excessivo aos maus sentimentos: os maus sentimentos são inevitáveis, mas o essencial é represá-los.