Quotes About Narrative

Only when we feel the story in each of its moments or places are we able to tell it properly.

el momento en que la escritura parece cuidarse únicamente de sacar adelante la historia. Es ahí donde radica por completo la alegría de escribir.

This is more or less what happened to me between the end of 1963 and the end of 1965. How easy it is to tell the story of myself without Lila: time quiets down and the important facts slide along the thread of the years like suitcases on a conveyor belt at an airport; you pick them up, put them on the page, and it's done.

Pero sigo pensando que cuando nos atribuimos de modo más o menos arbitrario la tarea de contar no debemos preocuparnos por la serenidad de quien nos lee, sino solo por construir ficciones que ayuden a contemplar la condición humana sin demasiados filtros.

Cada um conta a própria vida como acha melhor.

Each of us narrates our life as it suits us.

She will prolong her life by the length of her story, even though time will wear on inexorably as she tells it, thus depriving her of the chance to have a new experience.

History portrays everything as if it could not have come otherwise. History is on the side of what happened.

A story is a life that didn't happen, and a life is a story that didn't get told.

That way the story is put on the same footing as life, because a story is a life that didn't happen, and a life is a story that didn't get told.

History does not need explanatory principles, but only words to tell how things were.

I felt a wave of nausea to realize that I had propagated these stories just by telling Svetlana what was going on—just because I had wanted to tell some other person the basic events of my own life.

That's a weak definition of narrative. That's saying that narrative is just memory plus causality. But, for us, the narrative has aesthetics, too.

and thanked me for listening to his story. Now it's yours. It's out there. Do with it what you will. There it was. He wanted me to write it. I had no intention of doing so.

Look for the whole story and you'll get a lot closer to the truth.

I am not staying with the murderer," she said, her words muffled by his jacket. "I am not staying with the victim Abel Tannatek or the culprit Abel Tannatek. I am staying with the storyteller.

The place in her, though, where her tears should have come from, was rough and dry. No, she didn't find any tears in herself to cry for the storyteller. The storyteller didn't exist anymore.

A story isn't a good one unless it has a good listener

Contar cualquier historia es contar cicatrices.

Al fin y al cabo, la Historia, como viene a decir el autor del manuscrito carmesí, no es más que una larga carrera de relevos: sabemos de dónde viene y por dónde transcurre, pero, en último término, no adónde se dirige, ni cuándo concluirá.

Contar cualquier historia es contar cicatrices".

Cuando lo vi volver, alto y oscilante, las manos hundidas en los bolsillos de su gran abrigo abierto y con las solapas levantadas, entendí que había en él esa intensa sugestión de carácter que tienen siempre los portadores de una historia, como los portadores de un revólver. Pero no estoy haciendo una vana comparación literaria: él tenía una historia y guardaba un revólver.

Dado que el mundo es de una complejidad pavorosa, una buena historia de ficción lo simplifica y lo hace inteligible. La ficción ayuda a largo plazo a poner las cosas en su sitio. Al final, lo que sabemos de las sociedades lo sabemos a través de ella a lo largo del tiempo.

I think it's outrageous if a historian has a 'leading thought' because it means they will select their material according to their thesis